Mr. Nathan was dead set against a live album. “You mean you want to record your stage show live?” he said.
“That’s right,” I said.
“James, you can’t keep on recording the same songs over and over again. Nobody’s going to buy that.”
“But Mr. Nathan, they sound different when I sing ’em live. You ought to hear the way the audience hollers.”
“I’m not going to spend money on something where a lot of people are going to be screaming. Who wants a lot of noise over the songs?”
“But it’ll be like you’re right there at the show.”
“What if somebody yells something out of the way?”
“If you can’t bleep it out, then just leave it in.”
“Then it couldn’t even be played on the radio.”
“But Mr. Nathan, it’s going to be good.”
“No, James, we’re not doing it.”
That was it. That man didn’t want to hear any more about it. He’d been in business a long time, he’d made plenty of money, and he didn’t see why he should do anything but the conventional thing. See, there just weren’t many live albums in R & B or popular music then. It was a new thing, and he didn’t understand it.
I didn’t argue with him any more that day, but I didn’t give up on the idea either. I’d been booked on American Bandstand for June 11 and thought I’d have more leverage after I appeared there again. I did “Night Train” and “Shout and Shimmy” that day, and like the other time, the bookings got better and better after that. But Mr. Nathan still didn’t want to hear anything about a live album.
Some of the bookings were around Ohio, and that’s when I started seeing the Supremes and the Temptations. They came over to our shows in the Cleveland hockey arena and talked about getting on my show, but they were already working with Berry Gordy, who had started the Motown and Tamla record labels. Berry had written some of Jackie Wilson’s early hits—“Reet Petite” and “Lonely Teardrops”—and he’d written “You Got What It Takes,” a big hit for Marv Johnson. He’d decided to send his acts around in a package tour called the Motortown Revue. His record company and most of his artists were still pretty new, and he was trying to get a better foothold in the business. He approached Mr. Bart to see if I would take them out as part of my show for a while. I agreed to do it because I thought so much of Berry. It turned out to be the only time the Motortown Revue was headlined by somebody who wasn’t a Motown artist.
It was a great show: the Miracles, who had “Shop Around”; Mary Wells, who had “The One Who Really Loves You”; the Marvelettes, who had “Please Mr. Postman”; the Contours; Marv Johnson; Marvin Gaye; the Supremes; the Vandellas; and Little Stevie Wonder, who was only twelve years old at the time. I believe we started in Shreveport, Louisiana, and did forty one-nighters with maybe two Sundays off. We actually slept in hotels maybe one or two nights the whole tour; the rest of the time we were on the road on our way to the next town.
I traveled in my car and we had two buses, one for my people and one for the Motown people. Some of ’em, though, like Marvin Gaye and Marv Johnson, drove their own cars. Marvin had a brand-new red Cadillac exactly like mine. He was married to Anna Gordy, Berry’s sister, and she loved me so much she made him buy a car just like mine. He’d driven it straight to Shreveport from Detroit; it still had the price sticker and the drive-out tag on it. When we went out to the parking lot after opening night, we saw that someone had taken a brick to the front and back windshields and a side window. Smashed ’em all out. Marvin had a fit. Really, though, I think whoever did it thought it was my car. Whenever you start to get well known there are people making anonymous threats against you, and I was getting some, even back then.
In Silver Spring, Maryland, someone stole Marv Johnson’s car. They hotwired it, took it for a drive, and left it running in the parking lot. Kids had done it, and the police caught them right away. Instead of filing charges, Marv took them to dinner and talked to them about what they’d done. He kept in touch with them and later one of the boys finished school and went on to do very well for himself.
The road was a new experience for most of the Motown acts. Some, like Diana Ross, were kids, really. I don’t remember too much about her from that tour; she was very shy and withdrawn, but you could already see she was very talented. She spent a lot of time with Johnny Terry, and Mary Wells was going with Baby Lloyd.
All those Motown people were talented, but the music they played was different from mine. Their stuff wasn’t so strong and driving. They did lightweight, pop soul, very soft, and by being soft it crossed over into the pop market a lot easier. My music was raw, and it has never been popular to be too raw. I was always loyal to my musical roots, even when I was taking the music in a new direction. I have a lot of respect for Motown, a very strong organization and badly needed in the business, because they have that other sound. They were a good organization. When my part of the tour with them ended in Atlanta, I had a talk with Mr. Bart while we were sitting around the hotel room.
I said, “Pop, why don’t you handle my business from now on?”
He said, “I am handling it.”
“I don’t mean booking, I mean managing. Why don’t you manage me?”
He laughed and said, “No, Jimmy, my wife says I spend too much time on the road with you as it is.”
“I want you to handle the business because I know you know how. I don’t care about the money, I care about the business. If I make fifty million dollars, I’ll just keep one and you take the other forty-nine as long as the tax is paid up.”
He laughed again.
“I’m serious, Pop,” I said. “I want you to be my partner.”
He thought it over for a while and eventually agreed to do it. He worked it out with Mr. Brantly and then turned over Universal’s booking to his son Jack.
As soon as Pop became my manager, I told him there were two things I wanted to do right away: Make a live album and change the deal I always got from the Apollo. “I’m booked into the Apollo starting October 19,” I said. “Let’s take care of both things at once.”
I went back to Mr. Nathan about doing the live album, but we had another big argument. He just didn’t want to spend any money on something he didn’t know about. Finally, I said: “All right, Mr. Nathan, I’ll pay for it myself.”
“Fine,” he said. “If you want to do it, James, you do it, but I’m not spending one red cent for it.”
So I wound up paying for recording Live at the Apollo out of my own pocket. It cost me $5,700, a lot of money to me then because I really didn’t make that much. It was expensive to carry around the big show I did, and there was still something funny about my records and publishing money.
Next, we had to work on Mr. Schiffman about the deal with the Apollo. Before I became really popular at the Apollo, Mr. Schiffman said we were partners, which meant I received a percentage of the door after expenses and everything had been taken out. I didn’t always do a whole lot of business there, and when I did draw well, it seemed like expenses always ate up the gross. Besides that, it was hard to get an accurate count of the house because people stayed all day for all the shows on one ticket. But once I really caught on at the Apollo, I could see I was doing good business. I thought this arrangement was finally going to pay off for me, but when I got my money it was the same amount I had gotten before. When I went to Mr. Schiffman about it, he said, “Oh, we’re not partners anymore. We’re hiring you this time for a flat fee.” I said, “Whaaaaat?” I couldn’t believe it.
Later, after Pop found out about it, they came up with a few more dollars, but I wasn’t going to take that again, so I said to Pop, “When we go in there this next time, we’ll rent the theater.”
“Jimmy, nobody has ever rented the Apollo. Schiffman is not going to go for it.”
“Tell him he reneged on his agreement and that the only way I’m coming in there is if I rent it.”
Mr. Schiffman didn’t want to do it, but when I wouldn’t back down, he gave in. Once I got the place rented, I decided to put the ushers in tuxedos and the concession people in uniforms. I wanted the audience to feel that a James Brown performance was something special, and I wanted the people who worked at the Apollo to be clean and presentable, which is something I have always been particular about. Ever since I was little and didn’t have anybody to do for me, I thought a lot about cleanliness. I even tried to iron my pants when I was in prison.
Once Mr. Nathan saw I was going to go ahead with the live recording, he started cooperating. Mr. Neely took care of getting the equipment from A-1 Sound in New York, the only ones who had portable stuff—Magnacorders, I think. Matter of fact, Mr. Nathan started cooperating too much. He sent word that he wanted us to use cue cards to direct the audience participation. I said, “Now if y’all are going to pay for it, then I’ll do it the way y’all want to, but if I’m going to pay for it, then please leave it alone. All I want y’all to do is tape the stuff.” That was the end of it.
We had opened on the nineteenth and were building up to recording on the twenty-fourth, a Wednesday, which meant amateur night. I wanted that wild amateur-night crowd because I knew they’d do plenty of hollering. The plan was to record all four shows that day so we’d have enough tape to work with. I think Mr. Neely and Chuck Seitz, the engineers, had six or eight mikes, two crowd monitors in front, one above the crowd, and then the mikes on me, the band, and the Flames.
The other acts on the bill were Olatunji, the Sensations, Curley Mays, and Pigmeat Markham. Yvonne Fair had a solo spot, and so did Baby Lloyd. On the twenty-fourth I was going around backstage telling the Flames and the band not to get nervous, and I guess I was probably the most nervous of all. I wasn’t worried about performing; I was worried about the recording coming off good. I had a lot riding on it, not just my own money but my reputation because here I was having to prove myself to Mr. Nathan and them all over again, just like when I had to demo “Try Me.” I was standing in the wings thinking about all this when Fats stepped up to the microphone and did his intro:
“So now, ladies and gentlemen, it is startime. Are you ready for startime?” Yeah! “Thank you and thank you very kindly. It is indeed a great pleasure to present to you at this particular time, nationally and internationally known as the Hardest Working Man in Show Business, the man that sings, ‘I’ll Go Crazy’”...a fanfare from the band: Taaaaa! “‘You’ve Got the Power’” ...Taaaaa! “‘Think’” ...Taaaaa! “‘If You Want Me’”...Taaaaa! “‘I Don’t Mind’”...Taaaaa! “‘Bewildered’”...Taaaaa! “million-dollar seller ‘Lost Someone’”...Taaaaa! “the very latest release, ‘Night Train’”...Taaaaa! “Let’s everybody ‘Shout and Shimmy’”...Taaaaa! “Mr. Dynamite, the amazing Mr. ‘Please Please’ himself, the star of the show... James Brown and the Famous Flames.”
Then the band went into the chaser—the little up-tempo vamp we used between songs—and I hit the stage. As soon as I was into “I’ll Go Crazy” I knew it was one of those good times. That’s a hard feeling to describe—being on stage, performing, and knowing that you’ve really got it that night. It feels like God is blessing you, and you give more and more. The audience was with me, screaming and hollering on all the songs, and I thought, “Man, this is really going to do it.”
It’s a funny thing, though. When I’m up on stage I’m very aware of everything that’s going on around me—what the band and the backup singers are doing, how the audience is reacting, how the sound system’s working, all that. When you work small clubs you watch the door, check out how rough the crowd looks, listen for little pitch changes in your one little amplifier that tell you it’s about to blow out. You can’t just be thinking about the song or how pretty you look up there. You learn to be aware.
As the show went along I started noticing little things and filing them away in my mind. Every now and then the band made a mistake or the Flames were a half tone off. Sometimes I hollered where I usually didn’t in the song, and some of the audience down front was too enthusiastic. A little old lady down front kept yelling, “Sing it mother----r, sing it!” She looked like she must have been seventy-five years old. I could hear her the whole time and knew the overhead crowd mike was right above her. Mr. Neely had strung it on a wire between the two side balconies. Most times none of those things would’ve mattered, but we were recording and I was thinking, “Oh, Lord, this take’s ruined.”
During a quiet stretch of “Lost Someone” the woman let out a loud scream, and the audience laughed right in the middle of this serious song. I thought “Well, there goes that song, too.” Then I thought I had better try to fix it some kind of way so I started preaching: “You know we all make mistakes sometimes, and the only way we can correct our mistakes is we got to try one more time. So I got to sing this song to you one more time.” I stretched out the song, hoping we could get something we could use; then I went into “Please.”
Mr. Neely brought the tape into a back room between the first two shows and played it for us on a little tape recorder. As soon as we heard the little old lady, we all busted out laughing. He didn’t understand. All he could hear was her high piercing voice, but he didn’t really understand what she was saying, even though it was clear as a bell. Finally, somebody told him. Then he understood.
“Oh no,” he said. “I can’t have that. I have to get it out of there and make sure she’s not here for the other shows, too. This is terrible.”
He was getting all worked up, while all the cats were listening to it over and over, laughing, having a great time, and getting other cats to listen to it. After a while, watching everybody carry on, Mr. Neely settled himself down and said, “Hey, maybe we’ve got something here.”
He found the lady down front and told her he’d buy her candy and popcorn and give her $10 if she’d stay for the other three shows—he didn’t tell her why. He moved the overhead mike so it wouldn’t pick her up so strong. We were using two-track, which meant practically mixing as we went along. She stayed for the next three shows and hollered the same thing every time I did a spin or something she liked. It was like it was on cue. I think the shows got even better as the day went along. By the end of the last one we had four reels of tape. Mr. Neely was so excited he brought the master up to the dressing rooms and passed around the headphones for us to listen. None of us had ever heard ourselves live like that. It sounded fantastic. We knew we really had something.
By this time we had completely forgotten about the finale, where all the acts change clothes and come out on stage together to close the show. Everybody else had changed and was waiting backstage, but we were listening to the tape over and over. Never did do that finale.