While the fight between King and Mercury was still going through the courts, Mercury put out “I Got You (I Feel Good)” on Smash. The injunction was still in force, though, and they had to withdraw the record right away. Finally, the lower court ruling was upheld on appeal: I could do instrumentals on Smash, but if I was going to sing, it had to be on King. That was all right with me. I had made my point with Mr. Nathan, and I didn’t want to see him driven out of business. When I came back they tore up the old contract and gave me a new one, so I came back on good terms and with a lot more power than I’d had before. You need power to get freedom. You need freedom to create.
The new contract was a ten-year personal services contract with a royalty rate of 7 percent, I think, but it wasn’t too long before they raised it to 10 percent. Except for people in the classical field, I think I was the first 10-percent artist. The publishing companies were restructured, too. The key point, though, was a weekly payment: King had to give me $1,500 a week no matter what. They could charge it against my royalties, but they couldn’t withhold the payment. The $1,500 figure wasn’t that important; it was the principle of the thing. This way we could avoid all the squabbling over royalties and the contract extensions that caused the whole problem in the first place. Later on, in my tax case, the government came along and took all that money away from me, but at the time I was very happy about it. Mr. Nathan was happy, too; one day he said to me that if the company was ever sold I ought to get 10 percent.
So I came back to King in the summer of 1965 with “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.” The funny thing was, Mr. Nathan didn’t like that song either. He was so disgusted he threw an acetate of it on the floor. I just laughed. It became my first international hit.
I had an actual new bag of my own, too. After I went back to King, every time I recorded a bunch of sides I got the masters and put them in a bag I had. I carried it with me everywhere. When I wanted to release something, I pulled the master out of the bag and gave it to the record company. I wanted to control the releases, and I didn’t want to get into a situation in the future where King would have a stockpile they could draw on like they had when I was over on Smash. From then on I called all the releases.
At the end of October I went into the Apollo and had the long lines again. I think we set the Apollo record that week. A ticket at that time didn’t cost but $2 and you could still stay all day on it, but we grossed about $70,000 anyway. One night while we were there we heard Ed Sullivan was in the audience. I understand he often came up to the Apollo to check out performers for his show. I think he knew how tough the Apollo audience was, and he figured if somebody could get over at the Apollo he could get over with his audience. Not too long after that I heard I got the booking on his show.
I followed up “Papa’s Bag” with “I Got You (I Feel Good).” It was a much hipper, up-tempo version of “I Found You,” which I had cut Yvonne on. It was another smash. Things were getting bigger and bigger, but Pop still wasn’t satisfied. He was always trying to come up with some kind of promotional idea to give us that extra boost. A lot of times, we gave away cars, television sets, all kinds of things at concerts, but he was looking for something other than pushing a single concert. One day a bunch of us were sitting around his office at Universal Attractions discussing ideas. Pop was offering suggestions, and I was rejecting them as fast as he came up with them. Finally, he said, “Jimmy, I know what I can do, but you’re not going to like it.”
“What’s that, Pop?”
“That thing we discussed before.”
He wouldn’t say what it was because he didn’t want Byrd, who was sitting there, to know about it. I knew what he was talking about, though.
“Pop,” I said, “just don’t embarrass me. Don’t make me look silly.”
The next thing I knew there was an item in the gossip section of a magazine that insinuated I was going across the water to have a sex-change operation. So I could marry Bobby Byrd. Once the rumor was started, there wasn’t much I could do about it. If you deny it, it just makes it bigger. Pop said to keep quiet and see what happened. Meantime, Byrd hadn’t heard about it, and I didn’t want to be the one to tell him. I said, “Listen, Byrd, Ben has come up with a lot of good ideas. Let’s all go along with him and see what he comes up with. He’s liable to make us both hotter.”
When it first came out, I think we were in Raleigh, North Carolina. People were yelling from the audience about it. I was wearing a lot of makeup then, and that added fuel to the fire. After the show, Byrd and I went out the stage door together. We couldn’t hardly get to the car for all the people lined up to check us out. They were hollering at Byrd: “There he is! Look at him!” Byrd said to me, “Boy, I must have killed ’em tonight.”
When we got back to New York, I called him at his hotel, I think it was the Great Northern on 57th Street. I said, “Byrd, was there a bunch of people around y’all’s hotel?”
“Yeah,” he said, “when the tour bus pulled up, a big crowd was waiting for us, and they were all yelling at me and talking funny. Something peculiar is going on ’cause I don’t have a record out now.”
“I told you I was going to make you hot, Byrd.”
He found out later that day what was happening. Somebody told him about the magazine story. At first he was mad about it, then he figured it didn’t matter what people said about you as long as you know what you are. The thing did make him hot. All these people were coming to the show to see what the truth was. Once, in California, there were people jumping up on the stage to dance, and some of ’em were trying to grab me between the legs. After it all died down, we had a good laugh about it. It was all in good fun; Byrd didn’t hold it against me, and I didn’t hold it against Pop. But just about the time I got back with King, Pop and I got into some very heavy disagreements about other things. They were just artist and manager type problems, but they got out of hand. We had both been under a lot of pressure, and we said a lot of things we shouldn’t have.
“Jimmy, I’m pulling out,” he said.
“That’s fine, Pop,” I said. “I don’t need you. You never did that much for me anyway.” We both knew that wasn’t true, and I think it hurt him for me to say that.
“Okay, fine,” he said. “But you’re going back into the clubs now because I’m going to lock up everything else.”
He almost did, too. I wasn’t really locked out of all the coliseums, but the prime bookings were harder to get. It was amazing how much power he had. He even stopped a show in Cincinnati one night and attached the box office. I bridged the gap by doing a lot of TV shows in the States and in England. It was never any real hardship, it was just that someone like Pop meant a lot to a black entertainer at that time. Plus, he meant a lot to me personally, and I hated to see us split up like that. It was like a family fight: Nobody knows how it starts, and nobody knows how to stop it.
Finally I went to him, we smoothed it over, and he came back. When he did, he said, “Jimmy, I’m going to take out a million-dollar life insurance policy on you.” It was a humorous thing to cement our getting back together, so I said, “Okay, Pop, if I can take out a million dollars on you.” I thought he was as valuable to me as he thought I was to him. We took out the policies, and after that he always joked, “You’re going to die before I do, Jimmy, because you work too hard.” I’d say, “Naw, Pop, you’re going to die first because you don’t work hard enough.”
The first thing we did when we got back together was plan a concert at Madison Square Garden for March 20, 1966. It was hard to put together. People didn’t think I could draw well in such a big place by myself, so to quiet ’em down I added Len Barry, Lou Christie, Slim Harpo, the Shangri-Las, and the Soul Brothers to the bill. By the time it was publicized most of the tickets had already been sold.
Right before the date, I went to England and did the Ready Steady Go television show. While I was there taping it several British acts came by to say hello—the Beatles, the Kinks, the Animals. I think a couple of the Stones came by, too. These groups had a real appreciation for where the music came from and knew more about R & B and blues than most Americans. I played the Palladium and the Walhamstow, and then we hopped over to Paris and played the Olympia. I wasn’t really prepared for the reception we got in Europe. In London they had to put us on one floor of the hotel, clear the floor above and below us, and put guards there. During that trip the English people yelled at Byrd about the rumors they had heard, but by that time I think he was used to it.
As soon as I got back to the States I went into the Garden. It was a sellout. Things were just getting bigger and bigger real fast. “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” came out in April and took off. Then came a booking on the Ed Sullivan Show.
I rehearsed with Bob Beck, his son-in-law, three times to see what I was going to do so they could block it. They had to know exactly how long each act would last because it was going to go out live. They kept saying: “Once you shit, that’s it.” I did “Good Good Lovin’” with the baseball routine and “Please.” Mr. Sullivan wouldn’t let me do “Don’t Be a Drop-Out.” I hadn’t released it yet, but I’d already written it and thought it was an important song. I wanted it to go on network television, figuring with that large an audience I should try to do something that might help people. He refused to let me do it. He was nice about it, but he never explained why he didn’t want me to sing it.
The Supremes were on the show, too. We did the rehearsal, and after the dress rehearsal when it was time for the live show Mr. Sullivan couldn’t get the people to stay quiet. I was hot for the dress rehearsal, and the Supremes were, too. The live version that went out over the air wasn’t as good as that dress rehearsal.
No matter how good or how big the bookings got, I still played the Apollo, but with the size of my show now—the band was twenty pieces—I couldn’t play under the old arrangement where people stayed all day for the price of one ticket. I told Mr. Schiffman, “You got to put these people out after each show.”
“I’ve been running this place for forty years,” he said. “You can’t do that.”
“They’ll do it if you tell ’em,” I said. “I’ll give ’em a complete show, and then they’ll get up and leave.”
They had to make the tickets good for one show only and increase the price to $3. I hated to do it, but it was the difference between playing there and not playing there. I knew I could get people to leave feeling satisfied when a show was over. That’s what I taught the people who ran the Apollo: completion.
Besides Byrd and Vicki, I had the gospel group the Swanee Quintet on the show. I did a lot of split shows with gospel acts during that time. People always said you couldn’t bring together church people and people who dug music like mine, but I thought you could. I used to have the Swanees, the Mighty Clouds of Joy, the Angelic Gospel Singers, Clara Ward, all of them. I had the gospel people on the first part of the show, then an intermission, and then my show. Singing is all about spirit anyway—doesn’t make any difference what kind of singing.
The pace I’d been keeping was beginning to wear me down. I was tired and had some kind of virus when I started that week at the Apollo. I worked so hard on stage I was dehydrated a lot of the time and didn’t even know it. I drank beer after the show to get more fluids, but I didn’t know that alcohol dehydrates you even more. It all caught up with me on Saturday night’s midnight show. I had already done several shows that day. I was doing “Please”—collapsing onto my knees—when I felt all the muscles in my legs freeze, then start cramping real bad. I started twitching all over, my breath got short, and I fell out right there on the stage. I thought I had done it to death for real. When the Flames helped me up, they weren’t acting. I tried to continue but was too weak. I guess some of the people in the audience thought it was part of the act, but a lot of ’em could see I was in trouble and became very disturbed and started screaming. The Flames got me into the wings.
The Apollo house doctor, Dr. William Calloway—everybody called him Dr. Bill—took one look at me and knew what was wrong. They put me into a car or an ambulance—I can’t remember which—and took me to his office on 135th Street. He said I had low-salt syndrome, that I had sweated out too much sodium and potassium; he gave me an intravenous solution of sodium lactate to rehydrate me. Meantime, a lot of people had followed us there from the Apollo. They were outside trying to get in, almost breaking the door down. Honi Coles or somebody went out and got them to stop before we had to call the police to protect ourselves.
After that I took an intravenous solution whenever I got really exhausted. I needed the salt and the fluids, sometimes as much as four pints, which would take two or three hours. I went to Dr. Bill’s and lay there on the table until I was done and felt better right away. That’s when people started saying I was a junkie because they saw the needle mark in my arm.
I thought the traveling might be taking a lot out of me, too, and things were starting to move so fast that Pop and I decided to get a jet. Right after the Apollo gig we leased full time a six-passenger Lear model 24. I think I was the first person of my origin to do that. We had it painted green and white, with “Out of Sight” written along the fuselage. With the plane I could work an eight-day week: I could get to the next gig quick, hit the disc jockeys, and still have plenty of time to rest before the show. Same reason I’d started riding in the car instead of the bus, only now everything was on a bigger scale.
We played the L.A. Sports Arena, the Cow Palace, Braves Stadium, Miami Stadium, and places like that. I played Shea Stadium for a Murray the K show that became a television special. I came down into the stadium by helicopter and climbed down a ladder onto the infield. Scared a bunch of people.
While I was doing the L.A. Sports Arena I went on Bandstand again—by this time it had moved to Hollywood—and sang “Man’s World” and “Money Won’t Change You,” which had just come out in June. Jackie Wilson was playing at the Trip Club, and I dropped in on his show and did some numbers. The next night Jackie came on my show at the Arena.
I think it was on this trip to the coast that Elvis and I finally got together. We kept up with each other through mutual friends in the business, but we could never get together. He came to see my show a few times. He came in disguise, after the house lights were down, and left right before it was over. I’d get word through Mr. Neely that he’d been there. And I knew he watched The TA.M.I. Show over and over.
At a big party he threw in the Hyatt Continental, I think, when it got late, we threw everybody out of the room, and Elvis and I sang gospel together. We sang “Old Jonah,” “Old Blind Barnabas,” all the ones I’d been singing since I was little. He knew the harmonies, too. That’s how we communicated—by singing jubilee, the real upbeat kind of gospel. He told me he wanted to use my band to record. He said he wanted the horns and things behind him, but he wanted them strong. When he first started he was copying B. B. and them, but finally they didn’t have enough fire for him. That’s when he really got into his own thing. Elvis was great. People still said he was copying, but he found his own style. Elvis was rockabilly; he wasn’t rock ’n’ roll, he was rockabilly. He was really a hillbilly who learned to play the blues.
Cats complain all the time about white people learning music from blacks. It’s true we’ve kind of had a monopoly on certain kinds of music, but everybody’s entitled to it. They shouldn’t steal it, but they’re entitled to learn it and play it. No sense in keeping all the drive on one side, because if you’re teaching people, you’re teaching people. They should remember, though, that when a man teaches you, he’s your best friend, but if he keeps you in the dark, you’re in trouble.
Elvis and I both hit the charts at the same time, 1956; he had “Hound Dog” and I had “Please.” But that night in Los Angeles we were just two country boys singing the stuff we grew up on. I could tell Elvis had a strong spiritual feeling by the way he sang that music. We sang together a long time that night.
After California we went into Kansas City and a whole bunch of mess. We got involved in a riot there when the police stopped my show for obscenity. It was funny, really. The dancers usually wore very short shorts, cut way up, with a bare midriff. In Kansas City they didn’t put seats on the auditorium floor. You could crowd right up to the bandstand, which a lot of kids did. That upset the cops because the girls hadn’t shaved under their arms and you could almost see some of their pubic hair when they kicked their legs up—and a lot of the routines involved kicking. The police didn’t want to see no hair nowhere. So they stopped the show.
The crowd got upset, yelling, “Leave ’em alone. Let ’em dance. We want the show.” This white kid jumped on the stage and pushed the cop off. When that happened, everybody with the revue left the stage. Then the fighting really started. Kids fighting the cops, cops beating up on people. The whole thing got a lot of publicity, but the obscenity charge was nothing. Kansas City had just gotten to be a very strict town, not wide open like it was in the days of Count Basie and them.
The sex-change rumor might have had something to do with the police’s attitude when we were there. I think they were expecting a dirty show. I never gave a dirty show in my life. The rumor had a life of its own, though. Later on I heard that a popular version was that I was going to marry my drummer. That’s funny because I used to drum on three of the tunes we did. Anyway, I never married my drummer. Never married Bobby Byrd, either. He was already married.