By 2:00 p.m. Tuesday, March 18, Joe had finished up at James Brown’s radio station. Now he now sat in Ken Johnson’s motel room answering mundane questions from a local newspaperman. It was part of a kickoff to a swirl of commitments with the area’s white community. Ken, ill from last night’s road trip, was sitting up in his disheveled bed a couple of feet away.
Kenny listened, as best he could, to two businessmen making a pitch for Joe to take his act to an upscale club across town. They promised large audiences and a big TV campaign if he moved to the predominantly white venue. In the background, a television blared out a commercial featuring Joe and the local mogul from last night. They were hamming it up with phony punches and references to the fights with Ali, while hyping Wednesday’s appearance at a car dealership.
One of the negotiators for the nightclub looked like a sandy-haired Ichabod Crane in an impeccable gray suit and mirrored sunglasses. He pushed his point relentlessly. Ken finally broke down and croaked out a promise for Joe to visit the club later that afternoon. We eventually all cleared out so Ken could pull himself together.
I tagged along for the drive across town. As we neared our destination, most of the homes became mansions. Some of these grand houses had tennis courts, and many had pools. The place itself was situated in a beautifully landscaped mall.
The posh club was also no more than a long tee shot and two-iron swing from the Augusta National Golf Course. That, of course, was the iconic home of the Masters—the most prestigious of all of golf’s major tournaments. I visualized Joe taking the stage at the club in the Masters’ traditional green sports jacket.
We were met inside by the 40-something proprietor. He had blond, slightly receding hair and a relaxed, friendly face and wore a partly open, casual shirt. He greeted us enthusiastically and made it apparent how thrilled he was to have Joe there. He leaned into Joe just a bit while making his pitch.
First, he gave us a little tour of the club. With his index finger, he pointed out the fenced-in mezzanine area in the back where the band would set up. It faced into a tiered dining area with plush seating. That, in turn, was flanked by a row of elaborate backgammon tables and an opulent, mirrored bar that ran the width of the room.
Off to the left, the owner indicated the large, formal dance floor. Beyond that, somewhat isolated, we found a quiet retreat furnished in expensive antiques, upholstered armchairs, and grand chandeliers. The room was decorated in muted yellows and grays with thick carpeting and subdued lighting. We were told this fit the somewhat older, more affluent part of their clientele.
The club held 600 patrons, and our host seemed convinced Joe’s shows would sell out. He said he also owned another Augusta nightspot across town “exclusively for blacks.” But he felt that Joe would go over much better in the white club. I started to ask why and decided not to interrupt.
Everything the guy said was on message. Yet, despite the warm, upbeat presentation, he referred to Joe as “boy” over and over again. After the first time, I instinctively braced myself for Joe’s violent reaction. But it never came. Joe cheerfully agreed instead to do two shows tomorrow night at 9:30 p.m. and midnight.
“What the hell was that?” I blurted out as we exited the club. I couldn’t help myself. I wondered out loud why Joe hadn’t flattened the guy for repeatedly calling him boy.
Kenny seemed a bit perturbed as well but didn’t say anything.
Joe calmly explained to me that this was normal for the South of 1980. That was just the way the club owner had been raised. Joe actually saw him as a good guy who didn’t even realize he had been insulting.
I knew Joe was right. He had been raised in the South. He had a much better feel for true intentions down here than a New York native like me.
A moment later, Joe gave me a sly smile. He added one more point. If the same thing had happened in Philadelphia or New York, he would have knocked the guy out.
After leaving the club, we drove back to the motel. Joe and Kenny had booking arrangements to discuss, and I didn’t hear an invitation to join them. I headed instead for a rambling interview with the Steppin’ Out Band. We soon drifted into a conversation that picked up on the friendly relationship established yesterday afternoon.
All the guys in the band were around 24 years old, extremely talented, and college trained. Five of them had studied music at Berklee, and one had attended the University of Massachusetts Business School. Only David Cherry, the opening act, was older, at 30, and had a more informal entertainment background. He was already with Joe’s entourage when the band signed on and had performed with several East Coast bands before that. The guys had readily incorporated DC into their group once they saw him onstage.
The band members said Joe had been performing professionally, on and off, since at least 1970, when he was already heavyweight champ. They acknowledged Joe had come a long way in his stagecraft. By way of example, John Desony, the bass player, referred to one of Joe’s more painful early mistakes. Taking an awkward step on a Las Vegas stage, while still champ, Joe “fell off the stage and broke his leg.” It was about a year before Joe’s first fight with Ali.
John said they saw their main job as making the boss look continually more professional up there. It was not an uncommon mission for band members the world over.
“Hell, musicians are always in the position of making some front man look good—even a singer like Elvis Presley,” said John. “Joe carries a share of the load. We just make it lighter and easier to take.”
John then bemoaned the loss of the female backup singers and what they had brought to the show. “The group was better with Something Sweet,” he said. “They covered Joe better—very talented, on a million-seller album. Actually, the girls felt Joe’s show was kind of a step down. For us, it’s a step up. We’ve met Lou Rawls and many other stars through Joe.”
Switching gears, John went into a litany of serious and somewhat amusing complaints about dealing with the boss. His key criticism centered around Joe’s time spent with Marvis, the guys in the gym, and now his own training routines. Those absences had cost the band lucrative engagements and had impeded Joe’s progress in show business.
“Joe has a lot of other commitments and is not with us to rehearse as much as he should,” said John, who felt the ex-champ had the potential to be much better onstage. “Joe has the discipline from boxing to become a polished performer.”
The musician said that boxing discipline made Joe a perfectionist at times, “a compulsive winner.” Unfortunately, John only saw that discipline at work when Joe had the time to be fully engaged. “If something is not right, he’ll ask one of us, ‘How do I do this, does it sound good?’ And he’ll listen to us.”
John also talked about Joe’s fatherly attitude toward the band members while on the road. Although this could be funny at times, he thought the boss’s heart was in the right place. He recalled Joe giving them lectures on a strong work ethic or even safe sex.
“Now if you’re gonna go with ’em girls, make sure you use them rubbers,” said John, mimicking Joe. “I don’t want my boys getting sick now.”
Rick Magnani, on sax, suddenly chimed in with a quirky complaint of his own. “I’ve been on the road with Joe for six weeks and he still doesn’t know my name,” he said. “He calls all the guys in the band by their instruments—Mr. Bass Man, Mr. Saxophone, Mr. Trumpet.”
I laughed out loud and let out a sigh of relief. Ever since I had arrived in Augusta, Joe had been introducing me to people as “the White Writer.” I had started to worry that it was a race thing—something I hadn’t picked up on before. Now I knew it was only a memory thing that came from dealing with an ever-growing crowd of people in his orbit.
Steve Schwartz, the lead trumpet player, said he had a solution for Joe’s forgetfulness. “He finally remembered my name after I won $50 off of him in blackjack.”
Winners like Joe remembered losses all too well.
The interview finished up with a story about how physically tough Joe still seemed to be. Kenny and some of the band members had been hanging out in Joe’s motel room on the road. Mike Leonardo, from the horn section, had heard that Joe used to work out with a medicine ball to toughen his gut. So he had been throwing a medicine ball into Joe’s stomach as the ex-champ stood firm with his hands behind his back. Joe apparently psyched himself up and grinned through gritted teeth as the ball hit home.
Then Joe reclined on his back while Mike stood next to the bed. Mike brought the medicine ball above his head and slammed it down over and over again into Joe’s stomach. Eventually, Mike was sweating and Joe was just turning casually from side to side. The demonstration had ended when Kenny got nervous.
“Hey, if he goes to the hospital, we’ll be out of work,” said Kenny, according to the guys.
The Tuesday night crowd at the club in the black neighborhood was even smaller than the night before. After about an hour, there were still only 12 people in the audience. Kenny was already regretting his decision to do one more night before canceling the rest of the engagement. He instructed the band to rapidly dismantle and pack the equipment after the first show. He didn’t see a reason to do the second one.
Joe was clearly upset but instinctively fell back on his professional attitude. “This is my job,” he said, before heading out onstage for another likely unpaid performance.
I felt for Joe as he looked out over the cavernous room with all those empty seats. Yet he just flashed his broad grin and ad-libbed a glib welcome.
“Ah yes, two’s company, but three makes a crowd,” he said, panning the tiny audience with an outstretched hand. “So, I’m gonna give this crowd everything I got.”
Joe went on to keep his promise to the audience. Several band members told me later that Joe had performed technically one of his best sets of the tour that night. It seemed he was consciously trying to make up for the lack of customers by expanding his effort.
After each song, Joe got a smattering of applause from the small group. “Ain’t nothing but a party,” he kept shooting back. By the end, most of the audience had left and just four black women remained.
Joe closed his act with a farewell quip that finally let his anger show. “Well, Augusta, Georgia, you better look close at me now,” he said, “because you ain’t gonna see me here no more!”
By the time Joe emerged from his dressing room, the anger was gone. He even offered to reward the four women for their loyalty. Joe invited them to go across town to the posh white club for some late-night drinks.
What a difference in atmosphere! At 1:00 a.m. midweek, the upscale place was still hopping. More than half of the 600-seat venue was full, and the bar buzzed with loud chatter.
Although not scheduled to perform until the following night, Joe was instantly mobbed by adoring fans. He chatted easily with everyone and signed autographs for over an hour. One well-heeled person after another touted the ex-champ’s accomplishments and took turns talking about how much he meant to them.
I noticed that some fans, in their enthusiasm, tended to treat Joe more like a racehorse than a boxer. They often gushed about how much money they had won betting on him. And, for some reason, they expected him to rejoice over their good fortune.
One well-dressed, gray-haired guy, about 50, offered Joe a story of a past triumph laced with some high praise. While he spoke, his wife pumped his hero’s hand.
“Man, way back, that first Ali fight, nobody thought you would survive,” he said, giving Joe a grave look. “But I bet on you and you made me a lot of money. You won that one—and I could swear you won it for me.”
Joe laughed and shook his head in disbelief. “Yep, yep, yep,” he replied, that big grin spreading across his face. “That’s what I did it for.”
The man went on to say how much he respected the ex-champ. He particularly appreciated the great job Joe did by facing down that damn Clay.
Several others in the crowd said they still considered Joe Frazier the champ. They didn’t seem to like Ali very much and were glad to say so. And they referred to Joe more than once as “our” champion.
There it was out loud. These wealthy, white fans were basically calling Smokin’ Joe “the White Man’s Champion.” They clearly meant it as a compliment that night, but it echoed the most damaging attack suffered by Joe Frazier in his career.
The White Man’s Champion was Muhammad Ali’s cruelest, most insidious racial slur aimed at his archrival back in the day. It instantly challenged Frazier’s integrity, history, and loyalty as a black man. And it had obviously caught on better over the years than anyone thought possible.
In the run-up to the Fight of the Century, Ali had gone into high-volume salesman mode. But it turned out he had been selling more than just tickets to a boxing match. He had been pitching the image of Joe Frazier as the White Man’s Champion—the dumb black man duped into selling out his people to the white establishment. By contrast, this allowed the Greatest to cast himself as the Black Man’s Champion and the defender of his race.
On March 2, 1971, an Associated Press article in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune began by acknowledging that “Muhammad Ali once again called Joe Frazier a white man’s champion.” This happened in a solo, national telephone interview to promote the upcoming heavyweight title bout in Madison Square Garden. Ali went out of his way to suggest Frazier was too unsophisticated to handle the racial and political controversy the fight had stirred up. In the end, he claimed this would undo his opponent both in and outside the ring.
“I represent the masses,” proclaimed Ali, clearly referring to all people of color around the globe. “He’s looked on in the eyes of the world as the American representative, as the white man’s champion. This is too much pressure for Joe Frazier. He can’t cope with these outside pressures.”
In an earlier interview before the fight, Ali had been even more direct in his assault on his rival’s politics. “Joe Frazier is an Uncle Tom,” he had said, according to an article in the Guardian. “He works for the enemy.”
Ali later took that sentiment a huge step further. He suggested that almost all black people supported him. What’s more, he said any black person who thought Joe could win was also an Uncle Tom. This certainly left little room for any black fan to comfortably root for Joe.
New York Times writer Arthur Daley quickly zeroed in on how Ali’s rhetoric had hit home with the black community. One short paragraph in his March 10, 1971, column on the outcome of the fight made it clear that Ali had already alienated Joe from many of his own people.
Daley wrote: “‘Whitey won again,’ shouted one heartbroken watcher, angrily dismissing the Frazier victory as a prearranged coup by the Establishment. It matters not that Joe’s skin is darker. Ali is their boy and he can do no wrong.”
Muhammad Ali later admitted he had fabricated all these charges against Joe just to promote the fight. Yet the explanation had always rung hollow and never seemed to soothe the pain Ali caused. Now, in the last 48 hours, I had seen firsthand how fully those lies were embraced in both the black and white clubs around Augusta, Georgia—so close to where Joe grew up.
Joe Frazier’s initial reaction to these attacks by Ali was one of shock and bewilderment. After all, the two had been friends early on. Joe was also one of the first boxing personalities to defend Ali after the 1967 ban. He worked for Ali’s reinstatement and even came to his rescue when things got tight.
Frazier’s friend Butch Lewis, quoted in a 1996 Sports Illustrated piece, confirmed that “on at least two occasions” Joe gave Ali money when he needed it. One time he handed Ali “$2,000 to pay an overdue bill at the City Squire Motor Inn in New York City.”
That same Sports Illustrated article later captured just how betrayed Frazier felt back then by Ali’s verbal assaults. He seemed particularly blindsided by the Uncle Tom references. Joe knew he had lived a more authentic, gritty, black childhood than Ali ever did growing up.
“He called me an Uncle Tom,” said Joe, according to SI. “For a guy who did as much for him as I did, that was cruel. I grew up like a black man—he didn’t. I cooked the liquor. I cut the wood. I worked the farm. I lived in the ghetto. Yes, I tommed. When he asked me to help him get a [boxing] license, I tommed for him. For him! He betrayed my friendship.”
That betrayal became progressively more pronounced after Frazier won the Fight of the Century. Ali’s remarks were ever more personal, graphic, and insulting as the rivalry intensified. By the lead-in to the Thrilla in Manilla, these comments were downright vicious and cut deeper and deeper.
Ali’s attacks were usually masked with his famous charm, something funny. He set the tone for one press conference by whipping out a small rubber gorilla doll and introducing it as Joe Frazier. He then beat the gorilla doll unmercifully. This was accompanied by a not-so-funny little ditty.
“It’s gonna be a chilla, and a killa, and a thrilla, when I fight the gorilla in Manila,” he sang, according to a bleacherreport.com piece marking Ali’s death. Ali was still punching away at the doll while he sang. Everyone laughed at the time. But as the words sunk in, some black people winced instead.
Other prefight jibes by Ali were impossible to ultimately laugh off or misconstrue. Yet they invariably began with some kind of humor as well.
“Joe Frazier should give his face to the Wildlife Fund,” quipped Ali to a gathering of the press, reported the Guardian. “He’s so ugly, blind men go the other way.”
Again, everyone in the room laughed. It came off as a classic “he’s so ugly” joke at first. Then it got really mean spirited and racist.
Ali, a black role model and voice for racial equality, suddenly spewed the worst kind of white supremacist slurs. He suggested his rival was an inferior kind of black man. He implied Joe’s distinctive black features and dark skin color were an embarrassment. And he was doing it on the world’s biggest stage.
“Ugly! Ugly! Ugly!” Ali shouted, without missing a beat. “He [Joe Frazier] not only looks bad, you can smell him in another country! What will the people of Manila think? That black brothers are animals. Ignorant. Stupid. Ugly and smelly.”
At some point, after the fight in Manila, Joe summed up the damage done by Ali’s remarks. He also sadly acknowledged the animosity some black people felt toward him.
“I know things would have been different for me if he [Ali] hadn’t been around,” admitted Joe, according to the Guardian piece. “I’d have gotten a lot more respect. I’d have had more appreciation from my own kind.”
On Wednesday morning, March 19, Joe was working on Big Red with Young-blood and his nephew Stanley when I showed up. The guys checked out the water in the radiator, the oil, battery, spark plugs, and just about everything else accessible without a hydraulic lift. Joe attributed his knowledge of cars to the time he had spent with his father. He said Rubin had seen it as part of the need to be as self-sufficient as possible on the farm.
After noon, we took off for the drive back to Thomson, Georgia. Joe was scheduled to do the big promotion event today for the local mogul’s main car and truck dealership. After all the recent publicity, everyone expected an impressive turnout.
The mogul was just about my age and already owned quite a bit of this small town. His Thomson holdings included a wide variety of lucrative businesses besides his car dealerships. The town of 6,500 was relatively poor, with black residents accounting for around 70 percent of the population. Yet the mogul admitted to taking in many millions of dollars in the past year.
The way the mogul had likely made his fortune was not lost on Joe.
“[He] is a perfect example of how all blacks down south spend all the money, and the whites get rich from the blacks spending all their money,” said Joe, with a certainty that came from experience. “All the whites make their money because the blacks [down south] like to dress nice, drive nice cars.”
En route to the event, we passed one broken-down shack along the road after another. Joe stared intently out the window and seemed physically hurt by what he saw.
“He probably sold every one of these poor blacks a new car,” said Joe, shaking his head.
Joe got quiet and just seemed to fume for a while after that. As we got closer to the dealership, he gave us an idea of what he had been thinking.
“[The dealer’s] granddaddy might have been just the kind of man that would have strung me up to a tree not long ago,” he said.
The mogul was there waiting for us when we arrived. He greeted Joe warmly and rushed him over to confer with the production team for the commercials. For the next half hour, a steady line of locals streamed onto the lot. By the time the team was ready to start shooting the ads, the crowd had reached about 200 and showed no sign of leveling off.
“I think Joe’s loyalty to the fans exceeds their loyalty,” said the mogul, despite the size of the turnout. “I would say there will be more whites to see Joe here today than blacks. Yet the blacks around here do look up to Joe as successful and a celebrity.”
Joe’s first commercial required him to drive a tan-and-brown truck a few feet and say a few lines. He inched forward, stopped, and instantly flubbed his first line. While Joe waited for the crew to do another take, a white man with slicked-back gray hair and a blue windbreaker sidled over to him.
“Why don’t you go and take your championship back,” he said to Joe. “Go on, now!”
“Oh no,” Joe replied. “I’m a senior citizen now.”
The guy just shook his head at Joe in disappointment, then settled for an autograph instead.
Joe went on to do nine more takes for that first commercial. He graciously laughed along with the mostly white crowd after each take. And he received a big ovation when he finally got it right.
At the end of that initial ad, the mogul was supposed to jab Joe with a solid right hand. But he wound up delivering a lame, awkward tap instead. Joe stopped the shoot, assumed a boxing stance, and started teaching the businessman how to throw a punch with authority. A good part of the crowd seemed bent on getting in on the lesson.
Between commercials, the champ posed with both a black and a white cop from a local police station.
For the second ad, Joe climbed behind the wheel of a T-top convertible. There was a beautiful young woman by his side. He eyed the woman, went over the lines, and got down to business.
“I’m sitting here in my Trans Am and it looks good, and it smells good, and it handles good,” Joe said, flashing a broad smile for the camera and his passenger. “Just like a beautiful woman.”
The production people beamed. Of course, that one Joe nailed right away.
From 5:00 p.m. to almost 7:00 p.m., Joe hunkered down at a big desk to sign autographs. The line of mostly white and black kids, with parents and grandparents in tow, came in the main entrance of the dealership, past the champ, and then snaked through the garage and out a side door. Many of the adults pushed their kids forward to get Joe’s signature and then asked for another one of their own.
Smokin’ Joe took the time to say a little something to everyone. As best as I could tell, he signed more than 300 autographs in the two-hour session.
Joe Ivory, a black farmer waiting patiently in line with his kids, wore a bowler hat, a frayed yellow sweater, and sneakers. I asked why he was willing to stand through suppertime just to meet the former fighter.
“Says he’s a champ who cares about the people,” replied the farmer, through splayed teeth. He didn’t think he had to add anything to that.
About an hour into the autograph session, Joe halted the procession to greet an elderly black reverend he knew from his past. He also took time to slap five with a kid he recognized sneaking back for a second autograph.
After the promotion event, Kenny and I tagged along with Joe for a fancy, sit-down dinner in his honor at an exclusive country club nearby. The party included the mogul and his wife, a radio disc jockey and his girlfriend, a representative from a television station, and a local politician, among others. One glance around the table made it apparent that if Joe were not a celebrity he would have never gotten in the door.
The conversation started off amiably enough. We discussed Joe’s boxing career, his fights with Ali, and even his fear of flying. Then a woman from Sparta, Georgia, who had tracked the champ to the country club, crashed the party and stayed at Joe’s insistence. She was a black activist who quickly changed the subject to the state of race relations down south. This was going on while young black waiters in formal service attire hustled to fulfill the group’s every demand.
The activist invited Joe to speak to a mostly black group in Sparta about more equitable living conditions for blacks in the South. She said Joe must tell black people to rally for a fairer share of the wealth. She demanded Joe push whites to give blacks better living conditions and a greater opportunity for land ownership.
“Shouldn’t blacks live as well as the whites?” she asked.
Joe tried to converse quietly with the woman. Everyone else at the table either leaned in to listen or mumbled about their discomfort. Joe obviously wanted to keep things as light as possible without alienating the activist or anyone else. But, at the same time, he seemed reluctant to allow the woman to put words in his mouth.
Joe finally countered by saying that most people “just work for what they get” and don’t expect to be given anything. He claimed that “us just sitting down and eating this fine meal in this club” with our prominent hosts “shows progress.”
The woman began to object, and Joe calmly but firmly cut in. “People can’t be forced,” he said.
I found Joe’s reaction disappointing at first, but several minutes later he took me and everyone in the room by surprise. Joe had obviously become annoyed by the way some of the white businessmen treated our waiters. He abruptly stood and took a large silver serving tray from one of the young men.
Joe instructed the waiter to sit in his seat at the head of the table. He took the waiter’s place serving the group. Joe, not so playfully, warned the businessmen that they better treat him—and by implication the black waiters—with more respect.
There was stunned silence for a while. Joe might not have wanted to talk the talk of the black activist. But he certainly walked the walk of a proud, confident, caring black man. It seemed like the last thing a White Man’s Champion would do.