James Brown

It was around the time he released Body Heat, so, whenever that was—the past—that James Brown played St Louis’ Chase Park Plaza. “The place to be in St. Louis,” as goofily lisped by the improbable Liza Minnelli in a popular local TV commercial. I was there.

There was a football game going on somewhere, probably the Super Bowl. I’d never seen a football game in my life, but I’d also never seen James Brown, so a friend and I sat in the Legendary Korasshan Room—home to St. Louis’ ridiculous Veiled Prophet Ball, a debutante rip-off of Mardi Gras for the beer, chemical, and pet food barons of the greater St. Louis area—and waited. The crowd was thin and getting impatient. Brown was late. Very late. He wasn’t widely popular in those days and certainly not among white people, unless you worked in a record store or knew someone who did. I worked in a record store. My friend knew someone who did.

We took our seats, held our breath, and waited.

I remember the first time I became aware of James Brown, long before he turned inside-out, the way white kids clumsily clapped along to a beat like they’d never heard a song they hadn’t sung on a hay-ride. It was on American Bandstand. Dick Clark introduced him as “the legendary James Brown.” I must have missed something. James Brown, I thought. Who is James Brown? I remember my puzzled pre-teen self squinting at the screen in the same way that I gazed mystified at The Lawence Welk Show. What the hell is this? He wasn’t anything like Del Shannon or Roy Orbison. I couldn’t figure out for the 12-year-old life of me what this man was doing on television.

He looked like half of Little Richard. He was a crooner, but his voice sounded like Lava soap. He was bent impossibly backward and sang to the ceiling. From the ankles down, his feet were dancing faster than he was. There was something utterly unknown and alien about him and I couldn’t figure out what it was, until I did.

On black-and-white TV, he was black; everything else was white.

It wasn’t until high school that it all so deeply, so darkly sank in. I got it; it got me. But still, what was it? For all of its exhortations that we should make it funky or have a funky good time back then, no one called this music “funk.” He called it “New Breed.” We had no idea what he meant by this nor did it matter much. Whatever anyone called it, just by the sheer force of being James Brown, he invented it.

Eventually, it led me to the Legendary Korasshan Room.

After what must have been at least an hour and a half, Danny Ray, the man who introduced James like an air-raid siren broadcasting the Bible with “Are You Ready For Star Time?” sauntered out onto the stage to make a quiet, out-of-character announcement that the band was backstage and they wanted to finish watching the game, but James Brown would be in the lobby in a few minutes, signing autographs.

Long silence.

After the bewilderment wore off, we were in that lobby as fast as you could say get on the good foot. He was tiny, hard-working trim, dressed in a leisure suit the color of which doesn’t actually exist, and his hair looked like it was made of spun coal. He was smiling and you could see your reflection in his teeth. He shook my hand like he was cradling a baby bird, took my ticket and asked me my name. When I finally remembered what it was, he signed the ticket: “To Tom, Soul Brother #1, James Brown.” I have no idea where that ticket is today. Somewhere around here. My friend got “I love you brother.”

About 15 minutes later the lights dimmed. It was Star Time. The rest of the evening remains, to this day, indescribable.

Part 2:

Later that year, James Brown came back, this time to Club 54, deep in the heart of where white kids drinking gin and tonics in places like The Blue Room or Helen’s Black Eagle Lounge were about as out of place as Millie Jackson at a Junior League Banquet. Still, there were more of us there this time; word had gotten out. There goes the neighborhood.

There was no waiting. Danny went off; it was Star Time again. I was sitting in the front row; in a few minutes there would be no sitting. After 30 or so chapters from the gospel of Danny Ray, James Brown exploded into view about 10 inches from my face, grabbed my hand with a grip that felt like it might be the last human contact he would ever make, and flashed me that smile. This time there was no reflection. This time his teeth were all James Brown.

The J.B.’s launched, and I mean launched, like aircraft-carrier-launched, into “Body Heat.” The sound system was storefront-church-sized and so was the club. When Brown shouted, “You got to go to church, y’all!” and the band called back, “Go ahead!” we did.

There are people, lots of people, billions of them, who didn’t see this, hear this, who didn’t wake up the next morning disbelieving that any of this happened, who didn’t take James Brown’s hand, who didn’t smell him.

He’s gone now. There may be no God. There is a James Brown, though.

I am your proof.