The Questlove Show - QLS Classic: Alan Leeds (Part 2)

Episode Date: November 7, 2022

The former tour manager for James Brown, Prince, KISS, D’Angelo, Maxwell and more returns to QLS for an all new interview about working the Chitlin Circuit with James Brown and the inner workings of the James Brown Revue stage show. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me. Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media.

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Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok podcast network on TikTok. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, all. wherever you get your podcast. This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft, and we've got a special guest. The director of the NFL's

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podcast network on TikTok. What's up y'all? It's on Paid Bill. Here to give you the latest Quest Love Supreme Classic episode. Back in October 2016, Alan Leeds was a fifth guest on QLS. That conversation, which I encourage you all to check out, has been re-released. But even three hours down was not

enough. In 2020, he came back for a two-part interview. Here is Alan a second QLS appearance from March 18th, 2020. In this one, he talks a lot about his years with James Brown. Some really great stuff about playing the Chitland Circuit and put together those epic James Brown review shows. You can hear why Alan Leeds deserves three episodes. Episode 101.

Enjoy. To all you dolls and hip cats across the nation, this is a special edition of Questlove Supreme. I always wanted to talk like a 50s, 60s radio jack. Sound like Wolfman Jack. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the quiet edition of Questlove Supreme. Are you only seeing that because Laia is nice. Meaning Laia went off for cigarettes.

Laia saw Lenny Kravitz outside, so she'll be back in about a month. I'm the only smoker here and everybody else goes out for cigarettes. Right, exactly. Ladies and gentlemen, our guest today needs absolutely no introduction if you're a longtime fan of the show. This is one of our rare repeat guests. In my opinion, our guest today is probably one of the most organized humans in show business. At least I'm led to believe that you are. He's shaking his head right now in denial.

I would say that he is the glue that really ensures that you would have gotten your money's worth if you are seeing your favorite act perform in concert. Speaking of which, which acts would they be. You can name them all from Kulner Gang to Boutzi's Rubber Band to, kiss to Prince whoever that is to Chris Rock to DiAngelo to Raphael Sadiq to Maxwell and of course

the main reason that we're all gathered here today me my name is Shugga no of course I'm speaking of his time with James Brown which probably

domino effect his long-standing power and offered him the credibility to pretty much stand next to a gazillion geniuses and music. His book, thank God, there's this book entitled There Was a Time on Post Hill Press

recently released this late winter. Look at that, Bill. It was late February. Oh, okay, yes. It was still late winter. It's Tuesday. We don't know that yet, anyway. Yeah, there was the time offers a rare glimpse into the world of the Chitland Circuit or outside the Chitlin Circuit as it morphs into regular show business for most R&B acts.

One of my favorite human beings on earth, ladies and gentlemen, welcome Alan Leeds back to Questup Supreme. Very good thing. Alan hates. That's where I guess. get it from when you guys say that i eschew uh compliments compliments and praise allan often cringes when i have to say that as well not on the inside it's it's it's it's it's it's because you don't know how to take compliments so you pretend you don't care right trying to be cool no compliments are very hard um i get it i wouldn't know well i steve you're a great guy it's nice to see you

Terrific guy. Thank you, everybody. Yo, so do you, how weird is it for you to be at this phase in your career? Like, are you the type of person that feels like when you write the book, this is sort of the end of a life chapter or, I mean, not to sound super morbid, but I just mean, usually, like, when people came to me writing books like, I was like, oh, no, I have more life to live. Right. I'll save it for later. Yes and no.

Okay. No, because I started this book. 30 years ago. Really? Yeah. Okay. I actually thought it when my first marriage broke up and I was sitting around, there's nothing to do. And I said, okay, I got all these diaries and papers.

And while it's freshen my mind, let me start putting stuff down. Now, I couldn't write a lick at that point. Oh, it was terrible. You couldn't? No, I've got to draft. I've seen your liner notes. That was after. Oh, okay.

That was after. I'm impressed. Even the early liner notes are pretty poorly written. But talking about the payback? Thanks very much. I was just asking because that's the first one that I can think of it.

Wait a minute. He did write the line of notes for the payback on the inside, right? Yeah, payback's going to be your mother. Damn, I forgot that. Yeah, that worked. Yeah, that worked. There was a James Brown album

called Hey America. Despite the title, it was actually a Christmas record. And I wrote the line of notes for that. Okay. And a Jew writing liner notes for a Christmas album

It's kind of an anomaly to start with. Yeah. What? Did he ask you to write? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Because back then, you know, you had to put information on the back of the album.

Well, he thought I was a genius just because I could write publicity releases. Oh. You know, James Brown was coming to town. And I could do that one page. And newspapers would take it and fill their pages up. And so he thought I was Shakespeare. Oh. I see.

So he said, Brian Limerdance. So you. started 30 years ago writing this book. Yeah. And it was the kind of thing where, you know, that original draft, besides the fact that it's poorly written, Pierre's very little or as emlets to the finished book. It's just, that was a bunch of drivel.

It was really a tour diary. It was like 50% personal tour diary and 50% James Brown by, oh, he was born on May 3rd, that kind of stuff. And as time went on, it realized that the diary was self-reesome. indulgent, had a lot of stupid stuff that was of no interest to anybody, not even me. And, you know, it was like what I had for breakfast before the show. It was dumb stuff. This guy actually, yeah.

That's the shit I want to know. But I was smoking a lot of weed, that. And it's like... See, that's the thing. Like, I... That was the hoarder. So am I. Yeah, no kidding.

Half my houses now. Yeah, I think we knew that. your step. No, and when he left King Records for Polydor in 1971, we're cleaning out the office. And there's tons of file cabinets full of old itineraries, tour routings, publicity pictures, all kinds of stuff, the kind of stuff you would think would be in an office like that. And also were recording session reports, music union session reports, with dates and who Who plays what?

And that kind of tracking sheets from sessions like Say it Loud and Funky Drummer, the original tracking sheets. The tracking sheets were in the office? Yeah. Not inside the real box? Were they? Oh, they were probably copies in the real boxes. Right. But, you know.

They were just meticulous with filing back. Yeah. Like, how did you know to save all that stuff? Like, how did you know it would? Because I was a fanatic. I was just, I was already. You were one of us. He never.

You already knew that it was history by then? None necessarily. No, I knew I wanted it. Ah, it was purely selfish. It really was. I'm not mad at that. This comes from the fact that he never had credits on his records. Right?

Right. So to a real fanatic, it was like, okay, who's the drummer around this session? Who's the guitar player around this session? When did this guy leave the band and replaced by the next guy? I was that guy who wanted to know who did everything on his records. Right. And here's the Holy Grail. and it's a copy of the King Masterbook,

which tells you the recording sessions and locations and the dates and what time of day and all that kind of crap. So this is to somebody who was compiling a discography that I never really dreamt anybody who would give a shit about

except me, but I wanted to know. So I asked him, they're going to trash all this stuff. Literally. Don't put it in a dumpster because we're moving to New York. Well, some of us to Augusta, that's all the other.

that the book tells you. But, but, and I just said, Mr. Brown, can I? And he's like, yeah, does somebody allow to keep it? It's history. He knew it was history. I knew it was a collection I won. It was like baseball cards to me. I want the collection.

That was it. And, of course, time went by, and you begin to realize that this is going to be worth something one day. Right. And as his, his stardom becomes iconoclastic and so on, time goes on, you really begin to get a sense that like, okay, I really need to preserve this and documented properly and so on. I mean, I've got a 400-page discography that has every session he's produced and even has the bootlegs of all the concert recordings. I mean, it's stupid.

Do you have a publisher for that yet? No, who publishes that stuff? I mean, I'll read it. Yeah. I'll read it and obsess over it. No, I'm serious. Well, no, it's very important that. that comes out.

Exactly. It's important. So I can assume that if they can do it for the Beatles, they can do it for James Brown. Well, as an aside, everybody that I've talked to says, well, make it a coffee table book. You don't need all the details. And I'm like, no, no, no, it's all about the details. They just don't get it because they're just looking. It's a research book.

Yeah. It's not a coffee table book. It's not for the casual fan. It's for us. Right. So can I assume that the. So you really were the source of most of the information in the Star Time box set? Yeah.

So anytime I read who was on what and blah, blah, blah. Pretty much. So without that, we would have just been guessing? Yeah. Literally. Now, mind you, as time would go on, every time they'd have a session, and this continued for years after I stopped working for him, I would call Fred Wesley or David Matthews, the arranger.

and, you know, done any sessions lately? Where? When? What did you record? Who was on the session? I'm used to drive them crazy. Matthews talks about his wax poetic story. He's like, Alan Lee's, I never really knew what he did, but he used to drive me crazy about details on the sessions.

And he would write everything down. So, yeah. Do you have any of the original charts? Were the charts also in the office as well? Like the horn arrangements and stuff? No. So they just write them down and then leave them at the studio? I think most of them were head charts.

Really? Just ridden, whatever. He would do recordings like It's a Man World with an arranger like Sammy Lowe, and it wouldn't be his band. They were charts for that. I never saw him. There had to have been charts for that. I'm sure David Matthews did charts for his arrangements. But as far as the bulk of the hit records that James made with his own band, those were all head charts.

All right. So then for James Brown himself, would he could I could I say that I'm assuming that he freestyled a majority of this stuff or like he just would have an idea and write down four lines and it really varied um off times there'd be an idea and many times well I shouldn't say many but quite a few times ideas would come from having changed the arrangements of previous hits Oh, okay. You know, like... The vamp becomes the new song. Exactly. Okay, I get it.

I mean, Sex Machine came out of a guitar lick that they were doing and give it up or turn it loose. At some point, they changed the guitar part and give it up for Turn It Loose on the road, the road arrangement. And he liked that part and ended up building a song around with Sex Machine. I see.

So then with... But I'm saying, like, a song that has actual lyrics like Black and Proud, I'm certain was notation. on paper or whatnot. But then... Maybe, maybe not because the story goes, I wasn't at that session,

but Charles Bobbitt was, and Bob had always claimed that it was a very impulsive thing. Like they were talking in a hotel late at night, and Brown was saying there needs to be a song like this, and I've got a lyric.

And I suppose he went to Pee Wee and said, let's cook something up around this lyric. And, you know, whether they did it in the studio, or the night before in the hotel or on the bus or whatever, but it... But I'm saying it has actual lyric structure. It's a poem.

Right, right. But for something like... Escapeism, doing it to death. Escape it. All right. So can you explain that? All right. So can you explain a song like escapism?

Is it... Escapeism, the long version, I think it's like a 20-minute... Yeah, it's ridiculous. ...wrap session where they just talk. Yeah, I actually talk about that session in the book and tell the whole story, but the short version is he was out of the club in Cincinnati where the De Felice Trio was the house band. This was a cocktail trio, you know, soft jazz trio, that mostly played standards. And he used them for a couple of records where he dreamt a bean sinatra for a minute.

Oh, yeah. There was a time, actually. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. He was hanging out at this club, and somebody used the word escapism in the context of a casual conversation. Like they had a drink and said, you know, what's wrong today?

All these kids, it's all escapism. They're not paying attention to what's going on in the world and so. You said that and I just heard the horn squeal in my head. Right. Yeah, exactly. He came into the studio the next day and I was there. This was an edit during my time. And as a matter of fact, my brother Eric, should be here to tell the story because he actually sat in one of the session.

He didn't play. What? But he was in the booth the whole day. The session was for, I know you got sold. Bobby Bird. Right. Okay. Oh, we're about to record Bird real quick.

Right. I see. Exactly. That's what the session was for. But James had this obsession with the word escapism. So he comes in, they're running over the track, which was ostensibly going to be for Annoi Gasol. And at some point, he says, Bert, I'm going to do this one. And he ad-lib to escapism thing.

And according to Eric, who was actually in the booth, I was in the house, office. I couldn't hang out. It was during the afternoon, so I had to be busy. I couldn't just hang in the studio or, you know, misleads. How far is the studio from proximity from where the home offices were? Same building. It's just, you know, go down a hallway, go through a door, up a ramp, and you're in the studio. Could you hear them, or was it like, oh, it was a studio? No. There was a warehouse between that you had to kind of walk around, but it was all in the same building. It was a huge factory like building. Okay.

So no, you couldn't hear a thing. Okay. So Eric was saying... Yeah, so he was tearing. And he said that, you know, James just loved the track and he was dying to do something with this thing, escapism. And if you listen to the record, you realize there's no, as you say, there's no lyrical structure. It's just him, just him fucking with the band.

And ad-lipping shit, I mean, it gets to the point where he's out of ideas, so he starts walking around the studio asking guys, where are you from? you know. Okay, so when he does that, okay, so during this period, he does that a lot, a lot on the JV's records, where he'll talk to Jabbo and talk to various members of the band. Yeah, where you're from, friend? Is he holding a free mic in his hand as he's doing it, or is it like a traditional studio setup that, like, you know, are they, like, is he set up, like, his stage show? No, no, actually, the few times I saw him record with the band, probably half dozen. a dozen times.

First of all, he'd be recording live. Okay. And much to the engineer's chagrin, he'd sacrifice separation in favor of chemistry. Right. So oftentimes the band was in like a semicircle.

And he would just be in the middle. So he didn't have to walk with the mic. He could just, you know, like I'm talking into a mic now. And he would just look and say, hey, Jimmy, he's from North Carolina. Tell me about North Carolina. What'd you have for breakfast, Fred? Where are you from?

L.A.? Yeah, lower Alabama. And just, you know, this is just what he did. Okay. The track goes on and on and on. Of course, the group was ferocious. And he walks in the, I guess, tape was running out. And Ron Lenthoff, the engineer probably signaled to him like, yo, dude, you know.

And he walks in and he says, whoa. And Eric just wrote this down. He had to remember it. And he said he could quote it perfectly. He said he walks into Ron Lentoff. And he said, well, Ron, that's a long one. That's got to be 10 minutes. Ron said, Mr. Brown, it's 21 minutes.

And Brown looks at him and said, well, that's enough for part one, two, three, four, and five. All right. And then, of course, after that, they recorded, I know he got so old, which has its own legend because of Eric B. or procurement, whatever else. But the thing is, is that they also do this live and release on the live of the Apollo. Did they often do escapism live and recreate? Because it's almost like that spontaneity.

Yeah, it's hard to recreate. But they kind of match it on the Apollo record. Or do you just do like, oh, it's a one-off for the Apollo? Here's something interesting. When we were going through tapes back when the tape vault was in Edison, New Jersey, and we had access. We're doing Star Time and a few of the other early CDs. Harriet Gwanger and I, Harry's executive at Universal, we would go to the tape fault and just spend days in there going through tapes.

And my whole mission again is my discography. What's in the tapes? What's on the tape boxes? So I'm just running around and making copies because they had a studio there where I could put the tapes up and burn CDs. Sorry, make a cassette. Cassettes. Exactly. And, you know, and this all helped because I'm listening to unissued stuff that I can then document in the discography as well as the complete versions and stuff and get data.

Anyway, long story short. So we're going through the tapes for Revolution of the Mind, which was the third live at the Apollo album. Right. Recorded in 71 shortly after he joined Pollinator Records. They recorded eight shows and pulled from the eight shows. and pulled from the eight shows to sequence the album. And yes, Harry. That's a culmination of eight shows?

Yeah. I mean, I don't think they used portions of all eight. Maybe they used portions of two or three. Right. But they had eight shows to draw from. And no, I haven't listened to all eight shows. But here's the point. Someday we'll do a deluxe version.

Yes, you will. I've been on Harry to do it. But, you know, it's a 50th of anniversary. There you go. I got Harry's your album, so. And he'll kill me for you been bringing this up. But that's why I bring it up.

But here's the interesting thing. The only show he did escapism, all the other shows are identical, meaning the sequence. Right. It's identical for all, for the seven of the eight shows. He only did escapism on the first show. Now, was that intentional because he wanted the title on the album? But it wasn't really part of the show yet. or didn't he like how it came off?

I can't tell you why. I can just tell you that there's only one live version of that. Whereas we had eight shows. There's one escapism. Now, after the record came out and hit, it was in the show, but very briefly. And I honestly can't remember what it was like. I just, I can hear the audience actually chanting, you know, the lyrics,

which I was like, wow, like they, I'm just, baffled that a spontaneous conversation is now a hit single, or at least where people are repeating a lyric backer. That was actually my first thought when I first heard. I was like, wow, this was a hit record. Right.

It's strange. Of course it is. Who did that? I mean, can you see Otis Redding, walking around? I'm talking to Steve Cropper at breakfast? It's like, that wasn't going to happen. So for that particular album, do you remember, all right, so if all all the shows were recorded,

Um, were they all done night after night or were these like, okay, we'll record the 12 o'clock show, the 3 o'clock show. No, he was doing by then, instead of doing the old four or five shows a day, he'd convinced the Apollos that for his appearances he would just do two a night and maybe three on the weekends. So he would do a 7 o'clock and 10 o'clock? Right, something like that. Yeah, when did that five-a-day things stop? in the 70s, early 70s. So was it that system for the Live of the Apollo 2 album? Oh, sure.

So in 19, what was that, 68, 67? Oh, Live the Apollo 2. Volume 2. There was a time period. It was June of 67, and they recorded two and a half shows that we found. We have two complete shows and about half of a third show. But what I'm asking is for that particular run at the Apollo, was that the 1 o'clock, in the afternoon, the 2 o'clock, or the 3 o'clock?

In 67, yes. Okay, so, and I don't think we went through this the last time, because I'm still trying to imagine how you squeeze in five shows with, I'm assuming that he at least had sort of a calvocate of at least four acts. I mean, is Bird doing something solo? Yeah, in fact, on the Deluxe Edition, they didn't record bird sets, but they did get two songs on tape, and we used to, we used, he did Sweet Soap Arthur Conley's Sweet Sole Music, and did we use a second track of his?

I don't think so. You got to change your mind or he must have done it. It didn't end yet. Okay. That was the later, I think the only thing that we found was Sweet Soul Music. Okay, but what I'm asking is, is. Here's another show ran. Yes.

Okay. The band would come out, and this was, is shorter, obviously you're doing four or five shows a day, they're shorter than you would get in an arena or a concert hall. Right. Where you're just doing one show at 8 o'clock and the shows would maybe run three hours. Right. And the Apollo would run maybe an hour of 45. Okay.

Okay. The band would come out and just do one or two instrumentals, whereas on tour they might do a half hour of instrumentals. For example, the The 1968 Boston show that's on video They recently discovered a reel with the instrumental set And they're doing five or six instrumentals

Before anything happens Oh, the band is But in the Apollo, they do one or two Just as a warm up Okay Then Brown would come out And Let me think back

He would come out and it would go right into his nightclub set where he does. That's life or if I ruled the world in Kansas City. All right now. That's like 15 minutes. I'm treating you as a DVR right now. I'm pausing the show. Right.

So with someone of his stature, ego at least, why would he deflate the balloon so early and not come out with a bang? like why was star time so late where like was it even fanfare I've seen some shows where he would just walk out yes absolutely the MC would say it now

surprised the star of the show James Brown he's blown out because who expects him to come on the show just started 10 minutes ago what was his logic like people know that I'm going to show up early his logic by then and this was understand that life at the Apollo 2

album is just as he's beginning to change his format But even in the old days before that, he would come out earlier and play organ with the band for a half hour. And that wouldn't ruin the surprise? No. Really? No. It was all about building.

Okay. It was all about building. And his idea was that we're going to save the explosions for the end, of course, for the climax. And he would come out and he would do back to let's stick with the Apollo 2, in 1967. He would come out, let's see, he did that's life. I want to be around. Both of them, he's sitting in a stool and just playing nightclub crooner, which was new for him. That was new.

He'd never done that before. And he would do this at the Apollo. Yes, it's on the record. What was the purpose, though, to do that Frank Sinatra stuff at the Apollo? The purpose was to show another side of him that he was expanding me on just a predict. Sault singer with a predictable review. He was like, I'm an all-around entertainer. He was hoping to get gigs in Vegas and Miami Beach in the lucrative showrooms

and expand his horizons and his audience. All right. So let me pause here. Okay, so let's go to the Copa or Miami. Now, if he's at a place that's the opposite of the Apollo. Mm-hmm. Same show. Wouldn't, right, so wouldn't the highlight then be the crooning stuff and then sort of be like, this might be, this might be too little rowdy for them, giving them all this.

If you pay for a James Brown show, you kind of. Yeah, it's a good point. You kind of know what you're getting. And. Well, would they in turn be disappointed? Is it bathroom time or popcorn time? His whole thing was always about making an audience meet him in his world. It was like, I'm not, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to.

You know, I'm going to make changes and I'm going to grow as an artist and I'm going to show different sides to me. But I'm still going to be true to who I am. I'm not going to do anything that's going to disappoint my diehard fans. He's like, you know, if I can attract that Vegas audience, great. But I'm never going to turn my back on the hood because that's my base. Okay. So it was like you got to come to me off my terms. This is who I am and I'm not going to deny it.

that. So if you don't like hard funk, then you can leave. But I'm going to get you. Because I'm an entertainer. Even if you don't like my songs or buy my records, I'm going to do something on that stage that's going to make you stop and pay attention. Even in the 70s? Sure. So even by 72, when he's just like Afroed out and... Well, he had stopped doing the ballads and that stuff by then. Okay. And since I'm really dissecting every, now, I wasn't, I wasn't joking about the food stuff and whatnot. Right. Because the main reason why I probe and probe and ask you these questions for the last 20 years I've known you is simply because, I mean, had I been born 30, 40 years earlier, I would have been the musician on that state.

So I'm just curious to see as a working musician, how are. lives compare like the quest level of the late 60s so what I want to know is it's going to be like a stupid question but I always wanted to know okay I got stupid so with with with a show that high energy I know that bottle water wasn't quite invented yet in the late 60s early 70s how are they replenishing themselves on the state? Like, is there a water boy on the side? No.

Intermission. Oh, so you weren't allowed to bring a drink on stage? No, that's not professional. That's why I asked you. Would he allow that? Towels even? For please, please, please with the capes. So only for him?

So the band would have to... No, I meet in Jabber. Clyde might have had a towel on the floor next to the kid. Okay. But don't let nobody see it. And I've never seen... any of the photos, I've never seen set lists. No.

Tape to the... Oh, so you would have to know. Yeah. But I mean, basically, remember, this is a show that was on the road, 51 weeks out of the year and worked sometimes four nights a week, five, sometimes six or seven, depending on the venues and the routing of the... They could probably play it in the sleep. Exactly.

Exactly. And the show gradually changed. It didn't change overnight. The set list... I mean, like I said, Apollo 3 and Apollo 2 for that matter, the settlers were the same for each show. Okay. Because there were segways and different dynamics that set up each song, and it was carefully

structured. I mean, it was, you know, there was a method to the madness in terms of the pacing so that he could catch a breath, you know, as to where the ballads go and so on. I mean, it's a showbils 101. Okay. So, all right, he's crooning. Yeah. Continue. Sorry. Okay. So he does that 10 or 15 minutes, whatever it takes to do that.

The last song that said is Kansas City, which is upbeat, which means that he kicks the stool back. And halfway through Kansas City, he jumps up and starts dancing a little bit. It's a tease. Okay. The band is smoking. And he's giving you a tease of James Brown. That James Brown, who slides across the stage, jump one foot. just a tease.

Then he disappears. And here comes Bobby Bird to do two or three songs. On two or maybe four songs in the Apollo, maybe two. Then here comes Marvel Whitney. Then here comes James Brown again. No introduction. Lights go dark. He walks on stage.

Lights come up and he sings it's a man's world for 15 minutes. Okay. Right? There was a really long version that's the, that's on the Apollo 2 album. Right. It's longer on the deluxe CD than it was on the album for obvious reasons. And that's another showstopper because it was a huge hit, and it's a very dynamic,

and he incorporates a medley of some of his older tunes within it, bewildered, lost someone, some of that stuff to satisfy his older fans. And then he goes offstage again. Then either there's a comic, Clay Tyson was our in-house comic who traveled as part of the show. He'd come out and do 10 minutes of old jokes, and then it'd be an intermission. Questions? Pause. I forgot.

There's the J.B. dancers who come out and do five minutes of dancing while the band plays caravan or something. Yes, do kind of thing. Oh. So when that stuff is playing, so when I'm listening to the stuff on YouTube, they're dancing, the J.B. Dancers are playing or dancing to those instrumentals? No. No. They get a feature in the first part of the show before intermission, where they're in.

introduced as the J.B. dancers and they're downstage center and they do a routine to, oh, they use different instruments on the 67 Apollo, it was caravan. Right. Later on in the 60s, it was Humasakilis grazing

in the grass. And just pick an instrumental and work out to choreography. That's there in the spotlight. So there's always been a Vegas element to his shoes. Sure. But you know what?

When you say Vegas... It wasn't cheesy. Right. I mean, sometimes maybe it was, but let me put it this way. If it was cheesy, it was black cheesy. Okay? But was it cheesy to you watching it in 1967, 68?

No, the girls were hot. Well, let me ask. Okay. So right now, I'm at my board phase. Like, I go through three phases. They weren't out there long enough for you to get put board. Well, no, no, no. I'm just saying that when I go through my board phase,

then this is when I start embracing 90s James Brown. Like, I'll look at... Can't get any harder? Good one. For good and sakes. No, no, no. I'm just saying that I'll, like, last week I watched his

Woodstock 3 performance, which was... Why? Exactly. I don't know. When the rumors of the... Woodstock 99 was just bad all around. When the, when the, was James Brown murdered rumors started seeping out, then I just, I don't know,

I felt the need to just look at the last 10 years of his life to see what his show would become. Right. Of which, he'd never strayed away from the formula. Like, in my mind, I'd never thought that there were dancing girls and this cover song and that sort of thing. because on the live albums, you're just getting the James Brown show as you know it. And then once I discovered the tapes, then I realized like, oh, there are dancing girls and there are that sort of thing. Well, that's why I was so happy with the expanded two-cd version of Apollo 2 because we were able to take the tapes from the two-and-a-half shows and to the best of our ability recreate what the show really flowed like. because the album, the original album,

because of the lent of songs, they weren't able to sequence it with any logic, really. And the whole mission with the CD was, let's create the show with the flow and the, you know, the ebbs and the peaks the way it actually was.

I was really appreciative that the Frankie Crocker intros were included in that too. Yeah, yeah, Eddie OJ. Yeah, yeah. Can I assume that letting Crocker or O.J. or a person of the day introduced the show

was sort of like a greasy palm. Well, Frankie and E.OJ, and it was also Rocky G. who was the program director at W.J. in late 60s, they would sponsor shows at the Apollo, not just James's, where they weren't really promoting the shows because it was in-house, the Apollo, but the Apollo would spiff them to put their names on there. So it would be Frankie Crocker and E.O.J.

Present James Brown. And that's something the Apollo had been doing for years and years. Wait, slight jump into the future. Because I always wanted to know. You got to fast forward on your Allen Leads remote control. Okay. So at the 1999 tour that you were tour managing, Crocker also introduces Vanity Six.

What was the lot? Like, whose idea was that? Was it just, hey, if you want me to play their records, then? Or was that you? No, I wasn't at the New York show. I came in right after that. Oh. So I can't.

But I'll tell you what I do remember. I remember before I went to work for Prince, when Vanity Six record came out and nasty girls took off. I happened to be home in Brooklyn at the time with what was it then? Kiss? What station? No, it was WBLS? BLS.

Frankie was on BLS at the time. And they did a promo studio visit with Frankie. Right. That I happened to hear. And just happened to have the radio on in the apartment in Brooklyn. And because I was already a fan of Prince and Nasty Girls, I paid attention. and they seemed to bond. I mean, it was a really playful interview that was memorable.

Yeah, she flirted it with everything. Yeah, exactly, exactly. All I remember is they kept saying every time he'd asked them a question. Susan and V would go like, Frankie, Frankie, Frankie, Frankie, Frankie, Frankie, Frankie. And it just stuck with me. Okay. Okay. I want to meet them, you know, and with no idea that I would.

That you'd be connected to him forever. But, you know, look, everybody knew Frankie had juice. I mean, he was New York radio. Okay. And you'd be crazy to come to town and not let him get on stage and say hello if he wanted to. Just as good to you as it is for you. You get so much with the Frankie Crocker touch. After all, how can you lose with the stuff I use?

Turn out the light and hold me tight. Frankie says it's just got to be all right. Closer than whites on rice, closer than coals on ice, closer than a collars on a dog, closer than a hams on a country hog. Really? Young and do, ain't never had enough of nothing. Definitely ready. If you need it, be steady.

Everything's going to be everything. But remember, if you can't stand it, please don't demand it. Oh, let your eyes get your mind messed up with your heart and soul desire something you need. No, you just can't stand. Really? All I have to do is set the needle to the track, separate the soul from the wax, lay in the groove, and hope to make you move.

A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me, Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way,

this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes

of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment. And the next, we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So if you've ever supported me

or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl.

You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me?

The cops didn't seem to care, so they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft.

And we've got a special guest. The director of the NFL's East-West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galco, joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects. From hidden traits teams look for to the biggest mistakes franchises make to the players flying under the radar. the insight you won't hear anywhere else. If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode.

Listen to the Sports Slice Podcasts on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slice of Life 12 and TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. Okay, so he comes out and does this gargantuan, It's a Man's World. This whole episode is just going to be about Apollo 2.

And then you said that comedians, So does this formula, I assume that we're going to get to start time after intermission? Right, of course. Does this formula work all over the United States? Wow. It's foolproof? Sure. Not one person trying to boo Clay Tyson or...

Oh, there were people who didn't want to hear him. Sure, they were kids who didn't want to hear him, and there were people who did. Because you have to, and this is really difficult to explain to anyone under the... the age of 50, I suppose. This all came out of vaudeville. Right. And that was Brown's template for creating a review of self-contained show. Remember that most solo artists traveled solo or with their own accompaniment and so on,

but they didn't have reviews because they either couldn't afford them or just weren't interested. James Brand's idea was like, let's do all this in-house. I'm tired. You know, when he was younger before he was had the influence and the success to take over things, he would be like everybody else and they'd be on shows where there'd be different acts every night. Depending, you know, if you were in Chicago, you might have Martha the Vandela's or Gene Chandler or the impressions or the drifters on the show with you and then you go to Cincinnati

the next day and Edzotus Redding and Carla Thomas and you never know because the promoters would first of all they never felt that there was one entertainer who could sell out a theater or an arena on their own so they felt obligated to take two or three semi-stars and a bunch of one record acts and put a package together and the idea was to have nine or ten acts most of whom just did two or three songs the star was would do a half an hour. And you had those tours, and you've probably seen the vintage posters of that stuff, and they would go all over the country. So that's what people were used to.

James Brown said, why do I have to share the revenue with all these other acts? Let me get my own acts. Let's let Bobby Bird do three songs. Let's let Baby Lloyd, one of the other flames, do a couple songs. Let's get a girl singer who's cute and can hold a note, and let's she do three songs. And they go on salary. So I'm not paying

or the promoters and paying Eddie James or the drifters and so on. I got my own review. And the template, of course, was vaudeville because that's where theater shows came from. And if you go back and look at the bills, the weekly bills of the Apollo

Theater throughout the 60s and going all the way back to the 30s, but even in the 60s, at the height of the soul music area, there would always be a comedian, there would always be a vocal group, there would always be a male singer, it would always be a female singer,

and then God knows what else they needed to fill up the show. It was always a package. Unless you were Duke Ellington, you know, who would also play The Apollo. But even he would have his own singers that would get a, you know, Count Basie had Joe Williams for years and years, and Ellington had singers.

So people expected variety, a variety show. And the idea was that you have sex, you have something for the guys, you have something for the girls, and you have some laughs, and you have some good instrumental music. And you had to have all those things to be a complete show. And that's what the audience is expected. The roots have failed. No, there's some comedy in the set. I have a question. Yeah, we'll get back to the Roots comedy, but go ahead.

You're first. Since we're at intermission of the show, so far, besides the comedy, it sounds like the band is out there the entire time. Sure. The same band. Yeah. All right, I just want to make that clear to the listeners. Absolutely.

But it should be noted that James Brown often had two or three drummers. Yes. And two guitarists and a basses. Right. They all went to the same gigs. I mean, so they would switch out. No, no, no, there was one band that traveled on the same bus and went to the same gigs. Absolutely.

But different drummers would switch out for different acts? For different songs. Okay. Different songs. I mean, there were, listen, when he recorded, I mean, that's a whole lot of tangent for a second. I want to get back to the Roots comedy just for a split second because I have an inspiration. I have an idea that it's so obvious you probably don't want to do it because it's too obvious. But you can do thank you notes.

and translate that somehow to the stage. You know what? Because either you or Tariq or somebody has to do is do this. I hate to say this. But when James is on these shows with us, it's like they get mad if he does not do thank you notes. They yell thank you notes now. And we look at each other like,

So it's not just me. One more note. One more note. That's good. That's good. Okay. My other question, sorry. And we'll talk to the rumors.

The show also sounds like it, like you said, it's supposed to build, but it also sounds somewhat chronological. Is that correct as far as like his earliest and then his and then leading up to the big single or my latest single? Not necessarily, but you save the hits for the start time segment, obviously. Oh, even his oldest hits. Yeah. Try me and please, please, please. We're the oldest songs that he would continue to do until he stopped working.

We're always in the Star Time set. So after your admission is Star Time. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Star Time at the Apollo Theater. Million dollar seller, try me. Please, please, please. Papa's got a brand new bag. This is a man's world.

Most Constructives tune of 1966, be a drop-up. Recently recorded, let yourself go. Baby, don't you weep, let's bring him on right now. Everybody, the hardest working man in show business. I'm going to let you say his name. James Brown. And that's a half hour, 35 minutes?

What? Star time? It usually ran about an hour. I mean, in the old days, in the old days in the Apollo, when they still had more support acts. For example, Apollo 1 was recorded in 1962. and on the show was Bobby Womack and the Valentino, Solomon Burke. There were other real recording artists on that show. Were those shows recorded?

No. No. Exactly. Blake. Pigmead Markham was on the show. You know, so Brown would do, I mean, the Apollo one album is about 35 minutes, and there's only one song cut out, so he was doing 40 minutes. But by 67, Star Time, I mean, he had so many hits.

It pretty much was an hour. And that pretty much stayed that way until he changed the format in the late 70s. So you're saying from the instrumentals all the way to Clay Tyson, it's a man's world, before intermission, that's kind of like 45 minutes? Or an hour. And the bathroom breaks 10 minutes, obviously. Yeah, that's it. And then he does 50 minutes to an hour and ends the show. Right.

Okay, in your observation, they're doing this four to five times a day? They were up until 69, I guess is when he started. Where do you feel the best show normally is? Or was there no, there is no, he didn't do that much energy tonight as opposed, like, can he keep it up 100%? All four or five shows? all five shows. No. So for you,

the best show to catch is... But with James Brown, the difference, the difference between the slow show and the hot show is not that vast. So who's in the audience at the one o'clock on a weekday? Some old ladies, some drunks.

Who's there on a weekday? Literally. So it's a weekday. Yeah. 1 p.m. Yeah. Police aren't in the audience? Like, shouldn't you be in school?

They may have occasionally. I don't know. These shows were sold out? No. They weren't sold out? No. Was he disappointed? Were you like, I got my money anyway?

I mean, by the late 60s, they were. But it wasn't typical to sell out every show. You couldn't do it. Hmm. Okay. I mean, there were times where you had played a half a house at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. And that was not deflating to his e-gene? or nothing.

Like he was understanding that, oh, it's one o'clock in the afternoon? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But why would they? I mean, you've got to see this tradition goes back to the 1930s. And, I mean, I guess we surmised that people in the 1930s didn't have that much to do at one o'clock. I don't know why.

But it's always been that. I mean, it's, you know, the white vaudeville theaters in Midtown Manhattan were doing the same thing. But they were doing it with Sinatra or Woody Herman. instead of James Brown or Duke Ellington. It was just the world we lived in. And people would go to, you know, people who didn't want to fight the crowds at night because obviously the seven and ten o'clock shows were the busiest shows. And so depending on the demographic that an artist appealed to, you know, it might be kids,

it might be older people. might be people who were bored and have nothing to do. I'd like to think that maybe the 7 o'clock was the better show because that's where the hotter women. Well, no, the hotter women, like, you're off work and it's date night or something like that. Right. Happy hour. Yeah, I mean, obviously weekends, to answer you your question directly, the hottest show was the midnight show on Saturday. See, I figured he'd be worn out by then They might be, but all the players are there

The audience is hot Okay You couldn't You couldn't escape Okay And the other one was the Wednesday night Late show because that's amateur night And that brought out a serious audience

That was dedicated to amateur night So where would amateur night fit in Late? On a Wednesday show? On the late show. What time? Like, after James is over? You know, I can't honestly tell you.

And it was a separate audience, separate let out, let in. No, no, no, no. It was like a movie theater. If you bought a ticket at 1 o'clock, you could stay there all day and all night. You could watch, kids could come in on Saturday morning and watch four shows. Oh, they didn't clear the theater? Nope. Is it standing room or seats?

There's a little stupid. You've been in the Apollo. They're standing room in the back, but of course it's. seats. So, but did people were there pre-bought tickets back in the day? No. Like, James Brown is coming May 19th. Oh, let me go and get tickets at a time. You just lined up outside.

And as people left, they let people in. So it was like a nightclub and a theater. Exactly. You know, if, I mean, there were times where they'd be lined up and actually be standing in line through a whole show that's going on inside because they're hoping they can get

in for the next show. Now, that's if you're hot. I mean, it wasn't typical of every week in every show. Right. But by the time Brown really, really got hot in the mid-60s,

it was frequently like that. And there'd be a line around a block all the way up on the 25th Street. But I would think that they would do a show, clear the place, and let people buy tickets. Like, he could make more money.

Of course. And that's what he... They never once thought of that? Of course they did. And he insisted. Did they do that at a certain point? And not want to say that point was either in 68 or early 69 is when he went to the Apollo and said, look, the only way I'm doing this is do two shows. I'll do three on Saturday.

And you got to clear the house. And was that foreign to them back in the day? Yes, absolutely. Because it was the same. That's just how the theater was run. And it was typical of all these vaudeville theaters. So I could have bought a James Brown ticket for $5. Walk to the Apollo.

How much? How much? $2? $2. Oh, sorry. $2? $2. $2?

And saw... Three? And seen like... Right, let me give my inflation calendar out. You couldn't have bought the 60s. One for me. One for your mom, Steve. So wait.

$2 in 1967. That's me spending, what, $22 bucks today? Yeah, maybe. I don't know. Wow. So... But I mean, I bet the earliest show. And we were saying,

one o'clock, but maybe it was two o'clock, three o'clock, I don't know, never any later than that. And the first show was probably for a buck except on weekends. I mean, envision an old movie theater. What a time to be alive. Yeah. I mean, it was crazy. Now, obviously shows had to be an automatic pilot at some point because it's just how can, even

if you're not physically tired, how do you get mentally amped? Right. Particularly somebody like Brown or his band who works so hard. And then you come off stage and they basically show a film. A movie? Yeah. A short? Yeah, a short.

Okay. The joke always was they'd find the worst movies because they were trying to encourage people to get up and leave. Literally. Really? Yeah. Okay. I'm cheating right now on my calculator, by the way. So if I were to pay $2 to see James Brown in 1967, $15.45 cents.

Yes, $15 and $56. Okay, so that's still cheap. Yeah. And you could have seen like four shows that day for $15. Sure. Wow. Absolutely. Whoa.

And so the standards of the day in back then, because then I would think, wow, you seem as, joke before or you've seen this song before like the same people yeah but no I mean obviously everybody didn't do that right right there's a handful of nuts who just either

really love the artist I'm raising my hand or they got absolutely nothing else to do I'm raising my hand you know or they found some good weed and they don't want to blow their groove so they just sit there his hand okay wow for two bucks you could just have

the best entertainment of your life Right. All day. What's his merch game looking like? Were there T-shirts back then? There were program books starting in, I guess, the earliest one. I was 1960, but that was from a tour. It wasn't in the theater.

But they saw program books, and they used to have hats that would have a little picture of him in the band. And, you know, different junk. They never had T-shirts. T-shirts weren't the thing then. It was program books and photos. You'd give them a glossy or a button. Okay. You know, they'd say loud buttons.

They sold well. Okay. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me, Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media.

Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast, it's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger.

So, if you've ever supported me, or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl.

You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me?

The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the Girlfriends. Trust me, babe. on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft, and we've got a special guest. The director of the NFL's East-West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galco, joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects. From hidden traits teams look for to the biggest mistakes franchises make, to the players flying under the radar. This is the insight you won't hear anywhere else. If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode.

Listen to the Sports Slice Podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slicalife-Life12 and TikTok podcast network on TikTok. So the show's over. And how long is it break before? 45 minutes, maybe an hour. I mean, I'd have to sit and do the math. I can't, you know, it's been a long time. All right.

So let's say 45 minutes. I'm his drummer. What am I doing? All right. There's, there's, in all these theaters, and this goes for the Howard and Washington, uptown in Philly, and Regal in Chicago. Exactly. From that circuit.

Again, old vaudeville thing, there's a chalkboard backstage. Mm-hmm. And the stage manager of the theater puts up what's called the half hour. And in Vaudeville Parliance, what that means is this is a half hour before the next show starts. If the next show is going to start at 8 o'clock, then the half hour is 7.30. You post that in advance to let everybody in the cast know you got to be back here at 730. That was the rule. You got to be back in the house a half hour before the show starts.

Okay. Now, what you do up until that time is your business. So you can go up to the dressing room and go to sleep. You can go down in the basement and shoot craps. You can go down the street. Those dressing rooms are small as hell, though. Yeah. And I'm certain that James and his entourage are taking up most rooms.

Sure. So where does the band go in the basement? Now, the Apollo is nice now. Yeah, right. Was it nice in the 60s? No, the basement looked like. Rats? Yeah, it was rough.

I mean, it wasn't anything like it is now. It wasn't to be puddles of water in the corner. It was like the basement of some factory or something. That is so weird because in the basement. They would rehearse there, actually. The shows would open Friday. They would play Friday through Thursday. And on Thursdays, the next days, the new show would rehearse in the basement.

So when you're upstairs, the James Brown shows playing up there. Right. There might be Sam and Dave in the basement working with the house band to get ready for tomorrow's opening. while the shows that's crazy so wait a minute so in the laundry room in the basement of the Apollo

there's now a sign that hangs that says like this is now the Flip Wilson room because Flip Wilson would play here five nights a week and he would just set up he would put a couch in the laundry room and sometimes sleep here overnight

I would assume to save cash or whatever but you're saying that the basement was less than desirable living. Yeah, it's not where I want to spend the night, but do it's got to do. Wow. Okay.

Okay. Food-wise, is there catering back then or you just... No. No. If you could afford it, you sent some gophers out to go to on the street and bring some food back. Was James A feed my band person who was like, go for what you know? Are you kidding? Really?

Dude. We would get on his life. Learjet. Now I'm fast forwarding to like 70, 71. We'd get on the Learjet. He got a Learjet in the 60s, too. He got it in 66, you're right. I'm talking about when I was there. I can only speak when I was there. And Danny Ray's one of his many gigs was to make sure there was food for Brown after the show went in the Leargett because frequently we'd fly out. Depending on what city we were in. He didn't like spending the night in small towns. So if we were playing, making Georgia, we would fly to Atlanta. because he had a favorite hotel there. If we were playing in, well, same thing wherever you were. Yeah. If you were in. If you were in Illinois, he goes to Chicago.

Exactly. So he had, you know, different places where he liked the hotels and where they had late-night food and things to do and so on. So we got to, if you happen to be flying with him on the jet, the jet only seats five or six people, I forget. But it's small. It's a small plane. and it would be Danny Raid, who was his valet, Henry Stallings, who was a bodyguard slash hairstylist, and maybe his wife or maybe his girlfriend. Other than he would be room.

Right. And then there'd be room if he wanted to talk to one of the musicians, maybe it would be Pee Weir or Fred, the band leader, because he'd have an idea for a new song or want to change something in the show, and he'd make them fly out with him. On the weekends, because I wasn't on the road constantly, our job was in the office Monday through Thursday. And then on Fridays, one or both of us would fly out and meet the show wherever it was and hang on the weekend, and then go back to the office. Unless we had to go to another city to advance the promotion of an upcoming show. Let's say tickets were slow selling in Nashville.

So maybe Brown said, you better go to Nashville and go visit the radio stations and give the promotion a boost, you know, that kind of thing. thing. So we're not on the same schedule as the show. But he, you get on the legit, and there'd be food for him. But nobody else? And nobody else. And you just sit there and watch him eat. And it was, you know. And you just realized he's the boss and this is, this is how he rolls. And everybody else is on their own. And, you know, it's like, Okay, I can feed myself. I'm not going to beg for food. See, my rule is that whatever I buy, I have to buy five times as much because each member of the roots is going to ask me for a little bit. Can I have that?

What's that? Can I have a french fry? Well, listen, each one of the band could ask James for food, do you can have a French fry and he'd say, no. That's all you got to learn is nope. I see I always wanted to know because of the way that Otis Redding passed away

was he ever afraid of flying on Lear jets afterwards or was he like oh no more flying for me he was a little afraid all along even before Otis's accident

I mean he was always a nervous flyer when it was bad weather and I was actually in the jet in a lightning storm once and it wasn't fun because that thing bounced around like a ping pong ball. It's a small light plane.

I'll walk to the next gig, Mr. Brown. Yeah, pretty much. It was a bit of an adventure. And you could see him tightening up. I mean, he was, you know, he wasn't crazy. But he loved the convenience of it, the idea that he could play some stupid town. And then, I mean, if, I'll use the same example.

If we played Macon, he didn't want to stay there, we'd be in Atlanta in the hotel by 1230, You know, show comes down at 10.30 or 11, and he dries off, and then you get out, you're in a plane by 12. And, you know, well, okay, maybe not 1230, but 1 or 1.30. You know, it's still doable hours. And in a major city, you can probably still find something decent to eat. I have a question about advances. Normally, at least a day, tour managers collect the money.

Now, at least in our standard today, when you book an act. You're supposed to have half the money up front. Sure. In months in advance, three, four months in advance. And before said act goes on stage, maybe an hour before, you're supposed to settle advances and get the rest of the deposit before they go on stage. Was it always that protocol, or did you guys have to wait until all box office receipts were counted? Because we were promoting most of the shows ourselves, we weren't waiting for something. need to pay us. It was our money.

So who's there to count? Like who's there to make sure that, you know. Road manager, personal manager, when I'm on the road, me, or Bob Patton, who was my colleague with booking the tour, whichever one of us was there, if we were all there, we'd all go up and we would do the settlements. But the settlements wouldn't, you had to wait for the box office to close. So if the show started at eight, chances are you can't start settling until not. under 930.

There's no deposits because we're renting the buildings. We're the promoters. I see. So who's to stop, say, let's, all right, we're in Chattanooga, Tennessee right now at a theater. So who's to stop the, maybe the guy that the house manager or somebody from letting his eight family members in for free? Like, you know that there's 600 seats in the theater. And you know the show sold out. are you saying that, okay, well, 600 tickets at, you know, $4 each, $2,400, whatever,

are you, who's to enforce if someone comes short? All right, here's what happens. The box office, you know, there were variations on this, but let's use the standard rule. The box office of a venue would give you a report at some point, 9, 30, 10 o'clock at night. And on that report would be how many tickets were sold at which price. price because you'd have different prices, $3 tickets, $5 tickets, whatever, how many comps came through the door. And if the number of comps was reasonable, you wouldn't squawk about it.

Because if you had a successful date and the manager of the building wanted to let his kids in, to use your example, it's like, I'm not going to make an issue of that because we want to play that building again and I want this building manager. to give us first dibs at good dates. Right. We would even tip them. Oh. Literally tip them.

For real? Yeah. I mean, these were city employees, and I talk about this in the book, too, and how different the business was back then. It's basically what the book is about. And they were city employees that made a, you know, very middle class if that income. They're on salary from the city that manage these. these arenas.

Oh, so they weren't privately owned? Banks didn't run... No, it varied. You take five venues, the structures of them might be completely different. If you're playing a theater, it might be privately owned. If you're playing a dance hall, it might be a local promoter who rented the building, and you're dealing with that promoter. If you play the Apollo, you're dealing with the theater.

But if you're playing an arena, which is mostly what we were doing when I was there, the guys who run those buildings are usually city-owned buildings. Okay. And you go to Roanoke, Virginia, or Cincinnati. There's no Donald Trump building arenas. Right. And this was before there were sponsorships in the arenas all had names of banks and stuff on them because you didn't have that. And even then, if the bank is sponsors.

an arena, it doesn't mean they run it. There's still a guy who's got the job to run the arena or run the box office and so on. And these are not guys getting rich. They're just not a city salary. Assuming it's a city-owned building. So, you know, so you'd look at the other way. As long as the cops were kosher, you know, 500 comps, we're going to fight. But, you know, if it's 20, who cares?

And mind you, we would also give out comps to radio people and newspaper people. and, you know, anybody was going to help us build the promotion. So comps were like, it was a commodity that we could use to influence the promotion. So there would always be a certain amount of comps. But here's the deal. If you didn't trust the promoter or the building for any reason at all, the only way you could deal with it then was count the ticket stubs. To see if the ticket stub counts because you'd get a stop. stub, they tear the ticket when you come in and throw it in a bucket and keep the stubs.

Right? So there were nights where we literally had to sit down and count thousands of ticket stubs. And you'd be there until two in the morning because you felt something about the report was fishy. It's like, wait a minute, there's 10,000 tickets, 10,000 seats in here. The place is jam-packed, and you're telling me you sold 7,500 tickets? That's bullshit. So now I'm going to count the ticket stubs. Now, what stopped them from pulling out a thousand stubs before I got up there?

Nothing. So there were sometimes where we actually would put a guy on the door with a clicker. Really? To count the people that came in so that you could then match that. In some venues, the tickets were just wrong. rolls of tickets and they were numbered and you'd get the number of the starting ticket so you could do the math at the end of the night it was a mom and pop business so i have a question i would assume that you guys were the standard or the best game in town for a black tour in during that period what stops mob activity from wanting to i was getting ready to go there yeah what stops mob activity from saying like oh like now it's hard to do because corporations like if you remember that sopranos episode where uh where uh tony's guys like go into the Starbucks for the first time and they're trying to shake down the

Starbucks and then it's slowly realizing like oh this isn't like a mom and pop operation like art and they realize like oh shit we're dinosaurs because we can't shake down a corporation like we used to so or not what stops like have people try to sure I want a piece of the action how do you wrangle out of that like how do you you don't have a manager who's mobbed up you don't have a booking agency that's

mobbed up and you're not on a record company that's mopped up and there were mobbed influences in all three of those areas but there were booking agents you who protects you from someone trying to edge in yeah who's to stop a shook night of the 60s

The only thing I can say is this. When I went to work for James, one of the things he told me is, if anybody Fischy ever tries to buddy up to you and acts like they want in or want to get next to me or become your friend and make offers that sound too good to be true, let me know immediately. And that was his way of saying, don't let that happen. And I can only say, say that he was smart enough and discriminating enough about who he hired, that there was

never one of us in a position that could have encouraged that kind of element. And I'm sure it was trying to, listen, the mob had pieces of studios, recording studios in New York. The mob had certain, a lot of independent record labels were mobbed up. There were several booking agencies that booked black artists that were mobbed up, not all of them. I mean, they were everywhere. Time out.

Time out, ladies and gentlemen, I know you hate when this happens, but you know it had to happen. Yes, you're going to have to wait for part two of this story with Alan Leeds. Of course, he has a gazillion stories. And yes, you Prince fans, I'm not going to leave you out. You know good and well. He's going to tell some Prince stories in addition to more James Brown stories. So, tune in next week for another epic episode of the Alan Leeds Questlove Supreme Return. show. Thank you. What's Love Supreme is a production of IHeartRadio. This classic episode was produced by

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