James Brown is in town tonight for a show at Harrah's casino, and I'm eager to see/hear him, no matter what happens. Exactly six years ago, he performed at a Union Station benefit for Science City, a show I missed. A couple of weeks before that show, I interviewed him over the phone from his office in Augusta, Ga., a facility that was in some serious disrepair following an act of arson a few weeks earlier. More trauma and drama in the life of James Brown.
As I set up the interview, I dealt with his assistant, a woman I knew as Miss Moon (that's how she answered the phone). She had the steady, clinical, disembodied voice of someone who had endured for many years the kind of impetuous and unpredictable behavior you get from a figure as large as James Brown. Right up until he came on the line and started talking to me, I inferred, through Miss Moon's mood, that he most likely wouldn't deliver the interview. But he did. And I'll never forget it.
He had me on speaker phone, but it sounded like James Brown was a long ways away -- like across a very large and somewhat empty room. I'd prepared a list of about a dozen questions, figuring they'd easily take up the 15 minutes I'd been allotted. My figures were off, in a few ways.
Six years ago, I wrote that Brown was either 72 or 67, depending on the bio you consulted. In a long but riveting Rolling Stone article this summer (here), novelist Jonathan Lethem also reported that Brown was 72. I guess you can create your own timelessness if you can ignore, expunge or rewrite a few official documents.
My bad calculations didn't end there. I knew the guy was eccentric; I'd seen some of his mug shots. But I wasn't ready for how the interview transpired. My first question was a big fat softball that I hoped would prompt Brown to talk about his vast catalog of music and its relationship to contemporary R&B and hip-hop. I asked him whether he was aware his music was being sampled nearly 35 years after he recorded it and how he felt about that.
After a pause of about five seconds, he growled: "My daughter has a new record label."
After a pause of about three seconds, during which I figured he either hadn't heard my question or was completely ignoring it, I recovered and asked a follow-up: "Will you record a record on her label?"
His response: "It's in Atlanta." I repeated my question. His response, after another five-second delay: "I was just in Morocco. I performed there for the king for his birthday. I just finished a wedding-anniversary party in Washington for Strom Thurman's daughter ..."
And so it went. He was answering questions succinctly and with some considerable detail, they just weren't necessarily answers to questions I was asking. Then, about halfway through our interview, he apparently remembered he was talking to someone in Kansas City, because he said: "I lived in Kansas City for about a year ... when I was about 14 years old."
As I prepared for this interview, I read several essays and bios on this legendary man and not one of them ever mentioned Kansas City, even peripherally. So I dismissed that comment as just another moment of confusion -- a condition that others have encountered during interviews. In his Rolling Stone piece this year (which also never mentions Kansas City), Lethem wrote: "It's hard, for a man of James Brown's helplessly visionary tendencies, to know what happened today, yesterday or, indeed, tomorrow. All accounts are, therefore, highly suspect."
Except that Brown then said, "I lived at 1415 Harrison. My dad was in Olathe, Kansas, at the time." And he pronounced "Olathe" correctly. So I asked him for more recollections of his year in Kansas City. He had other memories in mind:
"Kansas City is where I met Miss Marva Whitney. She went to Vietnam with me in 1968."
That's not the only place he took her. In my research, I'd come across that name. Marva Whitney was born in Kansas City, Kan. By 1967 she was an accomplished gospel singer. Her manager, Clarence Cooper, helped her meet Brown and his band when they were in town for a show at Memorial Hall. She ended up becoming part of his famous James Brown's Revue and his girlfriend for a short time. She was 23.
He may be 72 or 67 or 78 today, but James Brown hasn't forgotten her. At least he hadn't on that day. During the remaining five minutes of the interview, at regular intervals, he'd purr, like Hannibal Lecter looking at Clarice Starling: "Mmmmarva Whitney!"
As in: "Oh yes, I still enjoy performing live, especially for all the young people who come out to the show. (pause) Mmmarva Whitney!"
After about 12 minutes, I'd spent all my questions and figured I'd better bail out and return the man to Miss Moon. So I said thanks and expressed my sincere gratitude and admiration to a guy that I think is as influential and important to popular music these days as anyone.
I'm not sure he heard me or was even listening. As I was hanging up, right before I laid the phone in its cradle, I heard him say one more time: "Mmmarva Whitney."
| Timothy Finn
Recent Comments