James Brown Living In America

Pee Wee Ellis outruns a family tragedy

"I don't talk about it very much," says the man who put the funk in James Brown's band. "My stepfather was murdered. It was a racial crime." This was in 1955, in Lubbock, Texas, "not a place to be black and a free and independent thinker." Ellis' stepfather was a short-order cook, but he also managed bands. As Ellis reconstructs the crime, his stepfather asked a white woman to dance with him. Someone went into the club's kitchen and came out with a knife and stabbed him. Ellis' stepfather bled to death, Ellis says, because the closest hospital wouldn't admit black patients. It was not an unusual situation in the South of that era.

Ellis, who was born in Florida and moved to Lubbock in 1946, was 14 years old when his broken family arrived here in 1955. There were relatives in Rochester. There still are. Ellis lived here for six years, important years in a young kid's life. He was at Madison High School studying saxophone, and going to clubs here like the Pythodd — "That was like another kind of school" — to jam not only with Ron Carter, the African-American bassist studying at the Eastman School of Music, but a couple of white kids from Franklin High School, Gap and Chuck Mangione. A different world from Lubbock. Rollins was a jazz star even then, but the kid stopped him and asked if he could get some lessons. Rollins surely had plenty on his schedule at that time — he was recording his magnum opus Saxophone Colossus at the time — but he agreed to take on the kid. Ellis studied with Rollins for a few years, moving between Rochester and staying with his aunt in New York City. He jumped on that sidetrack in 1965, and it turned out to be the main line, an interesting ride that included stints with Van Morrison, playing with the J.B. Horns with Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker and people like Jack McDuff, George Benson, Dave Liebman and blues rockers The Blues Magoos, and releasing many records under his own name, including a new one this year, Tenoration . It is his association with Brown that resonates the loudest.

"How much time I got?" Ellis says with a laugh, when asked about Brown; he's talking by phone from Los Angeles, and that night is scheduled to play an African tribute to James Brown at the Hollywood Bowl. Ellis has always kept his association with Brown intact, including a tribute tour that he put together called Still Black, Still Proud. The reason was, these two icons of music were wary of the people around them. Maybe they had a right to be paranoid. As Ellis notes, they both "had a lot to lose." And a lot of people wanted a piece of them. For weeks after his death in 2006, Brown's family and the woman he had been living with for the last few years of his life were involved in an awkward squabble over the final resting place of The Hardest Working Man in Show Business. "It's a market town, artists, book stores," Ellis says. "The citizens are very accepting of artists. It's an ideal place to live.

80's Vinyl Gems: James Brown - Living In America (12")

James Brown, much missed, with his last great hit from 1985  (written by Dan Hartman and Charlie Midnight) from the film Rock IV. This is the "R and B Dance Version" at six and a half minutes, sounds more funky than R and B to me, a classic twelve inch version. The seven inch is here plus instrumental track, "Farewell" that does not feature Brown but is by Vince Dicola.? Patronism at it`s finest!

Living in America, the soul saga of James Brown

James Brown, The Godfather of Soul

Jet

Jet

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