Editor’s Note: The following is the second in a two-part series featuring Fred Daviss and James Brown. Daviss was the “Godfather of Soul’s” banker for nearly 40 years. He handled more than $100 million of Brown’s money. Beyond that, he was a true and loyal friend and confidant. Part I of Daviss’ story can be found in the Aug. 30 edition of the Houston Home Journal. This story is a glimpse of Brown through Daviss’ eyes. The complete story of both can be found in Daviss’ book “James Brown and His Money Man,” to be published soon.
James Brown went from near-death to epiphany.
He, just a young boy, probably 6 or 7, Daviss said, and living in Augusta at the time, was standing just inside the service bay door of a local gas station. “He was watching and listening to about a half dozen old white guys sitting on some Coca-Cola crates (in the middle of the bay),” said Daviss. The station, he continued, sat on a levy where the ground was always wet and mushy. As such, there was always a puddle somewhere on the floor, Daviss said. Brown could tell you exactly where because he was standing in it on this particular day when he stretched out his arm to lean against an old air compressor. It had a short.
“He said, ‘Mr. Daviss,” Daviss said of Brown recounting the story years later. “He said, ‘I ain’t never felt like this. I swung around and the next thing I know I was hugging that thing and going ‘ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah’ and all this electricity was going through me.’ Usually a 220 (volt),” Daviss said – which this was – “will knock you away. It’s a 110 that will kill you.
“He said it ‘felt like smoke was coming out of my ears. My mouth. And I could feel it in my hair.’ And he said, ‘I looked down, and after about 30 seconds I could see the water bubbling and smoke coming out of the soles of my tennis shoes.’
“He said ‘I’m not exaggerating about the time the electricity was going through me, but after about 30 seconds it wasn’t hurting me. It felt good.’ He said ‘it was running some power through me.’ He said, ‘Mr. Daviss, it was like blowing a balloon up.’ He said ‘the longer I held that, and just frying to death, I felt like all this power was building in my gut. Something was building me up with power. I had never felt like that before.’
“Finally, somebody shut it off, and they had estimated he had been taking power for like four minutes. Those people on death row don’t take that kind of power for four minutes.” Brown, he said, told him he could smell himself burning. “And as he’s sitting on the side of the bed telling me this, he pulls off one of his slippers and shows me the bottom of his foot. He said ‘I want you to look at the bottom of my feet.’ And it was kind of like they were fried. It had taken all the wrinkles off. They were just as smooth. And he said they had to scrape it (the shoes) off his feet because they had melted to his feet.”
Brown, up until that point, had just been another runny-nosed kid, Daviss said. “Heck, he didn’t even own a pair of drawers until he was 7,” said Daviss. His aunt Honey, who had taken him in, operated a whor*house. She used to send him to the nearby Army base, Daviss said, where “he’d do his little ‘buck’ dance and tell the soldiers where they could get their liquor … and women.”
The incident made him a celebrity. Everybody in town heard about it, said Daviss. They began calling him “The Chosen One.” Brown’s response to the incident, as told to Daviss, that night down the road: “After that happened, I knew in my mind, one day, the whole world would know my name. I didn’t know how. But I knew. One day the whole world will know who James Brown is.”
True enough, they do … at least to a point. “There’s been two or three books written about him,” Daviss said. “But the thing is, James Brown had a way of censoring things, to make sure they came out the way he wanted them to come out.” There is also the movie that is in theaters now. “It’s good in a lot of ways,” Daviss said. “But it misses the mark on a lot of things.”
It isn’t from a lack of respect, but Daviss wants to tell the real story. In fact, he said Brown pulled him aside one day and told him to do just that.
From his book: “For over 50 years, his public image had been well defined. Everybody had seen his stage performances, read his interviews and even witnessed his version of the public meltdown with the police and his time in jail. But nobody really knew what happened once the curtain closed after the show … nobody knew what he thought – or what he feared – because he kept it all so carefully hidden. He could always close the curtain to his fans … and even with those closest to him, he was able to insulate his inner feelings and soul in a protective veil of bravado. I was privileged to work behind that curtain, and I know I am the best-qualified person to tell his story.”
For instance, with songs like “Don’t Be a Dropout” and “Say It Loud: I’m Black and I’m Proud,” Brown telling a member of the Black Panthers he wasn’t about to tell anybody to pick up a gun, the world painted him a social activist. Daviss said he knew different. “James Brown was not into civil rights. I mean, he wanted certain things, but he wasn’t about to get out there and march with Martin Luther King.”
On the other hand, he did do a lot of things, Daviss said, behind the scenes he didn’t want anybody to know about. Like at one concert, he handed out 20,000 bicycles. Daviss said he used to be required to carry thousands in $5 and $100 bills in his suitcase wherever they went. “If we were out on the street and he came across some kids, he would always say, ‘Mr. Daviss. Let me have some of those $5s.’ He had a real way with kids. He would always squat down and talk to them eye-to-eye. He had a real feeling for them. I guess because of the way he grew up.” (The $100s, by the way, were if they came across adults.)
He bought motorized wheelchairs for those who had standard hand-operating ones. He paid for funerals. He once took a “shoeshine kid” off the streets, made him king for a day and then contributed a bundle to his college fund.
“He was always doing things like that,” Daviss said. “Elvis would give away a car and they’d say, ‘Oh! Elvis gave away a car!’ I’d say ‘Mr. Brown, we need to tell people about this (the giveaways).’ He would say, ‘Nah. People might take it wrong, think I’m trying to showboat.”
On the opposite end of that spectrum – of the appearance of sanity – was the strange and bizarre. Like the one time Brown’s favorite dog – he had many – got knocked in the head by a swinging kitchen door. About a week later, it died. Brown had an elaborate funeral to include buying a $6,000 child’s casket for the dog. (Daviss knows because he got the receipt.)
“It was hilarious,” Daviss said of the funeral and still even today getting tickled over it. “They had one of those ministers. Typical black funeral. He’s over there going on and on and ‘mmmm … mmmm,’ shuffling his feet and carrying on. One of the women goes to looking over in the casket at the dog and then she starts screaming, ‘whaw … whaw,’ and then drops in her chair like she’s about to faint. They had one in a white nurse’s uniform and she’s just a fanning her.
“Pudgy is laying there and they’ve got his paws fixed like he’s praying and he’s got this smile on his face. We had these two guys at the radio station and they’re self-proclaimed funeral directors. James Brown is late but finally comes out and they’re like ‘right this way Mr. Brown. Right this way.’ And he gets in front of the casket and he’s got tears running down his face and he’s crying and saying, ‘I just can’t believe Pudgy’s gone. And that nurse is still fanning that woman and she’s still carrying on and the preacher’s carrying on and I’m doing all I can to keep from busting out laughing.”
Contrasting that was the time Daviss said they landed in Senegal. Word had gotten out, so when they landed – a chartered 747, not one of his private planes – they were greeted to the sight of thousands upon thousands of people lining the perimeter fence bordering the landing strip. It turned out to be about 80,000, Daviss said a newspaper reported later. When the plane came to a stop, they went into “go” mode, tore down the fence, brushed aside the guards and swarmed around and underneath the plane. They began to chant. The people on board began to panic. Brown, on the other hand, asked to have a microphone rigged up. It was done.
Said Daviss: “He got out there and told them, ‘Now look. I know y’all want to see James Brown. I want to come out and talk to my brothers and sisters. I tell you what. Everybody needs to be calm.’ He said, ‘As a matter of fact, I’m going to come back and do a concert for all of y’all.’ And then he hollered ‘Yow!’ and did a couple of splits. ‘Y’all please be ladies and gentlemen. We’ve got people on this plane that need to be home with their families. There are business people on this plane and they’ve got business to do. So will y’all please move back from the plane.’
“And then he said, ‘Ya’ll need to move back from this plane because I’m taking care of the world business for y’all.’
“And they moved back. As those people just kind of parted and let the people get off and moved off the taxiway so we could take off just as calmly and as quietly as could be.”
Swinging the pendulum in the opposite direction was perhaps the time Brown was part of a weeklong concert in Europe. There were 2.1 million people in attendance. Daviss said he made the mistake of telling Brown even the Pope couldn’t draw those numbers. Brown’s sincere response: “I’m bigger than the Pope.”
Or perhaps when his third wife, Adrienne, died of a drug overdose.
Daviss said he called Brown to offer condolences. “He said, ‘Yeah. That’s a shame Mr. Daviss.’ They’d been fussing and fighting. And then he says, ‘You know Mr. Daviss. I know how Alfie (the name he called her) was killed.’ I’d already heard plenty of his stories of paranoia and how far it spread, the government watching him and all. Anyway, I said, ‘How was she killed Mr. Brown?’ He said, ‘Well, you know what a spiritual man I am Mr. Daviss. If I need a million dollars, I can pray to God and I’ll have it in 24 hours.’ I said, ‘That’s good Mr. Brown that you’ve got that kind of connection to God. But why did he kill her?’ He said, ‘Well I’m getting at that.’ He said, ‘I prayed to God to get rid of Alfie.’ He said ‘that’s basically what I asked. To get rid of Alfie for me. But God misunderstood. We just had a lapse in communication. And he went and killed her. What I was trying to tell him was I just didn’t want to be around her no more.’”
Such was the life of James Brown. Such was the life of Fred Daviss that he needs – has – a book (on its way) to tell it all. (And these stories here don’t even come close to scratching the surface.)
“I look at details,” Daviss said. “What a complicated person he was, how complex he was. But also, how brilliant he was. There’s no telling what James Brown’s IQ was. (For instance) with only a seventh grade education, he would casually insert little addendums in the margin of a recording contract that would later yield millions of dollars. That way, he beat the corporate lawyers with his own little pencil simply because of their inability to recognize his intellect.”
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