Look at all these rumors...

Did you hear that one about Susan?

Hello there!

First, let me apologize for the long absence.  A few things happened in life (law school graduation, marriage, bar exam, etc.), but now that that is all over I am free to pursue the finer things in life like crafting witty blogposts about inane subject material that four people will read.  Pretty fantastic.

This post came to mind as I was reading a book recently - the first book I've read that was not law-related in over a year, mind you.  That book was The One, by RJ Smith.  It is the newest biography about "Mr. Please, Please, Please" James Brown.  For a review/interview with the author, go here.  I'm not here to review the book, granted it was decent (for me, it was too broad in scope (his entire life) so it left out some things I would have like to have known more about), instead I'm interested in a little footnote of a story that Smith mentions.  And that story involves another favorite of mine:  Bill Withers. 

Before we get to that, though, allow me to set the tone of what we're really talking about here:  Celebrity Gossip.

Not pictured:  journalism

  

Now, celebrity gossip is nothing new.  Americans have loved gossiping about their favorite (or least favorite) celebrities for as long as there have been celebrities (which were created by William Randolph Hearst in 1880, I believe).  We love stories of their love affairs, their break-ups, their triumphs and tragedies, and their communist activities.  What we really love, though, are those stories of celebrities acting crazy.  This is because a) celebrities pretend for a living and thereby live in a world that is not real, and are thus allowed to act in outrageous ways; and b) celebrities are, indeed, crazy people.  We like to hear about how they push the boundaries of decency, of what is acceptable behavior, and of what they can get away with.  It seems their creativity in acts is matched only by their need for attention.  And we, myself included, love to hear about it. 

This post could easily turn into a recitation of crazy celebrity stories, but that's not my bag.  You can go here, here, or here (definitely!) to do that.   But just the same, here's a quick top three of celebrity stories that came to mind when I was thinking about this post:

Gary Busey

is crazy, as you know.  But even his level of insanity can reach drug-fueled lows (highs?) that are as sad as they are unbelievable.  If you haven't heard the story, he once snorted cocaine off his dog's back.  Yep, his dog rolled around in his yayo one day and Gary "MacGyver" Busey did what any successful actor would do:  grab a straw and not waste that blow!

Mötley Crüe 

Left to Right:  Liza Minnelli; Bret Michaels; Captain EO; Sgt. Pepper of  XFL team The Hollywood Glambots

Now, there is no shortage of crazy stories regaling the exploits of these four gentlemen-ambassadors of rock n' roll.  Often involving sex, drugs, and sex, the Crüe was a force to be reckoned with during their hard-living 1980s.  Sure, one of them killed his friend in a car accident and spent a mere thirty days in jail, but look at them and their teased hair, ruffles, and kissy-face makeup.  You can't hate them!
The story that comes to mind here is not the death-life-death-life of Nikki "Lazarus" Sixx, but instead what he and drumming god Tommy Lee cooked up for one of their groupies.  In one of their saddest and least arousing escapades, they persuaded their groupie-du-jour to place a phone call to her mother from a most-unorthodox phone booth.  Details here.

Prince

You know, I'm not even going to try with this one.  Just go here (on why he can't have a camel for his living nativity scene), here (spark-shooting roller skates) or here (declaring the internet to be "over") . . . seriously, Prince is too crazy for me to sum up.

So that brings us back to the top, the one if you will, and to one of my personal faves, "Butane James" - James Brown.

No crazy here, move along.

Back in 1974, Brown agreed to appear at a music festival held in conjunction with the "Rumble in the Jungle" Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire.  Also on that bill were Bill Withers, B.B. King, Celia Cruz, Ray Barretto, and the Fania All-Stars.  The whole thing is documented in Soul Power, a film about the concert released in 2008.  Needless to say, this concert was a pretty big deal (dubbed "the Black Woodstock" by some uncreative journalists):  you've got some hard-hitting (no pun intended) music acts headed to a country that was eager to have them, combined with some hard-hitting (pun intended) heavyweight boxing, and Soul Brother Number One at the top of the bill.

As I was reading about this in The One, though, I read the following sentence regarding James Brown's unwillingness to sit in coach on the plane flight over to Zaire (and thereby balance the weight of the plane, which was weighed down by all of the equipment Brown insisted on bringing with him):

According to [Hugh] Masekela, during a stopover in Madrid, Bill Withers bought a dagger and held it to Brown's throat, suggesting he sit in economy with the rest of the folks.

What?  "bought a dagger and held it to Brown's throat...."  Bill Withers did this?  "Grandma's Hands" Bill Withers?  "Still Bill" Bill Withers?  I have never heard this story before.  Mister "Lean-on-me-when-you've-got-a-heavy-load" threatened to kill The Hardest Working Man in Show Business?  This seems like something that would have made the rounds, right?  Bill Withers is not exactly a gangster with all that "Just the Two of Us" and "Ain't No Sunshine" business.  It's not like he's Sid Vicious.  And RJ Smith says no more about it!  No commentary on whether it was true or not, no mention of how this played out, nothing. 

Stone cold.

And it's not like James Brown is some wuss.  This is a guy that worked over 300 days a year, was incarcerated as a youth (and as an adult), was pretty much always carrying a gun, and would sometimes fire his band not by telling them but rather by leaving them stranded in California while he went back to Augusta - he is not to be messed with.  Just ask his bodyguards.

Stone to the Bone.

So, if it was true that Bill Withers threatened to kill The Godfather, then surely I would be able to corroborate this story somewhere else.  Also, I think I gained a little more respect for Mr. Withers (as I'm sure you just did, too, by reading the above anecdote).

Guys in rugby shirts are known to be a little unhinged.

After looking around the intehnets a bit, I came across a different version of the story.  Leon Gast, director of When We Were Kings (a different documentary about the "Rumble In the Jungle"), told the story in an interview with True/False Film Fest:

The Vanya All Stars [Latin band, subject of Our Latin Thing] played their instruments on that flight [to Zaire] all throughout the 15 or 17 hours. James Brown, BB King and his band were also on that plane. Some people wanted to sleep, and became offended. At a stopover in Madrid, Bill Withers got off, went and bought something threatening looking, like a fake plastic knife or something, came over the intercom and said, “My Latin brothers and sisters, I know you love your music, but if you don’t stop for a minute I’m gonna slit somebody’s throat” while waving that knife around.

Oh.  So that's maybe a little more plausible, right?  This keeps Bill Withers as the smiley-songwriter-guy-who-just-wants-some-sleep and James Brown as the top-billed-showman-supreme who, like his papa, would clearly "Take No Mess."  

Everything in its right place.

However, it does make one wonder where the "Bill Withers threatening JB" version comes from.  I mean, there are definitely some folks in the industry that did not like James - that much is well-known.  That's what happens when you have a history of paying yourself more than your band, assaulting your female singers, and (as mentioned before) firing your band by leaving them stranded somewhere.  But does it serve Still Bill's legacy to make him into a tough guy capable of cutting up JB?  He is currently a music industry recluse, having given up recording and performing sometime in the late 80s, so maybe this just adds to the mystery.  Or, maybe Masekela just remembered it wrong and harbored some ill-will for JB himself, so he told people Bill Withers got him to change his mind?  Who knows.

The point is, I love stories like this.  Whichever version you accept, this gives a lot of insight into the dynamics at play between music industry stars, some more famous than they can handle at times (i.e., James Brown), others just wanting to play music for people and the love of music (i.e., Bill Withers or the Vanya All Stars, for that matter).  We like this because it presents context for history and shows people acting like people - though let's be honest, I don't think I could get away with threatening James Brown's life simply for not sitting in coach.  But then, I didn't write "Use Me," either.

Regardless, it's not like Bill Withers had this tough persona right?  He wasn't hanging around with murderers or anything like that.

Left to Right:  The Greatest of All Time, Still Bill, a convicted murderer. 

Sample Example, pt. 2

I'm sure you've all seen this strange, but effective KIA commercial:


Who wouldn't take their sock monkey to a club with them? And a robot doing the robot is just perfectly post-modern.

The music used in that commercial is "How Ya Like Me Now?" by The Heavy. Who is "The Heavy" you ask? I have no idea, but I bet they're British - because British bands use samples of American music to make American-sounding music, right? (see, e.g. EMF, Big Audio Dynamite, Stereo MCs).


Different kind of 'British sampling'.

The reason C-Murder is bringing this to your attention is because of the too, too funky sample used in the song.


...or as they say in Italy, "Tutto funky!"

That sample is, "Let A Woman Be A Woman - Let A Man Be A Man" from 1969 by Dyke and The Blazers.

Let a Woman Be a Woman.mp3

Fantastic, isn't it? I think my favorite part (other than the break), is the dialog:

DYKE: "hey fellas!"
THE BLAZERS: "Yeah!"
DYKE: "Ya'll see anything wrong with Sally's walk?"
THE BLAZERS: "Naw!"
DYKE: "All right then...tell me 'bout it...hah!"

According to the little info available on the intehnets, three guys from Buffalo were in a band called The Blazers that backed up the "before-they-were-riding-on-a-Love-Train" O'Jays (also from Buffalo). Those three (Arlester "Dyke" Christian - bass, Alvester "Pig" Jacobs - guitar, and JV "No Nickname" Hunt - saxophone) were stranded in Phoenix after the O'Jays couldn't afford to get them back to Buffalo. As a result, the three hired an organist, a bassist (so Dyke switched to vocals), a drummer, and another saxophone player. They became Dyke and The Blazers and a made a big impact on the local Phoenix soul scene.


Any band with a guy named "Arlester" and another guy named "Alvester" has to be pretty good...

Dyke and The Blazers were well on their way to being a heavy-hitting soul/funk outfit of the 60s and 70s. Their first record, "Funky Broadway" (the one Wilson "Wicked" Pickett covered and scored a #1 hit with), is often thought to be the first time the word "funk" was used as the title to a record. From this, Dyke was makin' bank (since he was the writer), while his band was making about $100 a show. The rest of The Blazers eventually quit on Dyke, but it didn't matter because he started working with the guys that would become the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band (you know them from "Express Yourself")...and got even funkier.

The reason you may not have heard of Dyke and The Blazers by name, though, and the reason they didn't get famous, was because Dyke was shot and killed in an altercation in 1971, just a few short years after he got the band going in the right direction. A tragic end to a short climb. I personally think they would have been huge, since Dyke sounded a lot like Otis Redding (another tragic story of a life cut too short, too soon), and the band was as good as The JBs and Booker T. & the MGs over at Stax.

What you hear in "Let A Woman Be A Woman" are those Watts 103rd St. guys. In particular, you hear the funkiness of James Gadson, a sorely underrated, yet supremely funky drummer.


James Gadson - with a wig like that...this guy means business.

James Gadson went on to be the drummer for Bill Withers, played on "Dancin' Machine", "I Will Survive", "Love Hangover", and countless other amazing funky soul tracks. And this guy is STILL working today!

Since we're talking about the greatness and obscurity of Dyke and The Blazers, allow me to share a couple other great tracks:

The Wobble.mp3 - This tune is just a great slice of funk. According to what I can find, this may be Dyke's third drummer, Wardell "Baby Wayne" Peterson, coming after James Gadson.

Runaway People.mp3 - This one is about, as the title indicates, people that runaway. Not sure if this was a big problem in the late 60s, but it was on Dyke's mind. My favorite part is probably the break, which was sampled here by Mr. Tracy Marrow (doing business as Ice-T) on "Microphone Contract" from his 1991 classic, "OG - Original Gangster":


You won't find a better use of the phrase, "You better be a good bullet-ducker".

So, in short, check out these tracks, in fact, if you Right-Click them, you can save them (FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY). Just doing my part to share great music with the masses.
I would also recommend picking up "So Sharp!", a collection of their hits.



Until next time...

This is fantastic news for me and you:

I was recently made aware that there is a soon-to-be-released documentary about Bill Withers.
For those of you that don't know who Bill Withers is, you'll probably find out that you do know who Bill Withers is. I have done what I can as one man to spread the gospel of Bill Withers (more than one person has recounted to me how turning them on to Bill has 'changed their life a little bit'), and I always thought someone should make a movie about him.

So who is Bill? He was a regular guy from West Virginia working on 747s installing toilets when he decided to take music more seriously, and when he did that at 32 years of age, he got a record deal. What followed? -

Ever heard, "Lean on Me"? Of course you have. In fact, you already know the words to it and don't even remember how you learned them.

Yeah, well, Bill Withers wrote that gem back in 1972. In addition to that, Withers penned "Ain't No Sunshine" (an oft-covered classic), "Use Me" (which you heard on the "American Beauty" soundtrack), and "Lovely Day" (which was used in that Gap commercial a while ago).

After Bill had all these hits (there were more that you should check out...a list is coming), he quit the music biz completely in 1985. Poof. Gone. Into reclusive-mode like Sly Stone and JD Salinger (RIP). From what I understand, he didn't like the way the music business worked (not too shocking of an indictment) and so he left it. Big balls on Bill Withers, it turns out.

So this documentary is a long time coming...to me this will hopefully be not only the story of a fantastic artist who is one of the best living songwriters, but it should also be a great way for people to learn about the greatness of Bill Withers, someone who really has languished in obscurity in my opinion. Plus, there aren't too many successful artists that will tell you how much they hate the biz.

Not sure when it will be released (website just says "Spring 2010"), but I look forward to it.