"New bag" paved the way for the Funk era. 
Jimmy Nolen's chopping guitar break was something never heard before.
Rickey Vincent


Short Biography | Interview | Scores | Funky Stuff

         I was one of the millions of youngsters who were caught up in the guitar fad of the early fifties owing to the popularity of Elvis, The Everly Brothers and Duane Eddy among others in the then burgeoning musical phenomenon called Rock and Roll. Like just about everyone else, I was self taught and played along, by ear with my favorite records and thought I was pretty good. I hadn't been exposed to any blues yet, being from an all white, middle class neighborhood in Oxnard, California. But there was the "other side of the tracks" that was predominately black, as in most towns of that era. Fortunately, we all went to the same schools and it was in a Social Studies class that the students were asked to share their favorite music as part of a class project. I brought my revered Duane Eddy album along and a young black girl named Flora Lucky brought in a Cobra recording by the young Otis Rush. Flora inadvertently started me on a path of musical discovery that changed my life forever. From that point on I was totally committed to America's true musical product and I couldn't get my hands on  enough of the blues recordings that were available.

Got A Brand New Bag" and he was on many more hits of "Soul Brother Number One" from 1965 to 1983, except for the two years he left the band to go with Brown sidemen, Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley as "All the Kings Men". He literally put James Brown on the worldwide stage with his patented funk riffs and fills       

  After his stint with Johnny Otis and in the period before joining James Brown in 1965, Jimmy would regularly work the Southern California "chittlin' circuit", playing small clubs and ballrooms with his own band. It was during this time that I finally got to meet him and I was persistent enough for him to reluctantly take me under his wing and we established a lifelong friendship. He would come up to my town north of Los Angeles and play an old honky tonk called "Cadillac Mama's" that was down by the airport. It was owned and operated by Ivory Lee Bryant but why they called her Cadillac Mama was a mystery to me because she always drove a Buick but that's another story. I think it had something to do with her backside.

         She had everybody who was anybody come through that little club. The "Blues Consolidated" package consisting of Little Junior Parker, Bobby "Blue" Bland and Joe Scott's great orchestra featuring Al "TNT" Braggs. Johnny Guitar Watson, Pee Wee Crayton, Lowell Fulson, Johnny Otis, Joe Houston and of course, Jimmy's band. I was too young to go in and my father was a Deputy Sheriff  who forbid me to go near the joint! He wouldn't even allow me to sit in my 51 Ford and listen to those great sounds echoing into the parking lot. But in my mind I wasn't going to let a strict parent and my age stand in the way of my passion or ability to meet my idol and soak up his music. So I had to convince Cadillac Mama to just let me stand inside, secreted by the kitchen door that was near the bandstand.

         At first she shunned me with sage advice like, "you'll be old enough one day" or "boy, do you want me to lose my license"? But I persevered and she finally allowed me to come in through the back service entrance and I would hide behind that kitchen door in awe of Jimmy. I'm sure I was the laughing stock of the patrons that frequented her club observing me in my little "hide out", including Jimmy Nolen but no one ever let me know it. I didn't have the nerve to approach him and I'm sure he was curious because Mama must have told him who I was and why I was there. He came up to me one night and introduced himself and we talked all through his break. After we were acquainted and he was aware of how much I idolized him, he told me to bring my guitar the next time he was appearing there to sit in with him and his band. I told him that I was too scared and besides Mama wouldn't allow it and he said, "you let me take care of Mama". The next time he played there,  I was in my usual hiding place and I hear him announce to the audience that he had a special guest with him that evening and he introduced me to the crowd!

         I didn't have the nerve to bring my guitar with me and to say the least, I wasn't mentally or physically prepared for this challenge that he suddenly thrust upon me. He came over and practically dragged me on stage and he let me play HIS guitar! Now Jimmy was about 6' 4" in stocking feet. I was about 5' 8" when I stood up straight by following my mothers relentless warnings about bad posture and wore pointed "Cuban heeled" boots that were the fashion fad of the day. I still suffer from bunions at this writing for foolishly being cool.

         I was used to playing my little Fender Telecaster and his big fat Gibson was the biggest thing with strings that I had ever seen, short of a stand up bass! In my panicked state of mind it was bigger than a stand up bass! So Jimmy gets behind me and holds the guitar up while I placed the curve of this beautiful instrument on an uplifted knee and proceeded to go into a slow blues instrumental in the key of G. Because it was such a novelty for a young white kid to be playing blues then, the crowd went wild and from that point on I was greeted warmly by all of Mama's customers up until the place closed down in the early seventies. I was fortunate enough to rescue the kitchen door before it's demolition and it now stands proudly as the entrance to my home office.

         When I say that Jimmy took me under his wing, it was a very benevolent undertaking on his part. I was immediately nicknamed by him as "Grayboy", a moniker that has stuck with me through the years. He would usually stay the night with some local beauty in my town after his gigs and the next day we would meet at a prearranged spot where he would take me to his home on Wilton Place in Los Angeles. There he would spend most of the day teaching me his chords and licks and everything I could absorb from him. When the lesson was done, we'd cruise around South Central L.A. in his gorgeous Cadillac until it was time for him to drop me off at the Greyhound Bus Terminal for my return trip home and he would pay my fare! Just driving around L.A. with him in that Cadillac was just as important to me as the lessons. We'd stop to greet many of the musicians and entertainers of the day or go to his favorite barber shop to get his hair "conked" where we would run into more famous people waiting to get their hair done.

         In early 1963, I entered the US Army and my first assignment after basic training was to spend thirteen months in South Korea as a member of the Eighth Army Special Services Division. Thankfully I was able to be a part of a very good little band billed as "The Statesmen" (what else?) that played blues, jazz and show tunes and we traveled extensively throughout the Far East, performing at military clubs and on Armed Forces Korea Television Network. When my assignment was up in Korea and I was being reassigned, I learned that Uncle Sam wanted to trade me a rifle for my guitar and send me to an escalating Viet Nam war! Thanks to a good congressman, the military changed it's mind and reassigned me to Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. Did I say a good congressman? I got there just in time for the civil rights strife in Selma, Montgomery and Birmingham!

         It was in Alabama that I hooked up with probably the best musicians I have ever met in my entire musical career. To this day most of them are noted musicians that include E. W. Wainwright Jr., a great jazz drummer that tours and records with Pharoah Sanders and McCoy Tyner and fronts a great group in the San Francisco Bay area called African Roots Of Jazz. Fred Wesley, a noted trombonist that directed James Brown's band for many years and then went on to tour with Maceo Parker and the JB Horns and was influential in the careers of George Clinton and bassist, Bootsy Collins.

         During my time in the Army, I had lost touch with Jimmy Nolen and had no idea where he was playing or who he was playing with. I rarely ventured back to California, being too busy with my military commitment and regular gigs in Huntsville. On one of our rare weekend nights off, we had the chance to attend a James Brown concert at the Madison County Coliseum. I always caused a fuss because of "colored" and "white" lines and segregated audiences that were prevelant then and I would usually get into the colored line while waiting for entrance to an event. This resulted in my being jailed for what Huntsville's finest men in blue deemed "disorderly" and I wasn't very popular with the local chapter of the Klu Klux Klan either!

         When me and the band arrived for the concert, the audience was supposed to be segregated and James Brown, much to his credit, was refusing to perform until the barriers were withdrawn. His band bus had broken down en route and word got to him that we could back him almost as good as his own band, so we were brought backstage to discuss it. It was his first meeting with Fred Wesley who would later become an intregal part of James Brown's career. When we got James Brown's approval, we went over to the club that we regularly played to retrieve our instruments and returned and set up to back the Godfather Of Soul in front of seven thousand people. We had been used to playing for about seventy at most and this venue was a real inspiration.

         The barriers were withdrawn and after about three warm up tunes, Brown's band bus pulled in and an intermission was called so Brown's musicians could set up. It had been agreed that if this happened, they could use as much of our equipment as needed to facilitate their late arrival. As I was unplugging my guitar and getting ready to return to my seat, a voice from behind me asked, "okay to use your amp"? When I turned around to respond, there stood Jimmy Nolen. We both froze for a second and he said, "Grayboy"? He was obviously surprised to see his former student so far away from home. We immediately laid our guitars down and went into a bear hug that I can still feel to this day! You could hear a pin drop among the thousands in attendance inside this huge auditorium. At first there was a spate of hand clapping and then gradually the building was engulfed in shouting whistling and thunderous applause! The barriers came down that night and I like to think it was, for it's time, a moment of unity. A night that entertainers, musicians and audience alike forgot the ills of the day and came together despite a social atmosphere of ignorance and racial hatred. It was sublime!

         After the concert, Jimmy asked me if I would give him guitar lessons, tongue in cheek of course but a way of saying how proud he was in the way that I had progressed as a guitarist from those early days of hiding behind Cadillac Mama's kitchen door.

         Although we stayed in touch over the years, the last time I saw Jimmy was in Atlanta in 1966. He was there with James Brown's Revue and most of the band came over to an after hours club I was playing in and we had a great time jamming and reminiscing the old times. Fred Wesley called in December of 1983 to inform me that Jimmy had passed away on a road tour, again in Atlanta due to a massive heart attack. It is likely that he is mostly unknown to todays guitarists because of James Brown's former policy of not giving his musicians credit by name on stage or album liner notes. But I will always remember this gentle, giant of a man with those big fingers curled around that beautiful big Gibson who graciously took me into his confidence and told me years ago, "Grayboy, looka here". "Ya see, it goes like this".

Dan Pollock
Vintage Guitar Magazine
September 1998

 Short Biography | Interview | Scores | Funky Stuff