 It was March 9, 1970. The funk vine quickly
spread the news: James Brown lost his entire band.Disgruntled and burned out, the musicians had confronted Brown with a list of ultimatums just before a show in Columbus, Georgia. Instead of mulling over their demands, Brown called his Cincinnati office and set his staff in motion: "Mr. Patton," he told his agent, "you gotta find Bootsy and those kids now!" Bob Patton tracked down bassist Bootsy Collins and his band, at a dive called the Wine Bar. Veteran JB sidekick Bobby Byrd made the call. In a matter of hours, a teenage band that had only briefly toured behind Hank Ballard and Marva Whitney was on its way to Columbus in Brown's Lear jet. Bootsy : We were rehearsing one afternoon at the Wine Bar on Gilbert Avenue and all of
a sudden we got a call from Bobby Byrd At first I thought It was someone trying to play a
joke but sure enough it was him. He told me they needed us right away and that he'd be
there in 45 minutes to an hour Don't worry 'bout a thing, just come like you are, he said.
So I said "Okay, cool". I told the fellas what was happeni The idea of us playing with James was so incredible, we didn't know which way to turn until he came and kinda seLtled us into it. The crowd was chantin' because the show was late. We didn't have any rehearsal and James just called the songs off. I remember the crowd was pretty much into it and the way James pulled it off, I don't even think they knew what was going on. One gets the sense that in a weak moment Bootsy might admit to not really knowing what the audience picked up on that night. After all, he could barely comprehend the significance of having just replaced his own mentors. In fact, when quizzed about his first months on the road with Brown, he has trouble recalling where they played. |
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ng but nobody really believed me until he picked us up and took us to the
airport. We flew to Columbus, Georgia, on James Brown's private jet and went straight to
his gig. We didn't have any idea about what was going on. Once inside, Bobby tried to rush
us past the band and into James's dressing room but the first person I saw was Kush
(trumpeter Richard "Kush" Griffith). He was standing over James and he wasn't
smiling. I knew then there was gonna be some serious trouble that night. I thought
"Oh, man what have we walked into?"