THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. **** Saturday/Sunday, February 29 - March 1, 2020 |C11
BYMARCWEINGARTENF
OR A PERFORMER
who never shied away
from self-gilding hy-
perbole, James Brown
actually had it right
when he called himself “the Hard-
est Working Man in Show Busi-
ness.” In a remarkably fertile
period bracketed by his early-’60s
crossover hits and his last great
record (1973’s “The Payback”),
Brown ruled the R&B charts and
invented funk music while also
running James Brown Enterprises,
his record and concert-promotion
business. For Brown the business-
man, that meant steering clear of
the racist covenants that blocked
performers of color from playing
mainstream venues and instead
leaning hard into the “Chitlin’
Circuit,” the loose agglomeration of
barns, college gyms and traditional
venues (including the Apollo in
New York) that welcomed African-
American performers and their
fans.
In the early ’60s, Alan Leeds,
a white, Jewish R&B nerd from
New York by way of Richmond, Va.,
sneaked into every James Brown
show within 100 miles of his home.
“The music was an entree to a
community made mysterious sim-
ply because I had no other access
to it,” Mr. Leeds writes in his eye-
opening memoir, “There Was a
Time: James Brown, the Chitlin’
Circuit, and Me.” “It sounded like
someplace I wanted to go long
before I knew where it was.”
Mr. Leeds talked himself into
Brown’s inner circle and in 1969
became the performer’s factotum,
drumming up press releases before
transitioning to the dirty business
of booking gigs. “There Was a
Time” is a panegyric to an era in
which Brown’s career and art flour-
ished even as he was fending off
Jim Crow at every turn, carving
out a singular career one heart-
stopping show at a time.
In retrospect, it’s hard to imag-
ine an architect of 20th-century
popular music having to play live-
stock auctions, but it was ever thus
for black artists of the era. The
calculus was simple: Generate hit
records, get radio to play them to
death, then ride the wave to bigrentals. Mr. Leeds introduces us
to regional kingmakers like Joe
Murnick, Jim Crockett and Allen
Knight, promoters who controlled
venues along the Chitlin’ Circuit
and had long-term relationships
with Brown, even when they were
stealing money from him. Dealing
with thieves was the cost of doing
business, which is why Brown kept
a keen eye on costs. If too many
comp tickets were handed out or
the advertising budget exceeded
the show’s profits, Mr. Leeds
writes, it was “like facing a teacher
at the end of class; you never knew
if you were going to be com-
mended...orifyouwould be
called out and embarrassed.”
Brown knew exactly how to
game the circuit—hiring local disc
jockeys as promoters, for exam-
ple, in order to supercharge re-
gional airplay. Even while he was
creating radical new approaches
to pop music and peeling off one
monumental jam after another,
Brown stayed focused on the
balance sheet. Everything was
in the service of healthy profits,
even if that meant having to
do leg splits across the country
50 weeks a year.
This is not the erratic, doped-up
version of James Brown who was
repeatedly arrested for domestic
abuse in the 1980s. Young Brown
was, in contrast, “an enterprising
businessman, a snappy minded,
uncompromising perfectionist whoalso happened to be a world-class
entertainer.” As a boss, he could be
garrulous and nasty, charming and
heartless. When his great band the
Famous Flames complained about
their weekly wages, Brown fired
them all on the spot and hired a
Cincinnati bar band that included
his future co-conspirator in funk,
bassist William “Bootsy” Collins.
Mr. Leeds recalls Brown giving the
business to an underling who had
fallen out of favor: The great man
invited him onto his Learjet, then
upon ascent told the sap that “as
long as this plane is in the air,
you’ve got a job.” Mr. Leeds him-
self was praised and castigated so
many times he was inured to it,
which, along with his fierce loyalty
and street smarts, kept him on
the payroll for nearly a decade.
It all changed in the early ’70s,
when album-oriented artists like
Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder
leapfrogged Brown, forcing him to
play catch-up for the first time in
his career. The party was over, but
Mr. Leeds subsequently forged a
career as road manager for Prince,
Chris Rock and many others, all
the while abiding by his former
boss’s key maxim: “If you believe
in yourself, sooner or later, some-
one else will believe in you too.”Mr. Weingarten is the author,
most recently, of “Thirsty:
William Mulholland, California
Water, and the Real Chinatown.”ticket sales. The records under-
wrote everything, which is why
Brown never stopped making prod-
uct. Mr. Leeds recalls one session
in 1970 when Brown and his tour-
ing band ducked into a Nashville
studio before a show to quickly
dash off and release “Get Up (I
Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine,” a
pillar of the funk pantheon. Some
of Brown’s greatest recordings,
in fact, were laid down on the flyin four-track shacks across the
South and Midwest.
For Mr. Leeds, humping for Mr.
Dynamite brought little remunera-
tion or praise but lots of adven-
ture. His memoir, alas, is short on
groupies and upended hotel rooms;
this is the glamour of grit. “There
Was a Time” is mostly about the
challenges of trying to get over
as a black performer in the imme-
diate postwar era: buttonholing
unscrupulous promoters before
they skipped town with gate
receipts, having gear stolen right
before “star-time,” ducking credi-
tors looking to collect on overdueJames Brown toured
nonstop and ran
his own record- and
concert-promotion
business as well.There Was a Time
By Alan Leeds
Post Hill, 244 pages, $26The Glamour of Grit
GODFATHERJames Brown performs at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, 1969.
JULIAN WASSER/THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGESBOOKS
‘I taught ’em everything they know, but not everything I know.’—JAMES BROWN
CHILDREN’S
BOOKS
MEGHAN
COXGURDONMYSTERIES
TOMNOLANFILM EDITORMarissa Dahl, the
narrator of Elizabeth Little’s
“Pretty as a Picture” (Viking,
338 pages, $27), is a whiz at
her craft, but her social skills
are deplorable. “When faced
with any real conversational
pressure,” she admits, “my
personality just goes offline.”
Her social abilities are strained to the breaking
point when, after signing a 16-page nondis-
closure agreement, she is whisked out of her
Southern California comfort zone and onto an
island off the Delaware coast—there to serve
Tony Rees, “the most exacting director in
Hollywood.”
The secretive Rees is filming a major motion
picture about an unsolved murder that took place
on the very island where he’s shooting. Marissa
is the sudden replacement for the film’s original
editor, whose absence no one explains. Technical
mishaps are plaguing the production, but Rees
forbids Marissa from fraternizing (let alone
gossiping) with colleagues or local residents.
“His penchant for psychological manipulation
is well-known in the industry,” says one actor.
Ms. Little’s witty book
deftly skewers the movie-
making world and the
types who inhabit it.
Marissa quickly surmises
that Rees intends to use
the feature to solve the
real-life crime it depicts.
The director says that this
is not his intention: “I’ll
leave that to the audience.”
Even so, might the culprit
still be alive, still living on
this island? Are the film’s
crew and cast in danger?
Prodded by a pair of young podcaster wannabes,
Marissa vows, in spite of her social ineptitude,
to solve the cold case herself before new violence
may occur. “Pretty as a Picture,” with its mix of
satire and action, is funny, fast-paced and a
pleasure to read.
Harsh, violent reality is the daily fare for
Dallas police detective Betty Rhyzyk, the narrator
of Kathleen Kent’s satisfying“The Burn”
(Mulholland, 337 pages, $27). Returning to duty
after healing from injuries suffered in her debut
outing, Betty is consigned to desk work but
nonetheless is soon caught up in a half-dozen
new cases—and so distracted by psychological
trauma from her recent ordeals that she is
“stuck in the abyss of my own morass.”
One of the cases confronting Betty hits close
to work. In the wake of the theft of a large
shipment of drugs, local dealers are being
assassinated, apparently in retaliation. Some
street people claim a cop is involved, either in
the theft or in the killings, maybe in both. Betty
can’t help noticing that her partner Seth has
developed a drug habit, and she worries that he
has something to do with the stolen narcotics
or even—God forbid—the murdered dealers.
The terrain of Ms. Kent’s book is grim,
populated by ruthless bad actors. One of these
is El Cuchillo (“the Knife”), a notorious cartel
enforcer who has recently been spotted in Dallas.
Can he be the killer now bloodying the streets of
Big D? Betty, disobeying orders (as is her wont),
hits the streets herself, in search of answers that
may or may not reassure her about her partner’s
innocence.
Crime novelist Walter Mosley has created
several heroic lead characters in the wake of
his best-selling series featuringL.A.private
investigator Easy Rawlins. Most persistent and
charismatic of these is New York City resident
Leonid McGill: the ex-boxer and private detec-
tive who makes his sixth appearance in Mr.
Mosley’s“Trouble Is What I Do” (Mulholland,
166 pages, $24).
Leonid is visited one day by an ancient blues
singer from Mississippi named Philip “Catfish”
Worry. Catfish, who is black, spins the saga of
how, as a much younger man, he loved and was
loved by a beautiful white woman descended
from Mayflower settlers. The woman bore their
son, who in time sired a daughter, who is about
to marry a New York child of privilege with no
knowledge of her heritage.
Catfish bears a handwritten message for the
bride-to-be, written long ago by her late grand-
mother, intended to be read before her eventual
marriage. The blues man is wary of approaching
his female descendant in person; her father—
Catfish’s own fair-skinned son—is a powerful
private banker and notorious bigot who defends
his use of racial slurs by saying: “In America we
believe in free speech.” Catfish wants the private
eye to deliver the letter on time.
But Catfish’s son takes violent exception
to this plan and enlists the services of Hilton
Zeal, “the most dangerous criminal on the
Eastern Seaboard,” to thwart it by whatever
means necessary. The one time Catfish
confronted his offspring, to tell him they were
related, “he told me if I ever said that again
that he’d have me killed.” With a hired
assassin now at work, that threat is back
on the table.
“Trouble Is What I Do” is a slim volume
with the feel of a fable and the concision of a
blues scale. Minor characters have marvelous
names—Archibald Lawless, Dido Kazz, Mozelle
Tot—and move with ageless grace. “I felt a
kinship to all of them,” Leonid thinks. So do we.THIS WEEK
Pretty
as a Picture
By Elizabeth LittleThe Burn
By Kathleen KentTrouble Is
What I Do
By Walter MoselySecrets
From the
Cutting Room
lights went out in every
house in East Germany,”
we read. “It was the law.”
But look: In one upstairs
window, there’s a golden
glimmer. By candlelight,
6-year-old Peter Wetzel is
gazing at a photograph of
a hot-air balloon torn from
a West German newspaper
(see below): “He knew why
his mama and papa had
kept it hidden under their
mattress—that picture was
illegal. Peter also knew that
it was part of
Mama and
Papa’s secret
plan.”
Working
in secret, the
Wetzels and
Strelzyks fig-
ured out the
math and set
their danger-
ous plan in
motion. Some-
how, in a
police state
where every
person and every purchase
is under surveillance, they
would have to stockpile
fuel, metal and the nearly
200 yards of fabric needed
to build a gondola and
balloon. Though their
escape is a foregone
conclusion—it’s right
there on the dramatic front
cover—“Flight for Freedom”
still manages to be
suspenseful, as well as
beautifully presented.
It’s timely, too.
Changelings, children
raised by wolves,cuckoo
birds in crows’ nests:
There’s no end to the
narrative possibilities of
babies growing up instrange circumstances. Two
novels for readers ages 8-12
explore what it might be
like to find oneself at home,
and yet the odd one out.
In“Coo” (Greenwillow,
407 pages, $16.99), Kaela
Noel tells of an abandoned
baby girl who is carried
by pigeons to the roof of a
derelict building in one of
New York’s outer boroughs.
It is there that Coo, as she’s
called, lives for the next
decade, dressing in plastic
bags, eating
what the flock
can forage
for her from
dumpsters and
speaking the
birds’ distinc-
tive pigeon-
English, a
Yoda-like lingo
that will
enchant some
readers and
annoy others.
When a
hawk injures
Coo’s closest friend in
the flock, the child seeks
help from a seed-strewing
woman whom the pigeons
call “the healer.” Soon
Coo finds herself in human
society, entranced by its
pleasures (showers, hot
chocolate) butalarmed by
its values, not least its
distaste for her adoptive
kind: “Pigeons were beauti-
ful. They ate trash, true, but
they were cleaner about it.
They were not like rats. How
could humans think that?”
Children with earnest
and gentle spirits are the
likeliest audience for Ms.
Noel’s fanciful tale. Those
who like a dash of magicand perhaps some Russian
folklore are likely to enjoy
“The Girl Who Speaks
Bear” (Scholastic, 286
pages, $16.99), Sophie
Anderson’s story of a
village misfit named Yanka
who for her early years was
raised by a bear. Now she
lives with her adoptive
mother, Mamochka, a
healer who insists that
Yanka not stray into the
surrounding Snow Forest.
But how can Yanka resist,
when the trees and birds
are calling her? For that
matter, why is she so
much stronger than other
children, and what on earth
has happened to her legs?
In this adventure,
Yanka’s journey of self-
discovery alternates with—
and is illuminated by—the
stories she hears from a
forest loner named Anatoly,
who talks of fire dragons,
witch houses that walk on
chicken legs, and shaggy
bears that can change
into people.
Though it is odious to
nitpick, sometimes it can’t
be helped: I’m afraid that
both “Coo” and “The Girl
Who Speaks Bear” share an
infelicity that is far from
uncommon in new books
for children. One author
repeatedly uses “lay” when
she means “lie”; the other
writes “me” when grammar
calls for “I.” Given that
their intended readers get
graded on the quality of
their grammar and writing
at school, is it too much to
ask that adults who write
and edit children’s books
make more of an effort
in this regard?Sailing Over the Wall
THIS WEEK
Flight for Freedom
By Kristen Fulton
Illustrated by
Torben KuhlmannCoo
By Kaela NoelThe Girl Who
Speaks Bear
By Sophie AndersonAT A TIMEwhen the
idea of socialism seems
to be gaining appeal
among young Americans,
along comes“Flight for
Freedom” (Chronicle, 56
pages, $17.99)to remind
us how desperate people
were to escape the reality
of it during the Cold War.
In this thrilling picture
book based on real events,
for readers ages 5-10,
Kristen Fulton begins with
a child-friendly comparison
of life on eitherside of the
Berlin Wall: “On the west
side, children watched
cartoons, wore blue jeans,
and ate pizza. In the East,
children watched the news,
wore scratchy uniforms,
and waited in long lines
for a banana once a year.”
The Hamburg-based
illustratorTorben Kuhlmann
does a wonderful job here of
conjuring the atmosphere
of fear and repression that
drove two families, the
Wetzels and Strelzyks, to
take an incredible gamble
in the fall of 1979. In one
picture, he shows a dark-
ened village under a full
moon, loops of barbed wire
in the foreground. “Every
night at nine o’clock theCHRONICLE
In a
picture
book
based on
real
events,
two East
German
families
take a
gamble
in the fall
of 1979.