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James Brown’s Favorite Uncle The Hal Neely Story Chapter Fifteen

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Previously in the book: Nebraskan Hal Neely played in big bands, served in the Army during World War II and entered the record business in the late 1940s. He met controversial producer Syd Nathan and budding blues sensation James Brown.
All the stories about the recording session of James Brown’s “Please, Please, Please” were as equally diverse as those surrounding his demonstration tape. Most of the major players agreed that it took place at King Records in Cincinnati the first part of 1956. In Neely’s memoirs he insists that James Brown and his group showed up without an appointment in March. That was not how Brown recalled it in his autobiography.
Brown said the Flames were working in a club in Tampa, Florida, several weeks after the signing. Since so much time had passed they had just about decided Ralph Bass had changed his mind about the contract with King Records. Then they received a phone call from their manager, Clint Brantley, telling them to go to Cincinnati immediately. Brown’s assertion matched with an interview in which Ralph Bass said he called the group to come to King Records and told them he would put them up in a hotel.1
Upon the arrival of Brown and the Flames in Cincinnati, they were supposed to check into the hotel Bass had selected for them, which Brown described in his autobiography as a “fleabag.” Instead, the Flames went straight to King Records studio and slept in their car. According to one account, Neely came to work on a cold morning to find an old Ford station wagon in the parking lot with a bull fiddle tied to the top. Inside were six or seven sleeping men. He woke them up and discovered they were there for a recording session. Neely told them Nathan would not be in the office until noon and referred them to the Manse Hotel where black musicians stayed when they were in Cincinnati.2
Neely emphasized in his memoirs, however, that because Brown had shown up without an appointment, there was no studio space available on that date. Even though still working for Allied Records, Neely came to Cincinnati from time to time to produce records independently. On this particular day Neely was in the studio with Earl Bostic, an old friend. In his autobiography Brown concurred that Bostic was at King Records that day.
Earl Bostic and Hal Neely went back together to the old big-band days in Hollywood during the 1940s. Born in Oklahoma in 1913, Bostic attended Loyola University in New Orleans. By the late 1930s he was playing his saxophone for major bands in New York, arranging music for Luis Prima, Artie Shaw, Lionel Hampton and others. When he met Hal Neely in the 1940s Bostic had gone from jazz to playing standard tunes in a rhythm and blues style. The black musician began recording for King Records in 1949.
When James Brown sat in on the recording session in early 1956 Earl Bostic was one of the top rhythm and blues performers in the country. While accounts do not specifically say what Bostic was recording that particular day, discographies reveal that Bostic did record “I Love You Truly” and “’Cause You’re My Lover” during that time period.3
“We were supposed to record the next day, but when we showed up we found out Hank Ballard and the Midnighters had come in unexpectedly,” Brown continued in his autobiography. “Everybody at the studio was tied up in a big meeting with them, so our session was postponed until the following day.”
Ballard was another big star for King Records, making both money and controversy with his 1954 hits “Work With Me, Annie” and “Annie Had A Baby”. He was born John Henry Kendricks in 1927 in Detroit, Michigan, and was considered one of the first rock ‘n roll artists.
Neely, in his memoirs, kept calling Brown’s group the Royals, but that was the name of Ballard’s group in 1953 when it was signed to King Records. The group changed its name to the Midnighters in 1954.4
A major event in the relationship between Ballard and Neely came with Ballard’s big hit “The Twist.” Neely had gotten Ballard scheduled to perform the song on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand, but Ballard disappeared after a show in New Orleans with a female fan and did not appear at Clark’s studio in Philadelphia. A janitor named Leonard Pendergrast said he could sing the song, and, after a few quick rehearsals, was introduced to the national audience as Chubby Checker and sang “The Twist.” He later made his own recording of the song which became the version known today. Clark subsequently told Neely no one from King Records would ever perform on American Bandstand again.5 When James Brown hit his peak, he did appear on American Bandstand even though he was with King Records.
When Brown arrived at King Records the day following Ballard’s session, he said in his autobiography, “Little Willie John had come in to record, and our session was put off again. Little Willie John was just a shade over five feet tall, and he looked really sharp. Later on he came to mean a lot to me, but when I met him that day, I was thinking more about whether my own session would ever come to pass.”
Little Willie John was another money-making talent for King Records. He was born in 1937 in Arkansas.6 After his family moved to Detroit, Michigan, he formed a gospel singing group with some of his siblings, and it wasn’t long before he came to the attention of big-time musician Johnny Otis and King A&R man Henry Glover who brought him to Nathan in 1955. Glover alleged to have signed him and had him in a studio three hours later recording “All Around The World” which within a month had gone to No. 5 on Billboard’s rhythm and blues chart.7
Glover said about John, “He was a really, truly great singer. The blues came so natural to him that he was just a master at that and no one living in that day could touch him. He could perform some of the greatest blues gymnastics and voice gyrations that you could ever dream of a person having.”8
In his memoirs Hal Neely claimed to be at the meeting in New York on June 27 when Willie John first met Henry Glover. Neely also said he was the one who arranged for John to meet Glover in the first place.
The day Willie John bumped James Brown and the Flames at the studio, he was probably recording either “Need Your Love So Bad” or “Fever.” John’s original version of “Fever” earned a gold record; however, the song became an even bigger hit for Peggy Lee in 1958.9
Brown and the Flames finally got their recording session. About 20 people crowded into the studio. In his autobiography Brown said he could see through the glass into the control booth where Ralph Bass, Syd Nathan and musical director Gene Redd were discussing the project. Brown didn’t like the idea of having a musical director but went along with it anyway. The first song Brown and the Flames went into was “Please, Please, Please” but Nathan quickly erupted with one of his infamous outbursts.
“Stop the tape! Stop the tape! This is the worst piece of shit I’ve ever heard in my life! Nobody wants to hear this crap. All he’s doing is stuttering, just sang one damn word over and over,” Nathan screamed, according to Brown’s autobiography. “That it doesn’t sound right to my ears. What’s going on here?”
The Flames did not get any support from musical director Redd who shrugged and told Nathan he didn’t understand it either.10
Philip Paul, a drummer for King who was there that day, said, “Myself, and the other musicians said, ‘What was that?’” He remembered one of the studio guys saying, “If that’s the music to come…”
“We all cracked up,” Paul said. “These guys were really good musicians, and when they hear all the hollering and screaming, we all said, ‘What is this garbage?’”11
“I sent you out to bring back some talent, and this is what I hear,” Brown’s autobiography quoted Nathan as blustering. “The demo was awful, and this is worse. I don’t know why I have you working here. Nobody wants to hear that noise.”
But Ralph Bass came to their defense. “It’s a good song, Syd. Give them a chance.”
“A good song? It’s a stupid song. It’s got only one word in it. I’ve heard enough,” Nathan yelled before leaving the room, according to Brown’s memoir.
Hank Ballard, who was at the King studio that day, said, “Ralph Bass was a Russian Jew but he had black ears! Syd Nathan couldn’t hear a hit if you put it in his lap.”12
As far as Brown and the Flames were concerned, according to his autobiography, the recording session was a fiasco. They thought the only money they would ever see out of this project was the $150 apiece Nathan paid them for the recording session. Later they got a bill from King Records for the hotel, studio time, tapes, long-distance phone calls and even the food they ate. Back in Georgia, the members of the group returned to their old day jobs. Brown worked at a plastics factory; others to jobs as nursing home attendants.
According to Neely’s memoirs, he came back to Cincinnati on business for Allied, just in time to witness another epic fight between Syd Nathan and James Brown and the Flames.
“Hal, throw them out, unless you want to work something out and take them on,” Nathan said.
Neely then took the group into an office where he wrote a contract. The three-year agreement contained an option for King to renew for another three years. Neely would get a producer’s royalty of 3%. Neely said he called Clint Brantley in Macon to ask him to be the group’s manager. He also claimed to have changed the group’s name from the Royals to the Flames. (Other sources say the group was never known as the Royals.) Then, according to Neely’s memoirs, the group recorded “Please, Please, Please” with Neely as the producer and Eddie Smith as the engineer. Nathan liked it, Neely said.
Back in Georgia, Brown was busy with his factory job and going back and forth between his wife in Toccoa and his girlfriend in Macon. “Anyway, we carried on doing our little thing locally,” band member Byrd said. “But we had no idea the record was selling. See, we didn’t hear it on the radio.” Billboard Magazine first listed “Please, Please, Please” as a “territorial tip” at the end of March and then listed it as a “Buy O’ The Week” the first week of April. Billboard called it “a sleeper to watch. Atlanta and Cincinnati for two weeks have reported very strong activity.” By April 21, 1956, it joined the rhythm and blues charts, going to No. 6 and staying in the top 20 for 19 weeks. “And we certainly didn’t know nothing about no Billboard nowhere,” Byrd said. “Charts? What’s that? We were so down. We didn’t realize that – what we had been doing was getting out behind it and working the record.”13
“Now the aftermath of the story is that Syd never discussed how great this record was and what a great job I had done,” Bass said in an interview.14 “He could never do that. But I was in the studio there one day, waiting for someone to do a session. Syd came in blustering with some other cat who was evidently not in the record business. I could hear it all because of Syd’s loud voice. Syd said to the guy, ‘You know why we’re so successful in here at King Records? Because we don’t do things like anybody else. I’m gonna show you what I’m talking about.’ And with that, he went to the record player and put on a copy of ‘Please, Please, Please.’”15
Everyone, it seemed, had his own spin in the record industry.
Footnotes

1King of the Queen City, 90.
2The One, 74.
3Marion, J.C., Hurricane Blues: Earl Bostic.http://home.earthlink.net/jaymar41/bostic.html.
4Nite, Norm, Rock On: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock ‘n’ Roll (The Golden Years) Thomas Y. Crowell, 1974.
5Buddy Winsett Interview, July 2012.
6 Whitall, Susan, Fever Little Willie John A Fast Life, Mysterious Death and the Birth of Soul, Titan Books, London, 20.
7 Ibid., 58.
8 Ibid., 56.
9 Ibid., 73.
10The One, 75.
11 Ibid.
12 Sullivan, James, The Hardest Working Man, How James Brown Saved the Soul of America, Gotham Books, New York City, 2008, 64.
13The Life of James Brown, 42.
14King of the Queen City, 91.
15 Ibid.

James Brown’s Favorite Uncle The Hal Neely Story Chapter Fourteen

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Previously in the book: Nebraskan Hal Neely played in dance bands in the Midwest and California before joining the Army in World War II. After he graduated from college he worked for both Allied Record Manufacturing and King Records where he met the irascible Syd Nathan and the incomparable James Brown.

Someone once said, “Success has a thousand fathers, but failure is a bastard.” James Brown was one of those successes with a thousand fathers. Hal Neely in his memoirs dismissed the claim that Ralph Bass discovered and put Brown under contract Brown. He said he was visiting King that day when a package with a demo record arrived in the mail from a nightclub owner in Macon, Georgia.
It may well be true that the first time Neely heard a recording of James Brown’s voice was in Cincinnati but other music historians say that Ralph Bass heard Brown first while he was at the King branch office in Atlanta Georgia early in 1956. Even he wasn’t the first King employee to hear Brown sing. The office manager Gwen Kesler told Bass he had to hear this.1
“Who the hell was that?” Bass asked. “I had never heard anything like that. It was so different. My theory as a producer has always been: Let me find someone who’s different and at least I have a chance.”2
That chance Bass wanted to take was a young man who “wasn’t supposed to be James, wasn’t supposed to be Brown and wasn’t supposed to be alive. You see,” Brown said in his 1986 autobiography, “I was a stillborn. My mother and father lived in a one-room shack in the pinewood outside Barnwell, South Carolina.”
However, what a person writes in his autobiography often cannot be taken at face value. Critics accused Brown of half-truths, self-justifications and re-writing history.3 For example, James Brown said he was born May 3, 1933, in Bramwell, South Carolina; however, his birthday was also listed as June 17, 1928, in Pulaski, Tennessee, birth records. A Penthouse magazine article listed his birth date also in 1928. The 1933 birthdate has been deemed more likely to be accurate because “if he had been born in 1928 he would’ve been 21 years old when first imprisoned and 24 when released. In fact, he was still legally a minor, under 21, when paroled in 1952.” Some musicologists think he was trying to make himself out to be younger than he really was by releasing to the public birthdates.4
By the time he was 15 years old, Brown had grown proficient in breaking into cars and stealing whatever he could find inside; however, his luck finally ran out and the police caught him in the spring of 1949. Young James was sentenced to eight to sixteen years in the Georgia Juvenile Training Institute in Rome, Georgia. While there, Brown met Johnny Terry who eventually became a member of the Famous Flames. In prison they formed a gospel quartet with two other inmates. Two years later in 1951, he was transferred to the Alto Reform School near Toccoa, Georgia.5
A twist of fate led Brown to meet one of his best lifelong friends at the Toccoa reform school. That friend was not one of the inmates like Brown and Terry, but the valedictorian of the local high school who brought his a cappella gospel singers to perform for the prisoners.
Bobby Byrd was everything that James Brown was not – educated, respectable, religious and an all-around nice guy.6 Byrd’s family vouched for Brown and guaranteed a job for him at a local car dealership which led to his parole in 1952. Brown almost blew this opportunity when he “borrowed” a customer’s Jeep and then wrecked it. Only after further assurances from the Byrd family did the judge agree to let Brown continue on parole.7
Another person—other than Neely and Bass–who claimed responsibility for James Brown’s career was Barry Trimier, Toccoa’s only professional black music entrepreneur in the1950s. He claimed to be the group’s first booking agent and manager. He also ran a café, club and pool room called Barry’s Recreation Center. Trimier worked with the group from 1954-55. 8
Brown’s early career had a major advancement when he and his group met Little Richard at Bill’s Rendezvous Club in Toccoa in 1955. The Flames asked Richard if they could play during intermission. “I could hear them from backstage and what they were doing to the audience. James sang ‘Please, Please, Please.’ I thought they weren’t going to give me my microphone back!” Richard said.9
Fats Gonder, Richard’s band manager, recommended the Flames to Clint Brantley, Richard’s manager in Macon. A casual passerby might mistake him for the janitor of his nightclub, the Two Spot, but he was an influential character in the early years of rock ‘n’ roll. The new arrangement did not seem to bother Trimier. “He was somebody unusual,” Trimier said about Brown. “He had to have people like Clint Brantley to take him further. There was no way in the world that I could go out there and socialize.”10
Brantley immediately began booking the Flames all around Georgia and South Carolina, but the group really took off when Little Richard moved to California and to a new agent after his big hit, “Tutti-Frutti.” The Flames took the contracted dates which Brantley had originally signed for Richard.11
The Flames had been playing their first record “Please, Please, Please,” refining it for two years. Byrd said that the song had evolved into a blisteringly emotional, hypnotic fervent supplication which became a vehicle for Brown’s gripping showmanship.12
One of the demo records, cut at station WIBB in Macon in November 1955, wound up at Southland Record Distributing Company in Atlanta where it was forwarded to the King branch office. “It’s a monster,” Ralph Bass praised the record, according to Brown’s autobiography. “Where can I find these guys?”
Bass said he went to Macon and called Brantley. “Now at eight o’clock you parked your car in front of this barbershop, which is across the street from the railroad station. When the lights go on and the blinds go up and down after they go down you come in,” Bass reported Brantley as saying.13 The reason for such a bizarre request was that the white establishment in Macon did not want strange white people–perceived to be outside agitators–to come into town and have any social interaction with “their” Negroes. “An out-of-town white cat could be in trouble in those days,” Bass said. Brantley was taking precautions for Bass’s safety. Once inside Bass watched James Brown and the Flames perform. He paid Brantley $200 and within a few months the Flames were on their way to Cincinnati and the big-time.14
There are, however, a several other versions—all equally unsubstantiated–of how James Brown and the Flames were signed to a contract with King Records.
In one account, Bass was driving through Atlanta listening to the radio when he heard “Please, Please, Please” and rushed to Macon to close the deal.15
In a second story, rhythm and blues pioneer Henry Stone said he was in Miami when Syd Nathan called him about this hot new record being played on the airwaves around Macon. Before Stone could drive to Georgia, Bass–who supposedly was in Birmingham, Alabama–caught wind of the new sensation and got to Macon first.16
A third report had Leonard Chess of Chess Records mailing a contract to Brantley and announcing that he was flying down to Macon immediately. However a heavy snowstorm kept the plane grounded, and Bass beat him to Brantley bearing an offer that exceeded the Chess contract.17
A fourth version appears in Hal Neely’s memoirs in which he said a Macon disc jockey sent the demo record to Syd Nathan and King Records in Cincinnati, and he was in the room when the record was played. “In my opinion,” Neely remembered Nathan saying, “that’s a horrible record, but that kid singing lead has something, and that song is a hit song.” Neely also said Bass was in the room at the time, and Nathan sent him to Georgia to check the group out. While Bass said he signed James Brown and the Flames to a contract, Neely insisted only Syd Nathan himself could sign contracts for King and its subsidiaries.
We will never know what truly transpired.
As the wise man said, success has a lot of daddies.

Footnotes

1 Rhodes, Don, Say It Loud! My Memories of James Brown, The Lyons Press, Guilford, Connecticut, 2009, 26.
2King of the Queen City, 89.
3Brown, Geof, The Life of James Brown, 5.
4 Ibid., 15,16.
5Ibid., 19.
6 Smith, R.J., The One, The Life and Music of James Brown, Omnibus Press, London, 2008, 50.
7The Life of James Brown, 20.
8The One, 58.
9 Say It Loud, 22.
10The Life of James Brown, 30.
11The One, 67.
12 The Life of James Brown, 39.
13The One, 74.
14 Ibid., 73-74.
15 Say It Loud, 26.
16 Ibid., 26.
17The Life of James Brown, 39
17Say It Loud!, 26.
18The One, 72-74.

James Brown’s Favorite Uncle The Hal Neely Story Chapter Thirteen

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Previously in the book: Nebraskan Hal Neely began playing the trumpet with Big Bands in the Midwest before moving on to California. After his time in the Army during World War II, he graduated from college and worked for Allied Record Manufacturing Company. He also worked part-time for Syd Nathan of King Records.
(Author’s note: Chapters written in italics denote Neely’s own words from his memoirs.)
Many people with “convenient memory” claim that Ralph Bass who worked for King discovered and put James Brown under contract, but it was I and not Ralph Bass. I was visiting King that day when a demo record arrived in the mail from Clint Brantley, a nightclub owner in Macon Georgia. The record featured a young man named James Brown.
James Brown was born in Georgia. His father James Joseph Brown joined the U.S. Navy when James was five years old. His mother abandoned him at the same time. Little James at the age of five went to live with his aunt Minnie who lived in the black ghetto of Macon, Georgia, where she ran a house of “ill repute.” He worked the streets shining shoes and “pimping” for Aunt Minnie to the soldiers from the Army camp near Macon. James grew up fast, learning the ways of survival.
At the age of 15 he was involved in a local gang street fight. A young boy was killed. Police conjectured that “this kid Brown hit him (the deceased) with a baseball bat” but young James was only charged with stealing car hubcaps and sentenced to three years in the Georgia prison system.
While James was in prison, his future friend and music associate Bobby Byrd brought his five-piece band from Toccoa, Georgia, Byrd’s hometown, to play a “freebie.” The prisoners shouted for the young James and his musical partner Johnny Terry whom he had met in prison. Byrd called them to the stage to play with his group.
James was soon transferred to the prison in Toccoa, Georgia, where he paroled for good behavior. Byrd’s mother signed papers with the prison to be legally responsible for him He worked as a janitor in her church and started playing drums, singing, and dancing with Byrd’s group, “The Five Royals”. (Author’s note: music historian John Broven says Bobby Byrd’s group was originally called The Gospel Starlighters and later used the names The Avons and The Flames.)1 They performed at local area dances and clubs. Johnny Terry got out of prison and came to Toccoa to join Byrd’s band.
Little Richard—who would later go on to national fame as a rock ‘n’ roll artist–played a club in Toccoa. The audience shouted for The Five Royals. They joined Richard on the stand and jammed with him. Richard was very impressed with the group. Little Richard was coming into fame and popularity, traveling most of the time. He was booked and managed by Mr. Clint Brantley who owned a black club in Macon, Georgia. Richard told Mr. Brantley about The Five Royals and it was arranged for them to come to Macon and audition for him. He liked the group which soon became the house band for his club. Simultaneously, Little Richard and his band went to Hollywood to record for Specialty Records. They stayed on the West Coast.
The Five Royals started earning popularity and a loyal fan following. It was soon evident that James Brown’s singing and dancing was the major star of the band. The band played several Little Richard “gigs” with James posing as Richard. The audience never caught on.
Mr. Brantley took The Five Royals to Macon’s black radio station where they cut a demo recording on “Please, Please, Please,” a song written by Johnny Terry. The local DJ sent the demo to Syd Nathan and King Records in Cincinnati.
“In my opinion,” Syd said, “that’s a horrible record, but that kid singing lead has something, and that song is a hit song.”
Also present at that meeting was Ralph Bass, an independent producer for King’s Federal label. Syd sent Bass to Macon to check out the group. Bass falsely claimed he signed the group to a Federal contract. However only Syd Nathan at that time could sign contracts for King and its subsidiary labels. Bass’s claim was invalid. (Author’s note: Broven points out Bass may have exaggerated his authority to sign contracts but his role in bringing Brown to Nathan’s attention is valid.)2
The Five Royals were planning a gig in Memphis in March. They drove, with no appointment, to Cincinnati to meet with Mr. Nathan. There was no studio time available. I was in Cincinnati recording Earl Bostic, an old friend from my Hollywood band days, that week. The Royals would have to come back.
On April 25, 1956, I was again in Cincinnati. As always I stayed in my room at Syd’s and Zella’s big house in the Jewish section of town. Syd and I met with The Five Royals. James claimed he was the leader and Bobby Byrd claimed he was. James rubbed Syd the wrong way, and Syd got mad.
“Hal, throw them out, unless you want to work something out and take them on.”
I believed in the group and took the boys to a room across from Syd’s office which I used when in Cincinnati. Utilizing my University of Southern California business law degree, I formed a limited partnership of the original five members with each member holding a 1% ownership, a group royalty rate of 5% on net paid sales paid directly to the each member of the group and on each record said member recorded with the group. The original contract was for three years with a King option to renew for an additional three years on the same terms and conditions.
I called Clint Brantley in Macon and asked him to be the group’s manager. King would pay him a royalty of 1%, same as each band member. The group would need a new name as there was another Five Royals. In the discussion someone mentioned the name The Famous Flames. That was it. I would be their producer at a 3% royalty. All royalties would be paid on a net paid sales basis. The Famous Flames would be released by King on its subsidiary Federal label.
On March 26, 1956, the group came back to Cincinnati, and we went into the King studio. I produced, and Eddie Smith was the engineer. We cut four sides. One song was “Please, Please, Please”. Syd liked it. The single record was released on the Federal label and was an instant hit in the R&B music charts, going to No. 3. (Author’s note: I have tried to respect the details of Neely’s memoirs; however, his recollection of the dates and the group’s name in this episode are obviously at odds. At one point he said he wrote the contract for Brown and the Flames—also identified as the Royals–on April 25, 1956 yet produced the record on March 26, 1956. Also he said he was in California for the birth of his son April 26, 1956. Historian Broven says the “Please, Please, Please” recording session was Feb. 4, 1956, and Ralph Bass was the producer.) 3


Footnotes
1 John Broven interview.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.

James Brown’s Favorite Uncle The Hal Neely Story Chapter Twelve

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Previously in the book: Nebraskan Hal Neely started as a trumpet player in the Big Band era, served in World War II, graduated from college, and worked for Allied Record Manufacturing and King Records.
(Italics denote chapters from Neely’s memoirs.)

After getting King’s pressing business for Allied in 1949, I was in Cincinnati on a regular basis. All the staff and employees treated me as if I were one of them. I’d reassess Syd’s operations for him. They were obsolete and needed to be rebuilt with new, more modern equipment much of which could be built in King’s own machine shop. King was “hot.” Good deal all around.
I was now very active in Allied government production and supervised its recording schedules in five New York studios and on Riker’s Island where the Army had a production facility. I commuted between New York, Hollywood, Washington D,C and Cincinnati. It was hectic but rewarding. I loved my job, even the travel. It reminded me of my old band days, different town each day.
Jim O’Hagan died in January of 1950. It happened suddenly with no warning, and I was promoted to vice president and board member. Mary and I moved back into our house in Woodland Hills, California.
In 1952 I was spending most of my time in the East. Mary rented our house, put her little red MG Roadster in storage, and moved to New York. We rented a nice one-bedroom apartment on the East Side at 72nd St. and Second Avenue. Very nice. Mary would help out at the plant each day. We bought an Olds 88 convertible, parked it in a garage on the corner and drove to work each day. Also in 1952 the Army asked me to reconstruct my old 16-piece show band for a concert for 6,000 American and British troops at Wiesbaden Germany Army Air Base. I wore my captain’s uniform.
Union problems developed at the Allied plant. Allied decided to get out of the state of New York and move its business to New Jersey where it built a new plant. I would be the manager. I moved my office back to Hollywood. Mary and I drove back to California, spending a week in Cincinnati seeing Syd and my brother Sam and his wife Hazel who now lived in Dayton. We moved back into our house in Woodland Hills. I began a lucky and happy time. We and some friends went up to Lake Arrowhead and the mountains above San Bernardino over a long weekend. Our son was to be conceived there.
April 26, 1956, Mary went into labor. I cut it pretty close and got there late that evening. A neighbor picked me up at the plane. We took Mary to the hospital about 7 a.m. She and John Wayne’s wife had the same doctor and were both in labor at the same time. Both of us had sons. Mildred Stone, Mary’s mother from Lyons, came out to stay with Mary for as long as necessary. I was under great pressure to get the new plant operational and still take care of my sales duties. I only got home on several weekends and then back to Jersey.
Eventually we decided to move the family to Newark, New Jersey. Mary shipped her MG to the East Coast, and I found us an apartment in a nice section of Newark. She, our son, and I were on an American flight to New York, changing planes in Chicago. The Chicago airport ground crew went on a “sit down” for some gripe. We sat in the airport for about four hours with everyone else. American was able to get us a flight, but it was going to the Newark airport and not LaGuardia. What the hell. We took it. We got in very late that night and took a cab to the apartment which I had rented.
Mary walked in and said, “No way! I want a house.”
Friends of ours, Sid Bart and his wife, lived in a beautiful upscale closed enclave called Smoke Rise in the wooded hills of northern Jersey, close to the village of Mahwah. It was 40 miles from Manhattan.
We found a small house on a hillside, surrounded by trees and a beautiful lawn. It was two stories, two bedrooms, big basement and a huge screened-in back porch. In the back were flowers and a small spring-fed pond. Mary fell in love with it at first sight. We took out a mortgage and moved in. Mary found a nice widow lady to babysit our son, and we joined the country club. I was lucky again and had a good life.

James Brown’s Favorite Uncle The Hal Neely Story Chapter Twelve

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Previously in the book: Nebraskan Hal Neely toured with big bands in the Midwest, served in WWII, graduated from college and entered the record manufacturing business. He met King Records mogul Syd Nathan.
(Author’s note: chapters written in italics demote Neely’s own words from his memoirs.)
After getting King’s pressing business for Allied in 1949, I was in Cincinnati on a regular basis. All the staff and employees treated me as if I were one of them. I’d reassess Syd’s operations for him. They were obsolete and needed to be rebuilt with new, more modern equipment much of which could be built in King’s own machine shop. King was “hot.” Good deal all around.
I was now very active in Allied government production and supervised its recording schedules in five New York studios and on Riker’s Island where the Army had a production facility. I commuted between New York, Hollywood, Washington D,C and Cincinnati. It was hectic but rewarding. I loved my job, even the travel. It reminded me of my old band days, different town each day.
Jim O’Hagan died in January of 1950. It happened suddenly with no warning, and I was promoted to vice president and board member. Mary and I moved back into our house in Woodland Hills, California.
In 1952 I was spending most of my time in the East. Mary rented our house, put her little red MG Roadster in storage, and moved to New York. We rented a nice one-bedroom apartment on the East Side at 72nd St. and Second Avenue. Very nice. Mary would help out at the plant each day. We bought an Olds 88 convertible, parked it in a garage on the corner and drove to work each day. Also in 1952 the Army asked me to reconstruct my old 16-piece show band for a concert for 6,000 American and British troops at Wiesbaden Germany Army Air Base. I wore my captain’s uniform.
Union problems developed at the Allied plant. Allied decided to get out of the state of New York and move its business to New Jersey where it built a new plant. I would be the manager. I moved my office back to Hollywood. Mary and I drove back to California, spending a week in Cincinnati seeing Syd and my brother Sam and his wife Hazel who now lived in Dayton. We moved back into our house in Woodland Hills. I began a lucky and happy time. We and some friends went up to Lake Arrowhead and the mountains above San Bernardino over a long weekend. Our son was to be conceived there.
April 26, 1956, Mary went into labor. I cut it pretty close and got there late that evening. A neighbor picked me up at the plane. We took Mary to the hospital about 7 a.m. She and John Wayne’s wife had the same doctor and were both in labor at the same time. Both of us had sons. Mildred Stone, Mary’s mother from Lyons, came out to stay with Mary for as long as necessary. I was under great pressure to get the new plant operational and still take care of my sales duties. I only got home on several weekends and then back to Jersey.
Eventually we decided to move the family to Newark, New Jersey. Mary shipped her MG to the East Coast, and I found us an apartment in a nice section of Newark. She, our son, and I were on an American flight to New York, changing planes in Chicago. The Chicago airport ground crew went on a “sit down” for some gripe. We sat in the airport for about four hours with everyone else. American was able to get us a flight, but it was going to the Newark airport and not LaGuardia. What the hell. We took it. We got in very late that night and took a cab to the apartment which I had rented.
Mary walked in and said, “No way! I want a house.”
Friends of ours, Sid Bart and his wife, lived in a beautiful upscale closed enclave called Smoke Rise in the wooded hills of northern Jersey, close to the village of Mahwah. It was 40 miles from Manhattan.
We found a small house on a hillside, surrounded by trees and a beautiful lawn. It was two stories, two bedrooms, big basement and a huge screened-in back porch. In the back were flowers and a small spring-fed pond. Mary fell in love with it at first sight. We took out a mortgage and moved in. Mary found a nice widow lady to babysit our son, and we joined the country club. I was lucky again and had a good life.

James Brown’s Favorite Uncle The Hal Neely Story

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Nebraskan Hal Neely played in big bands before World War II. After the war he graduated from college and began in the record business and met King Records mogul Syd Nathan.
(Author’s note: the following chapter is from my research of material mentioned in Neely memoirs, which are printed in italics.)

Shortly after their initial meeting, Nathan hired Neely to update King’s dilapidated factory. The first phase was changing from the 78 RPM format to 45 RPM. The old format was still popular in the hillbilly and R&B markets because many of the customers still used hand-cranked players which only used 78 RPM. However, Nathan wanted to convert to the new format not only because it would give him additional sales but would also give him access to placing hits on the pop charts.1
Forty-fives were becoming the state-of-the-art in sound fidelity and the preferred choice of those buyers who had money to spend on them. Hence, music released on 45 RPMs had a better chance to place on the popular charts.
Evolving technology notwithstanding, there was the ultimate financial decision to move to the smaller 45s. RCA Victor introduced 45s on seven-inch vinyl discs which could hold as much sound as the 12-inch 78 RPMs.2 Less material—lower cost, another factor that the always penurious Nathan surely considered.
In December of 1950 King Records produced “Sixty Minute Man” by Billy Ward and His Dominoes. It became the first crossover hit from the rhythm and blues charts to Billboard’s pop charts. What ensured the success of “Sixty Minute Man” was the outrage spawned by the suggestive lyrics. Many radio stations around the country refused to play it, making it the biggest R&B hit of 1951 and probably the biggest R&B record of the first half of the 1950s. It sold mostly to white teenagers who were in their Rebel Without a Cause phase. It also reached No. 17 on the pop charts. Critics said “Sixty Minute Man” went too far with its lyrics about a “mighty, mighty man” known as “lovin’ Dan” with “kissing,” “teasing,” “squeezing,” and “blowing my top.”3
This success actually occurred on the Federal label which King had just created to act as a subsidiary for mostly R&B, jazz, and blues artists discovered by King’s newest artist representative, Ralph Bass. Bass originally worked for Black and White Records during the time of Jack McVea’s hit “Open the Door, Richard.”
Bass, born in 1911 in New York, was a white man of mixed Jewish-Italian ancestry who said he blurred the ethnic line with ease.4 He described himself as a “jive-talking wheeler-dealer, half artist and half con artist.” He was the key operator at Federal Records from 1951 to 1958. Besides Black and White Records, Bass worked with other labels such as Bop, Portrait and Savoy.
“Look, babe, I am in black music,” Bass said in a 1984 interview. “Being white, I had a lot to overcome to gain the confidence of blacks so they would accept me as being for real, not just a jive cat who was gonna take advantage of them. I had to learn the language all over again. I didn’t really become a different person, but I acclimated myself to what was happening with blacks in the South.”
Bass was introduced to Syd Nathan by Ben Bart of the booking agency Universal Attractions.
“I wanted to quit Savoy so bad, but I couldn’t afford to,” Bass said. Nathan offered him a generous financial deal, so Bass moved to Cincinnati. “I was going from the frying pan into the fire.”5
After the success of the Dominoes, Bass acquired Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, a Detroit vocal group discovered by King’s Detroit branch manager, Jim Wilson. Bass and his group recorded several songs in 1952 and 1953 which received mediocre reception. However, in 1954, within days of release “Work with Me, Annie” went to No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B chart, mostly because, like “Sixty Minute Man,” it had so-called “dirty leerics.”6
“Annie, please don’t cheat
Give me all my meat
Oh, ooooooh, weeeee
So good to me
Work with me, Annie…”7
Ballard and the Midnighters followed up their success within three months with “Annie Had A Baby.”8
“Now I know, and it’s understood
That’s what happens when the gettin’ gets good
Annie had a baby…”9
King followed up these hits with other songs with sexual innuendo, such as “Keep On Churnin’” by Wynonie Harris, “Big Ten Inch Record” by Bullmoose Jackson and “My Ding-a-ling” by Dave Bartholomew. Eventually King compiled all the records together in one album called “Risky Blues.” Despite the financial success of these records, King came under attack in an editorial called “A Warning to the Music Business” in none other than Billboard Magazine.10
“What are we talking about? We’re talking about rock ‘n roll, about ‘hug’and ‘squeeze’ and kindred euphemisms which are attempting a total breakdown of all reticence about sex. In the past such material was common enough but restricted to special places and out-and-out barrelhouses. Today’s ‘leerics’ are offered as standard popular music for general consumption by teenagers. Our teenagers are already setting something of a record in delinquency with this raw material idiom to smell up the environment still more.”11
The Billboard editorial unleashed a torrent of other criticisms, such as comments by Los Angeles disc jockey Peter Potter who said, “All rhythm and blues records are dirty and as bad for kids as dope.”
Another disc jockey, Zeke Manners, opined that Potter’s comments were extreme but did discount the modern music as a fad.
“The R&B following is limited to teenagers, white as well as colored, and to listeners that are musically immature. I don’t even say that it does any harm, but it is merely a passing craze with the kids of all races. And what do kids buy? Nothing but rhythm and blues records.”12
In reaction to the editorial and comments by disc jockeys, John S. Kelly, vice president and general manager of King, submitted the following letter for the next issue of Billboard Magazine:
We know that we are not without guilt in having in the past allowed some double-entendre tunes to reach the public, but I can assure you there will be no repetition. Several months ago we took definite steps to eliminate the possibility of objectionable material being recorded by or for our A&R (artist and repetoire) men on our three labels, King, Federal and Deluxe, by writing to them as follows:
‘We do not need dirt or smut to write a song. Imagination, newness of ideas, hard work to generate original new sounds, lyrics, and tunes will do the job all the time. This is just a reminder that we will never relent again and allow any off-color lyrics. If any of you record such material you, yourself, will have to pay for that part of the session that will be thrown out because of improper lyrics. Our policy is definitely established and that policy is to reject a tune if, in our opinion, it is unsuitable for the teenage group, who today are heavy buyers of R&B, as well as pop releases. We know that at times there will be a difference of opinion as to whether a given word or phrase measures up to our good intentions, but I believe you will agree that we in this company are sincerely trying to abolish the objectionable songs.’”13
Ralph Bass, in a 1994 interview, said he never recalled receiving a copy of the memo. “I was in Los Angeles, living there again and running the branch office. All of a sudden, white kids were buying black records for the first time.” A television interviewer wanted Bass to come on his show to talk to a politician, a woman with her 11-year-old daughter and the head of the PTA. “So I got on the show and I said, ‘Look, when it comes to something where white people don’t understand the language used, they immediately think in the worst terms. They don’t think in humorous terms, they just think it’s nasty.” Bass asked the little girl if she liked “Work With Me Annie” and she said yes because she “liked the beat.”14
King’s Detroit branch manager Jim Wilson, who had brought Hank Ballard to King’s attention in the first place, said he “believed that (dirty lyric) music helped younger whites to pass up some of the prejudices held by their parents.”15
Music historians pointed out King vice president Kelley was clever in his statement to leave an escape clause for the company which would excuse an occasional slip-up. His exemptions left the door open for King to release the often-controversial lyrics of hits by James Brown who was just about to hit the national scene. 16
Footnotes
1 History of the Gramophone Record, http://www.45-rpm.org.uk/history.html.
2 Powers, Brian, History of King Records, Public Library of Cincinnati.
3 King of the Queen City, 87.
4 Ibid., 88.
5 Powers, Brian, History of King Records, Public Library of Cincinnati.
6 King of the Queen City, 92-93.
7 Powers, Brian, History of King Records, Public Library of Cincinnati.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 King of the Queen City, 91.
14 Brian Powers.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.

James Brown’s Favorite Uncle The Hal Neely Story Chapter Ten

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Previously in the book: Nebraskan Hal Neely, played trumpet on the big band circuit in the Midwest and California before he joined the army in WWI. After graduating from college he went into the record business and met Syd Nathan of King Records.

Obscene, loud, greedy, and crude—those are just a few of the words used to describe Syd Nathan. Also expansive, fun-loving, joke-telling and charismatic. What a combination.
Nathan was born in 1903 in Cincinnati, Ohio.1 He dropped out of school after the ninth grade because he had respiratory ailments and weak eyes. “I couldn’t see, so why bother?” He failed at several businesses including running a pawn shop, bussing tables, managing a shooting gallery, playing drums, operating an elevator, selling jewelry, and promoting professional wrestling. In 1938 he was arrested after he refused to pay off winners at one of his shooting galleries. The charges were dropped, but Nathan was fined $50 for “promoting a scheme of chance.” Later that year he opened “Syd’s Record Shop” on W. 5th St. in Cincinnati. His inventory was 300 old hillbilly, Western, and race records which he bought for two cents each from a jukebox operator. The first afternoon he made $18 which he used to buy more records from other jukebox operators.
Nathan sold the business in 1939 and moved to Miami where his brother Richard was a doctor. He tried his hand in the photo-finishing business but failed again. He returned to Cincinnati and started another record shop on Central Avenue, again getting his inventory from jukebox operators. This time Nathan’s luck changed when country music musicians Merle Travis and Grandpa Jones came into the shop looking for new material.2
“Down on Central Avenue there was a little used-record shop run by a little short Jewish man with the real thick glasses,” Travis recalled. “He had asthma and a scratchy voice, and his name was Syd Nathan. We got acquainted with him, and we had to go down to Syd’s used record shop and find all these great records by the black spiritual quartets. We learned the songs and sang them on the air.”
“Syd got all het up wanting to start a label, a country label,” Jones said. “He came over to radio station WLW where we were doing the Boone County Jamboree and wanted to sign some of us up to make records.”3
The only problem was that Travis and Jones were under contract to the radio station which would not allow them to work for anyone else. Nathan talked them into driving to Dayton, Ohio, in September of 1943 to a makeshift studio above a Wurlitzer piano store. Travis and Jones changed their names for the record and between the three of them they came up with the name of King Records. The first record was a major flop.4
“Some of those early King records came out worked so badly you could use them for bowls or ashtrays,” Jones said. “Watching a needle go around one was like watching a stock car on a banked race track.”
Travis added, “When I got the record, I took it home and put it on my player. It went round and round and round and I sat there and watched and thought, ‘Well, there ain’t nothing on this record.’ It got way over to the end of the record and directly you could hear me and Grandpa. It sounded like we were recording in Dayton but the microphone was in Cincinnati, way off in the distance. It wasn’t much of a record.”5
Every record made between 1898 and the 1940s was 78 RPM, meaning it revolved seventy-eight times per minute. They were generally made of a brittle material based on a shellac resin. When World War II occurred, shellac became scarce and record manufacturers substituted vinyl instead. The term “78 RPM” actually was not used until after new forms of record technology were introduced in the 1940s to distinguish the older style of records from the new.6
The failure did not keep Nathan from trying again in the record business. He went to the local public library where he checked out a book about “gramophone records written by an Englishman,” he said. “I didn’t catch on. I didn’t know what he was talking about.” He then went to the American Printing House for the Blind in Louisville and talked to the pressing plant engineers. Eventually he hired one of them, George W. Weitlauf, to work for him in Cincinnati. By 1945 Nathan acquired a building on Brewster Avenue and remodeled it into a record plant.7
From there he created a string of hits in his first five years selling “race” and country music. He was known for signing both black and white artists in the late 1940s and had no patience for racism. King Records had integrated Christmas parties and company picnics. During World War II Nathan hired Japanese Americans to run machinery keeping them out of internment camps. He hired Henry Glover as an executive, making him one of the first African Americans in the music business with the power to make creative and business decisions.8
Syd Nathan was not a great humanitarian or social activist by any means. He ran a tight studio schedule and if white country music performers had to wait in the hall until the black R&B were finished recording, well, that was just the way it was. If a back-up musician would fail to show, Nathan would grab the nearest player whether he be black or white to fill in. “We work at it as if it was the coffin business, the machinery business, or any other business,” he said. “It has to pay for itself.”9
By the end of 1948 King was the top-selling race label. Among the 25 major hits was Bullmoose Jackson’s “I Love You, Yes I Do”. According to historical reports compiled by the public library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, King converted to the 45 RPM record format in 1949. King Records credited Neely with the switchover. As noted in his memoirs, Neely as a sales representative of Allied Record Company, was in Cincinnati calling on Allied client ZIV, which manufactured radio transcripts. In an interview with a representative of the Cincinnati library, Neely said he made it a point to “check out this character” Syd Nathan while he was in Cincinnati.
“I was in town to see a client and as it turned out I was about six blocks from King over on Brewster so I went over to see this guy for myself. I walked into his office and he said, ‘Who are you?’
“‘You don’t know who I am but I know who you are,’ I said.
“‘I know who you are,’ Syd quickly replied. ‘You’re a smart ass.’ By that evening I was having dinner at Syd’s house and he had sent for my bags at the hotel. I stayed for three days.” In Neely’s memoirs he left out the part of the story where Nathan had called him “a smart ass.”10
(Author’s note: I wrote this chapter from my own research. Chapters in italics are Neely’s memoirs.
Footnotes
1King of the Queen City, 90.
2The One, 74.
3Marion, J.C., Hurricane Blues: Earl Bostic.http://home.earthlink.net/jaymar41/bostic.html.
4Nite, Norm, Rock On: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock ‘n’ Roll (The Golden Years) Thomas Y. Crowell, 1974.
5Buddy Winsett Interview, July 2012.
6 Whitall, Susan, Fever Little Willie John A Fast Life, Mysterious Death and the Birth of Soul, Titan Books, London, 20.
7 Ibid., 58.
8 Ibid., 56.
9 Ibid., 73.
10The One, 75.
11 Ibid.
12 Sullivan, James, The Hardest Working Man, How James Brown Saved the Soul of America, Gotham Books, New York City, 2008, 64.
13The Life of James Brown, 42.
14King of the Queen City, 91.
15 Ibid.

James Brown’s Favorite Uncle Chapter Nine

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Previously in the book: Nebraskan Hal Neely tells in his own words how he played in Midwest dance bands in the 30s, served in WWII and began his career in the record business. Now begins his biographer’s research into Neely’s life.

Hal Neely was a tall man. According to his Army enlistment records from Nov. 11, 1942, he was six foot eight and weighed 198 pounds. No wonder the basketball fans in his hometown of Lyons, Nebraska were upset when he decided to forego playing hoops his senior year in high school for trumpet lessons in Omaha. He had completed one year of studies at University of Southern California while making a nice living as a society band leader playing the Statler and Hilton chains up and down the West Coast.1 His enlistment was for the duration of the war plus six months subject to the discretion of the President. After the war he returned to Los Angeles and put out the word he was back in town and ready to make music.
Jack McVea heard that Hal Neely was back in Hollywood, and, wasting no time, he called Neely to play trumpet at a recording session of his band for Black and White Records in October of 1946.
McVea was a well-known musician with many bands in the Los Angeles area during the 1930s and 40s, performing with Lionel Hampton, Nat King Cole, Les Paul, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker.2 He was the baritone saxophonist on Hampton’s 1941 recording of “Flying Home,” which has been noted as the first rhythm and blues hit. By 1946 McVea led his own group and recorded for Black and White Records. Black and White Records originally operated in Brooklyn, New York, in 1943; but, Paul Reiner and his wife Lillian bought it and moved operations to the West Coast, specializing in recordings of black musicians, what was called at that time “race music.”
The October 1946 session took place at Radio Recorders studio on Santa Monica Boulevard, which was acknowledged to be the best recording facility in Los Angeles.3 Among the artists who recorded there were Charlie Parker, Jimmie Rodgers, and Louis Armstrong. During this same time Radio Recorders recorded many radio shows for delayed broadcast.
Neely said in his memoirs that Black and White Records employee Ralph Bass was supposed to produce the session but Bass was not there. However, Bass was credited as producer.4 Neely claimed Reiner had picked out the song to be recorded, and only four minutes were left in the session for the last song. He said he suggested replacing the last song with a number he had heard the group perform in nightclubs called “Open the Door, Richard.” Since they had such a short period of time, Neely said he told the musicians they had one take, as they were familiar with the piece, one take should be enough, and he would use a fade out at the end of music.
The original recording of this song was the first time a fadeout was used on a commercial record.5 All other records up to this time had used a “cold” or final note. This comment independently corroborates Neely’s claim that he was the actual producer of the record. The McVea recording made Billboard’s bestseller chart in February of 1947, reaching the No. 7 spot.
“Open the Door, Richard” made the charts in 1947 by other artists including Count Basie, the Three Flames, Louis Jordan, the Charioteers, the Pied Pipers, and Dusty Fletcher, who originated the song as a vaudeville routine in black theaters. It was not unusual for a song to be recorded in many different versions in the late 1940s because fans cared about the song more than the performer.6 Writing credit was divided among Fletcher and John Mason for words and McVea and Don Howell for music. Howell, incidentally, was entirely made up, so that an unnamed (and fabricated) businessman could take some of the royalties away from McVea.
McVea recorded several other songs but none were as popular as “Open the Door, Richard.” In 1962 he began playing clarinet in a strolling Dixieland band at Disneyland where he stayed until he retired in the early 1990s.
Neely’s next producing project in 1946 was with Slim Gaillard of Capitol Records. Gaillard was also a well-known performer during the 1930s and 40s in swing music, though never as famous as Duke Ellington, Count Basie or Cab Calloway. Gaillard was mostly celebrated for creating his own musical language called “Vout-O-Reenie.”7 From this Neely session came Gaillard’s biggest hit “Cement Mixer Putti Putti.”
“We were recording on Sunset Boulevard, across from a television studio. After we did three sides, the A & R (artist and repetoire) man sent us out for some air. I was glad to get out because I didn’t have a fourth song and figured we’d improvise something,” Gaillard said. “Just outside the studio, they were repairing the street and one of those cement machines was going putt-putt-putt. When we were back in the studio the A & R man ask for the fourth side. I said Cement Mixer Putti Putti. Everybody in the place broke up. I started to sing “putt-ti, putti-hootie, putti-vooty, macaroonie, that’s all.”
Once again Neely did not receive record credit for the recording, but one might assume he was the A & R man to which Gaillard referred in his statement. Gaillard continued a successful career with his own small ensemble and on rare occasions with larger groups. At the time of his death in 1991 he was performing in London, England.
Neely also said in his memoirs he produced a record for a “Little Esher;” however, the only performer from that time period was “Little Esther Phillips.” Her first record came out in 1950, which is slightly out of the timeframe mentioned by Neely. Herman Lubinsky signed Little Esther who grew up in Galveston, Texas, to a contract with Savoy Records of Newark, New Jersey, in 1949. In January of 1950 the California Superior Court ruled Esther’s mother to be her legal guardian, upholding her new contract with King Records. Perhaps Neely produced one of her records during her time at King. Esther enjoyed a 25-year career with honors from Rolling Stone and Ebony magazines and receiving an Image Award from the NAACP in 1975.8
Among his other jobs he took to finance his college education, Neely produced a NBC radio religious program. His announcer was Oral Roberts who went on to dominate the evangelical air ways and establish a self-named Tulsa, Oklahoma, university. Neely also wrote scripts for the program. In his future career as a record producer Neely would write liner notes for albums. One of his scripted ideas for Roberts was to tell his listeners to put their hands on the radio during a prayer.9 Listeners would feel an actual vibration coming through the speakers because Roberts was blessed with a very deep voice which created the pulsation.10
Neely also originated the line, “The family that prays together stays together.” He also came up with the product of Jordan River water in a bottle for $2-$4. The water came out of Neely’s own tap at home. Who knows how many relatives going through the personal effects of deceased loved ones would find a tiny bottle of water glued on a cardboard picture of the Jordan River and would wonder what it was and why their family member would even buy it.11 He considered but rejected the merchandising concept of “healing cloths,” which were bits of 2 x 4 inch strips of material which were placed on any part of the body that hurt, and a miracle was supposed to occur. His short radio stint gave him a good education on how payola worked—a tactic he used when he was promoting James Brown and other acts.12
During his studies at the University of Southern California, Neely met nuclear physicist Albert Einstein when he was chosen to participate in a series of lectures conducted during a three to six week period. While the students sat around the professor for informal chats, Einstein once said, “When I am dying,” and he paused to point up, “I hope I see friends.”
Neely said Einstein asked him if he believed in God to which Neely replied that he did not know, but he thought he believed there might be a God.
“I don’t care what you believe, Hal,” Einstein replied, “as long as you believe in something.”13
Neely also became involved with the development of the tape recorder in the United States by Bing Crosby and the company Ampex, according to Roland Hanneman who had spent many hours listening to Neely’s stories about his early career.
Neely first met Crosby during his pre-war days as a band performer in Hollywood. They became friends and often played golf together. Neely did the first pressing of a stereo recording which was classical music. Because no one in the record industry understood stereo very well, records were released with Mono on one side and stereo on the other, which canceled the sound through any compatibility of musical waiver lines.
Fritz Pfleumer invented the tape recorder in the late 1920s in Germany where it was marketed under the name “Magnetophon.” He used paper strips that he coated with carbonyl iron particles suspended in lacquer. In 1938 German radio stations replaced relatively high-quality wax and lacquer discs with the magnetic tapes adding flexibility to broadcasting. During World War II the story began circulating that the Nazis ordered engineers to create the tape recording system so that Allies would not be able to locate where live-sounding speeches by Adolph Hitler were being made. Reality was that the technology had been developed more than ten years before and that Hitler preferred using the tape recordings so his live-sounding speeches could be aired without interrupting his odd sleeping habits.
Major John Mullin of the U.S. Army Signal Corps discovered the Magnetophons at the Radio Frankfurt substation at Bad Nauheim in 1945 and sent them back to his home in San Francisco broken down into 35 small packages. After he left the military he joined with audio engineer W.A. Palmer to reassemble them in a new configuration to create an American version of the machines. The first musical artist to be recorded on Mullins’ redesigned recorder was Merv Griffin in 1946. By 1947 Mullin and Palmer had created the small company of Ampex and introduced the system to Bing Crosby who used it for his ABC-sponsored radio program “Philco Radio Time.” The broadcast was such a success that Crosby talked ABC into buying all their tape recorders from Ampex and invested $50,000 of his own money in the small company.14
Neely made a major step crossing over into the business side of the music industry when he joined Allied Record Company after graduating from the University of Southern California in 1948. The president of Allied was Dakin K. Broadhead, a distinguished businessman who was a member of the War Food Administration during World War II and later served as an assistant to Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson from 1953-55. Broadhead began his career as a manager with Safeway stores. He was president and principal owner of Allied Records from 1945 to 1986.15
Allied was the largest independent record pressing plant in Los Angeles.16 In the 1940s customers were limited to the manufacture of just 200 records a week in accordance with rationing policies. Because Allied wanted to keep its record-pressing methods secret, no one was allowed inside the plant. Allied did not have any advanced technology, and its method was comparatively simple, being the reproduction of a surface, similar to that used to emboss leather.17
Neely was, of course, introduced to this new world of record manufacturing after college graduation. The exposure to the technology served him well when he met the volatile president of King Records, Syd Nathan, in 1949.

Footnotes

1Billboard Magazine, May 5, 1958.
2de Heer, Dik, rockabilly.nl
3radio_recorders historic.php
4Talevski, Nick, Knocking on Heaven’s Door: Rock Obituaries, Omnibus Press, London, 2010, 22.
5Snow, Arnold, Honkers and Shouters, The Golden Years of Rhythm and Blues, MacMillan Publishing Company, New York City, 1986, 226-227.
6 Weisbard, Eric, This Is Pop, In Search of the Elusive at Experience Music Project, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.,2004, 75-89.
7Purl Roadhouse 1940s Music and Dance, yuku.com
8Home.earthlink.net/~jaymar41/Lesther.html.200.
9 Roland Hanneman Interview.
10Buddy Winsett Interview, July 2012.
11Janet Cowling Interview.
12 Roland Hanneman Interview.
13Buddy Winsett Interview, July 2012.
14Hamman, Peter, The Birth of Tape Recording in the U.S., historyofrecording.com.
15findagrave.com
16Broven, John, Record Makers and Breakers, Voices of the Independent Rock ‘n’ Roll Pioneers, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 2010, 37.
17 Ibid.

James Brown’s Favorite Uncle The Hal Neely Story Chapter Thirteen

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Previously in the book: Nebraskan Hal Neely began with big bands, served in WWII, entered the record industry where he met King Records mogul Syd Nathan.

(Author’s note: The italics denote passages from Neely’s memoirs, his words and his recollection of his career.)

Many people with “convenient memory” claim that Ralph Bass who worked for King discovered and put James Brown under contract, but it was I and not Ralph Bass. I was visiting King that day when a demo record arrived in the mail from Clint Brantley, a nightclub owner in Macon Georgia. The record featured a young man named James Brown.
James Brown was born in Georgia. His father James Joseph Brown joined the U.S. Navy when James was five years old. His mother abandoned him at the same time. Little James at the age of five went to live with his aunt Minnie who lived in the black ghetto of Macon, Georgia, where she ran a house of “ill repute.” He worked the streets shining shoes and “pimping” for Aunt Minnie to the soldiers from the Army camp near Macon. James grew up fast, learning the ways of survival.
At the age of 15 he was involved in a local gang street fight. A young boy was killed. Police conjectured that “this kid Brown hit him (the deceased) with a baseball bat” but young James was only charged with stealing car hubcaps and sentenced to three years in the Georgia prison system.
While James was in prison, his future friend and music associate Bobby Byrd brought his five-piece band from Toccoa, Georgia, Byrd’s hometown, to play a “freebie.” The prisoners shouted for the young James and his musical partner Johnny Terry whom he had met in prison. Byrd called them to the stage to play with his group.
James was soon transferred to the prison in Toccoa, Georgia, where he paroled for good behavior. Byrd’s mother signed papers with the prison to be legally responsible for him He worked as a janitor in her church and started playing drums, singing, and dancing with Byrd’s group, “The Five Royals”. (Author’s note: music historian John Broven says Bobby Byrd’s group was originally called The Gospel Starlighters and later used the names The Avons and The Flames.)1 They performed at local area dances and clubs. Johnny Terry got out of prison and came to Toccoa to join Byrd’s band.
Little Richard—who would later go on to national fame as a rock ‘n’ roll artist–played a club in Toccoa. The audience shouted for The Five Royals. They joined Richard on the stand and jammed with him. Richard was very impressed with the group. Little Richard was coming into fame and popularity, traveling most of the time. He was booked and managed by Mr. Clint Brantley who owned a black club in Macon, Georgia. Richard told Mr. Brantley about The Five Royals and it was arranged for them to come to Macon and audition for him. He liked the group which soon became the house band for his club. Simultaneously, Little Richard and his band went to Hollywood to record for Specialty Records. They stayed on the West Coast.
The Five Royals started earning popularity and a loyal fan following. It was soon evident that James Brown’s singing and dancing was the major star of the band. The band played several Little Richard “gigs” with James posing as Richard. The audience never caught on.
Mr. Brantley took The Five Royals to Macon’s black radio station where they cut a demo recording on “Please, Please, Please,” a song written by Johnny Terry. The local DJ sent the demo to Syd Nathan and King Records in Cincinnati.
“In my opinion,” Syd said, “that’s a horrible record, but that kid singing lead has something, and that song is a hit song.”
Also present at that meeting was Ralph Bass, an independent producer for King’s Federal label. Syd sent Bass to Macon to check out the group. Bass falsely claimed he signed the group to a Federal contract. However only Syd Nathan at that time could sign contracts for King and its subsidiary labels. Bass’s claim was invalid. (Author’s note: Broven points out Bass may have exaggerated his authority to sign contracts but his role in bringing Brown to Nathan’s attention is valid.)2
The Five Royals were planning a gig in Memphis in March. They drove, with no appointment, to Cincinnati to meet with Mr. Nathan. There was no studio time available. I was in Cincinnati recording Earl Bostic, an old friend from my Hollywood band days, that week. The Royals would have to come back.
On April 25, 1956, I was again in Cincinnati. As always I stayed in my room at Syd’s and Zella’s big house in the Jewish section of town. Syd and I met with The Five Royals. James claimed he was the leader and Bobby Byrd claimed he was. James rubbed Syd the wrong way, and Syd got mad.
“Hal, throw them out, unless you want to work something out and take them on.”
I believed in the group and took the boys to a room across from Syd’s office which I used when in Cincinnati. Utilizing my University of Southern California business law degree, I formed a limited partnership of the original five members with each member holding a 1% ownership, a group royalty rate of 5% on net paid sales paid directly to the each member of the group and on each record said member recorded with the group. The original contract was for three years with a King option to renew for an additional three years on the same terms and conditions.
I called Clint Brantley in Macon and asked him to be the group’s manager. King would pay him a royalty of 1%, same as each band member. The group would need a new name as there was another Five Royals. In the discussion someone mentioned the name The Famous Flames. That was it. I would be their producer at a 3% royalty. All royalties would be paid on a net paid sales basis. The Famous Flames would be released by King on its subsidiary Federal label.
On March 26, 1956, the group came back to Cincinnati, and we went into the King studio. I produced, and Eddie Smith was the engineer. We cut four sides. One song was “Please, Please, Please”. Syd liked it. The single record was released on the Federal label and was an instant hit in the R&B music charts, going to No. 3. (Author’s note: I have tried to respect the details of Neely’s memoirs; however, his recollection of the dates and the group’s name in this episode are obviously at odds. At one point he said he wrote the contract for Brown and the Flames—also identified as the Royals–on April 25, 1956 yet produced the record on March 26, 1956. Also he said he was in California for the birth of his son April 26, 1956. Historian Broven says the “Please, Please, Please” recording session was Feb. 4, 1956, and Ralph Bass was the producer.) 3

1 John Broven interview.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.

James Brown’s Favorite Uncle The Hal Neely Story Chapter Twelve

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Previously in this book: Nebraskan Hal Neely traveled with big bands during the Depression, served his country during World War II and entered the music industry working both for Allied Record Manufacturing and infamous producer Syd Nathan. Italics indicate the following chapter is in Neely’s exact words from his memoirs.

After getting King’s pressing business for Allied in 1949, I was in Cincinnati on a regular basis. All the staff and employees treated me as if I were one of them. I’d reassess Syd’s operations for him. They were obsolete and needed to be rebuilt with new, more modern equipment much of which could be built in King’s own machine shop. King was “hot.” Good deal all around.
I was now very active in Allied government production and supervised its recording schedules in five New York studios and on Riker’s Island where the Army had a production facility. I commuted between New York, Hollywood, Washington DC and Cincinnati. It was hectic but rewarding. I loved my job, even the travel. It reminded me of my old band days, different town each day.
Jim O’Hagan died in January of 1950. It happened suddenly with no warning, and I was promoted to vice president and board member. Mary and I moved back into our house in Woodland Hills, California.
In 1952 I was spending most of my time in the East. Mary rented our house, put her little red MG Roadster in storage, and moved to New York. We rented a nice one-bedroom apartment on the East Side at 72nd St. and Second Avenue. Very nice. Mary would help out at the plant each day. We bought an Olds 88 convertible, parked it in a garage on the corner and drove to work each day. Also in 1952 the Army asked me to reconstruct my old 16-piece show band for a concert for 6,000 American and British troops at Wiesbaden Germany Army Air Base. I wore my captain’s uniform.
Union problems developed at the Allied plant. Allied decided to get out of the state of New York and move its business to New Jersey where it built a new plant. I would be the manager. I moved my office back to Hollywood. Mary and I drove back to California, spending a week in Cincinnati seeing Syd and my brother Sam and his wife Hazel who now lived in Dayton. We moved back into our house in Woodland Hills. I began a lucky and happy time. We and some friends went up to Lake Arrowhead and the mountains above San Bernardino over a long weekend. Our son was to be conceived there.
April 26, 1956, Mary went into labor. I cut it pretty close and got there late that evening. A neighbor picked me up at the plane. We took Mary to the hospital about 7 a.m. She and John Wayne’s wife had the same doctor and were both in labor at the same time. Both of us had sons. Mildred Stone, Mary’s mother from Lyons, came out to stay with Mary for as long as necessary. I was under great pressure to get the new plant operational and still take care of my sales duties. I only got home on several weekends and then back to Jersey.
Eventually we decided to move the family to Newark, New Jersey. Mary shipped her MG to the East Coast, and I found us an apartment in a nice section of Newark. She, our son, and I were on an American flight to New York, changing planes in Chicago. The Chicago airport ground crew went on a “sit down” for some gripe. We sat in the airport for about four hours with everyone else. American was able to get us a flight, but it was going to the Newark airport and not LaGuardia. What the hell. We took it. We got in very late that night and took a cab to the apartment which I had rented.
Mary walked in and said, “No way! I want a house.”
Friends of ours, Sid Bart and his wife, lived in a beautiful upscale closed enclave called Smoke Rise in the wooded hills of northern Jersey, close to the village of Mahwah. It was 40 miles from Manhattan.
We found a small house on a hillside, surrounded by trees and a beautiful lawn. It was two stories, two bedrooms, big basement and a huge screened-in back porch. In the back were flowers and a small spring-fed pond. Mary fell in love with it at first sight. We took out a mortgage and moved in. Mary found a nice widow lady to babysit our son, and we joined the country club. I was lucky again and had a good life.