Previously in the book: Hal Neely began his career with big bands and then entered the recording business, working with controversial producer Syd Nathan and soul star James Brown.
Hal Neely’s relationship with James Brown revolved curiously around specific events which evoked different memories from everyone involved. One of the best examples of this phenomenon was the creation of the history-making “Live at the Apollo” record album.
In April of 1959 James Brown was booked into the Apollo Theater for the first time. He was still riding high from the success of “Try Me,” and his booking agent Ben Bart, in charge of Universal Attractions, wanted to take advantage of it. The engagement brought back a former member of the Famous Flames, Bobby Byrd, who would spend the rest of his career flying in and out of Brown’s orbit.1
“I was a seasoned performer, but under the circumstances I was a nervous wreck,” Brown said in his autobiography. “The Apollo was a special place: it was the venue for black entertainers; it made a lot of people, but it broke a lot too. The audience was very tough and if they didn’t like you, they let you know.”
The Apollo Theater, on 125th St. off Eighth Avenue in the Harlem section of Manhattan, began as a burlesque house called Hurtig and Seamon’s Music Hall. A city crackdown on stripper shows in 1934 transformed the facility into what became the crown jewel of the “chitlin circuit”– a collection of theaters in the South and on the East Coast, allowing black audiences to enjoy black entertainers during the Jim Crow era.2
By the fall of 1962, James Brown was a major act but still not in the same league as Ray Charles or Jackie Wilson. Charles, for example, had already made a recording of a live show in 1969 called “In Person”. Brown wanted to do the same thing.3
Hal Neely, in interviews given later in his life, claimed the idea of a live recording was his. Whoever’s idea it was, Syd Nathan hated it, calling it silly. Very few live performances had been recorded because they could not be controlled.4 Another problem was that King Records made its money through the sale of singles which could be marketed easily on the radio. Nathan believed no hit single could come out of a live recording, and he wasn’t concerned with long-playing albums anyway.5
After Nathan so emphatically rejected his idea, Brown went to his booking agent, Ben Bart, with a proposition to make Bart his partner/manager. After some persuasion Bart agreed negotiating details with Brown’s other manager, Clint Brantley. He also turned over Universal Attractions duties to his son Jack Bart, according to Brown’s autobiography.
“We got into many battles over those years after my father passed the management of James over to me,” Jack Bart said. “This was due to the fact that James felt why should he pay a booking agency, why should he pay a manager? If it had been two separate families and our last names had been different, he probably wouldn’t have objected.”6
Brown gave one more shot at convincing Nathan to support the live at the Apollo album. Chuck Seitz, lead engineer with King at that time, described the meeting this way:
“I remember James came in one day needing money. He wanted Syd to give him $5000. Syd said, ‘I’ll give you $5000 if you’ll sign with me five more years.’ And James must’ve been up against it so he signed for five more years. And in that five-year period, the Apollo thing came around.”7
Bobby Byrd had a different recollection of the situation. “Didn’t nobody believe in us – none of the company executives at King Records believed in us. But see, we were out there. We saw the response as we ran our show. James took the money we had saved for an upcoming Southern swing ($5700) and gambled it on one night.” The gamble to which Byrd referred was Brown’s investment in the Apollo show.8
“Usually James fined his band members $5 or $10 for making a mistake, but this time, he put out the word that if anyone flubbed one note at the Apollo, it would be $50 to $100.” Instead of the usual arrangement with the Apollo, Brown and Bart put down the $5700 as theater rental.9
“Once Mr. Nathan saw I was going to go ahead with a live recording, he started cooperating,” Brown said in his autobiography. “Mr. Neely took care of getting the equipment from A-1 Sound in New York, the only ones who had portable stuff—Magnacorders, I think.”
Neely’s memory of the preparations were more detailed. The Apollo had the usual public address system, a mixer, four microphones and headphones. Neely rented and placed the additional equipment. There was no multi–tracking so what one got on the acetate single tape was the final product. Mixing was done on the fly. Drums and bass came in on different speakers. The board had switches instead of the sliders used today to control and come from speakers which were placed on the left, right, above and in front of the stage. Neely said he was not given credit for the recording, but the credit went to the company he rented the equipment from.10
“We had opened on the 19th (of October) and were building up to recording on the 24th, a Wednesday, which meant amateur night,” Brown said in his autobiography. “I wanted that wild amateur-night crowd because I knew they’d do plenty of hollering. The plan was to record all four shows that day so we’d have enough tape to work with.”
Once the concert had begun, Brown worried that Neely might have done too good a job stringing the microphones around the stage. One of them was right over an audience member–a woman who looked like she was 75 years old. In the middle of “I Love You, Yes I Do” Brown sang the line “from the way I look at you.” The mike clearly picked up her screaming “Sing it, mother***ker, sing it!” During a quiet rendition of “Lost Someone” which was supposed to be a serious song, the same old woman screamed loudly which caused the audience to laugh, according to his autobiography. Brown recovered and called for another “yeah” from the audience, causing them to continue to call out.11
“I wanna hear you scream. I wanna hear you saying OW!” After the response he added, “Don’t just say ow, say OW!”12
In the middle of the performance of the song “I Don’t Mind” the microphone picked up a minor argument between two audience members. A woman squealed, and a man rumbled back at her. When Brown sang “you gonna miss me” a woman yelled in response, “Yeah, you, baby, you! Ha-ha-ha … Yeah, you!” As it turned out, that was the same old woman who screamed “mother***ker.”13
Another version, however, said the old lady’s outburst was garbled and probably not the word “mother***ker”. Less than 30 seconds later, a scratchy, male voice says, “Sing a song, James.” This source conjectured that the garbled outburst was merely a squeak from the drum kit or the organ speaker. It went on to surmise that the audience mikes had been turned down when the crowd was expected to cheer and was turned up to catch the unexpected exclamations in the middle of songs.14
After the first show Neely brought the tape backstage for Brown and the rest of the musicians to hear, according to Brown’s autobiography. When Neely replayed the disputed outburst, everyone in the band laughed out loud. Neely did not catch the joke until the band explained what they thought the woman said. At first Neely thought it was terrible and the woman had to be kept from the other shows but when he saw the reaction of everyone backstage, he said, “Hey, maybe we’ve got something here.”
The legend15 developed that Neely went out to the lobby and found the old woman, bought her candy and popcorn and paid her $10 to stay for the next three shows. As if on cue she shouted at all the right places.
One last story that contributed to the legend of the night concerned a meeting between Brown and his long-lost mother. Neely said, “James hadn’t seen his mother in 20 years, and she showed up backstage at the Apollo that night.” 16 However, Brown said in his autobiography that the emotional reunion with his mother actually occurred during his first appearance at the Apollo Theater in 1959 when he opened for Little Willie John.
The controversy over credit for the recording did not end with the concert that cold October night in 1962. Again in the middle of the dispute was Hal Neely and his role in the final editing process. For one thing, the album cover credited Tom Nola as “location engineer” but Neely said he recorded it himself.17 James Brown in his autobiography gave Neely full editing acknowledgement, saying “he had a good mix of the performance and the audience, and he had fixed all the cussing so it wasn’t right up front. He figured it would be an underground thing for people who knew what the lady was screaming; he was right, too. He worked on the tape a long time and did a fantastic job of mixing it.”
Chuck Seitz, King’s chief engineer, also claimed responsibility for the successful editing of Live at the Apollo. “All I know is that tape came in to us, and we listen to the damn thing. We listen all the way through, and I thought it was terrible. For one thing you couldn’t always tell it was live. The trouble was the basic recording approach, which only intermittently picked up the crowd’s reaction. If this was going to be a document of a concert, pandemonium had to be reinjected18
“I suggested we try to boost the audience up. I went to Roselawn (in Cincinnati) to a sock dance they used to have out there. I knew the DJ, so I went out there with a tape recorder. He got them (a group of white teen-agers) to applaud and cheer, and I went back and inserted it where it was needed.” Seitz acknowledged that the exclamations by the old woman were authentic and from the original Apollo track.19
One point everyone apparently agreed on was that Syd Nathan’s initial reaction was that he hated it. He did not want to finance a publicity campaign to have the album played on radio stations around the country. Nathan considered releasing it on the Deluxe subsidiary label which would have doomed it to failure because the smaller label had less marketing possibilities. That way he could take a tax write-off on a project he had not even invested his money in.20
Brown said in his autobiography that Nathan did not like the way the album went from one tune to another without stopping. Nathan evidently thought there would be polite applause between each number which would give a disc jockey a place to begin and end a song on the radio. That was the only way he knew how to sell records.
Nathan’s plan to bury the album enraged Brown. Jerry Blavat, a Philadelphia disc jockey, remembered seeing Brown backstage at an Atlantic City concert. “He told me, ‘you have got to hear this new thing, man. That f**king Syd Nathan, he don’t want to release this, he don’t have a f**king ear! I’m gonna release it myself.’” Blavat said Brown gave him a copy which he took home and listened to. “It was the most exciting live album; this was raw, and it captured what he was on stage, man. Forget it! I busted that f**king thing wide open, just played the hell out of it. The whole f**king thing, because you couldn’t really just play one song the way it was put together.”21
The next stage of Brown’s campaign to promote Live at the Apollo was to send a copy to his favorite disc jockey and event promoter Allyn Lee in Montgomery. Lee said, “It hadn’t hit the streets yet. I was on the air on Sunday and I played it for the first time. I played it all the way through, and that sort of sealed my fate in Montgomery. One million phone calls came in – see, they didn’t really know James Brown in Montgomery; they knew ‘Please’ but they had never heard him in that form. Now they did.”22
Nathan relented in May 1963 and released the album even though he said he still couldn’t see the sense in it. He ordered an original pressing of only 5000 copies—a cautious if standard procedure for Nathan, according to Seitz, King’s Chief Engineer.
“Syd’s theory was that he’d put 1000 copies of a record out, and then watch it real close – he wouldn’t advertise until something started to take off.”23
Brown, in his autobiography, gave special credit to Neely. “I think Mr. Neely was the one who finally sold him on it.” He also gave another example of how stubborn Syd Nathan could be. Nathan still insisted that singles be spun off of the album so they could be played on the radio.
“When Mr. Nathan checked the radio stations to see what was being played off the album, he got a surprise,” Brown said in his memoirs. “They told him that there wasn’t a tune the stations were playing. They were playing the whole album. It was unheard of for a station to play a whole album uninterrupted, but a lot of stations with black programming were doing it. Mr. Nathan couldn’t believe it, but it convinced him to let the album keep going on its own.”
Live at the Apollo stayed on the LP charts for 66 weeks, an amazing feat considering the first pressing was for 5000. The album reached number two on the Billboard national pop charts and was the 32nd top selling album in 1963. However, total record sales numbers will never be known because Syd Nathan never got RIAA certification for King Records which made exact sales accounting impossible.24
Nathan did, however, eventually buy the master tape from Brown.25

Footnotes:
1 The One, 93.
2Wolk, Douglas, Live at the Apollo, Continuum, New York, 2004, 1.
3Fever, 119.
4The One, 108.
5Live at the Apollo, 6.
6 Life of James Brown, 77, 78.
7The One, 111.
8Ibid. 110.
9 Ibid.
10Roland Hanneman interview.
11Live at the Apollo, 70.
12Ibid. 57.
13Ibid. 85.
14 Ibid. 107.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17Roland Hanneman Interview.
18The One, 120.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., 121.
23Night at the Apollo, 120.
24 Ibid., 112.
25Ibid. 114.

Previously in the book: Hal Neely began his career with big bands touring the Midwest and California. Then he entered the record business where he met volatile record magnate Syd Nathan and soul star James Brown.
Hal Neely was not a stranger to the darker side of the record business, beginning with dealings with the Mafia and going on to just barely escaping federal repercussions in the payola scandal. It seemed to start out fairly innocently. King Records, as all music corporations, placed records in stores on consignment. What a store could not sell was returned to the company for credit. One time a record store owner tried to return 500 or more copies for credit. Neely balked because the store had held them so long, but eventually he took them back.1
In due course Neely realized he could sell the returned records to the Mafia for cash. The next step was to over-press intentionally records by several thousand copies and sell them to the Mob for a dollar apiece. The unauthorized over-pressing orders were done in the middle of the night when everyone else had gone home. The Mob then sold the records on the streets for a tidy and untraceable profit. Neely never dealt face to face with any of the leaders of organized crime but rather met with nondescript messengers who gave him envelopes stuffed with cash. The pick-up points changed for every transaction. Sometimes a Mafia front man appeared at a record store looking like they were picking up returns but actually were getting a new product. Neely made sure no one snitched on him, and he never felt intimidated by the crime bosses. It was with this undocumented cash that Neely used for payola payments.2
He kept tabs on which record representatives were given cash. When Neely dealt with radio station people, they always knew to look in his top jacket pocket for the bills. He was also busy at the National Association of Broadcasters’ convention every year where radio disc jockeys received special “comps” such as escorts, food, and shows. Of course, the disc jockeys knew when they went home to their radio stations it was time to show their appreciation for the hospitality by pushing the records. Neely never felt he was necessarily doing anything wrong because all the other labels were doing it too, and they needed payola as a promotional tool just to survive.3
In fact, in the beginning payola was not even illegal, but the practice came to the attention of the national news media after a story in the Miami News on May 30, 1959. Details of the shady operations at a recording industry convention swept across the nation. The official name of the event was the Second Annual International Radio Programming Seminar and Pop Music Disc Jockey Convention, but Miami News reporter Haines Colbert described it more as a Roman orgy than a staid businessmen’s meeting.4
“There were expensive prizes, free liquor around the clock in at least 20 suites and girls, imported and domestic,” Colbert wrote in his article. “There are about 2,000 record companies,” a spokesman for one of the major companies told Colbert, “and all of them send all their releases to every disc jockey. The only possible way to get them on the air is by giving the disc jockey personal attention. And that means giving him whatever he wants.”5
The newspaper expose triggered hearings in Congress by the Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight. Chief Counsel of the special subcommittee, Robert W. Lishman, had recently honed his investigatory skills with his work delving into rigged television game shows. His definition of payola was as follows:
“Bribes paid to disc jockeys to plug certain songs … It also includes charges of secret payment for plugging products and individuals on television and radio, kickbacks for promoting sales, and conflicts of interest by disc jockeys who have an interest in the manufacturing and sale of records.”6
Another form of payola was a radio station’s “Spin of the Day” which was paid for by the record company. That fact was never announced on the air. While being a “Spin of the Day” did not assure success for a mediocre product, it could help a good performance by a new artist get the recognition it deserved.7
By November of 1959 the scandal had taken its first victim, Alan Freed, a New York disc jockey who had been given the title of the “inventor” of rock ‘n’ roll. He was fired by both radio station WABC and television station WNEW.7 In the same month Frank Hogan, New York district attorney, subpoenaed several independent record companies including King. Cities where disc jockeys were allegedly bribed included Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York and Detroit. These were considered the important regional centers where new records were introduced to the public.8
Syd Nathan lost no time in giving an immediate interview to the Cincinnati Post in which he said that King “has paid off disc jockeys all over the country and that he has the checks to prove it,” although he qualified that statement by saying he “never paid more than $10 a month to any one disc jockey, although some firms might have paid as much as $300-$400 to get their records plugged.”9
Payola “is a dirty rotten mess and it has been getting worse in the last five years,” Nathan told the newspaper. There are more than 10,000 disc jockeys in the country and less than 200 demanded payola. That small amount could make or break a record. So we cut it out.” He added that King made regular monthly payments in 1957 and 1958 in the amount of $18,000 a month mostly to disc jockeys in Philadelphia and New York.10
He explained why he paid by check. “How else could we account for the money unless it was on our books for what it was? We told the disc jockeys that if they didn’t want to declare it on their incomes, it was their business, but if they were going to get paid it would be by check.”11 Nathan illustrated how out-of-control the practice had become by explaining how he once received a telegram from a disc jockey in Arkansas. Receiving your records periodically, but never any checks. What’s wrong?12
While his statement of culpability may have seemed brave on the surface of it, Nathan nevertheless shifted some of the blame by telling investigators that payola transactions were handled out of King Records’ New York office operated by Henry Glover who had been employed by Syd Nathan since the early 1940s. Glover had been instrumental in bringing several R&B artists to King, including Little Willie John. In later years, Glover told interviewers he felt Nathan had thrown him under the bus during the payola scandal. Shortly after Nathan’s statements Glover resigned as King’s A&R man in New York, though some in the industry say King fired him. Glover immediately formed his own Glover label in association with Old Town Records.13 Hal Neely defended Glover, claiming that he had left the company voluntarily.
“The only two people guilty of payola at King … were Syd Nathan and Hal Neely. The other guys were just doing what they were told,” Neely said. “They might have passed money, but they didn’t unless it was approved. They didn’t get the cash until it was approved,” he reiterated. “I’m the only record executive they didn’t indict for payola, and I am as guilty as anybody.”14 Neely conceded that they knew the company was going to be in trouble.
“We were hot, and we knew we had to stop. It was only a matter of time before an investigation would come. It was out of hand. We stopped two years before the committee came around and that’s what saved us because they only went back two years. I prepared the audit, and we knew we were guilty but we stopped. Everyone was guilty and should’ve shared the blame. Including Dick Clark.”15
Neely bragged about the day federal agents came to his office to look at the books. He turned to his secretary to ask her to bring in the files. The agents asked for accounts starting three days after Neely stopped paying payola. He also re-pressed records with recycled materials from returns of failed artists so there were no files of fresh material. At this same time supplies of records disappeared mysteriously from King storage. Neely had suspicions that his Mafia connections may have destroyed the evidence in an attempt to protect him because he had made so much money for them.16
Ralph Bass also left King Records at this time. Some felt Nathan had shifted some payola blame onto him, and Bass said, “I figured my operation with Syd…well, I was losing something with Syd. I thought he was doing things behind my back. It didn’t feel like he was on my side anymore. I had to get away, to start fresh. I felt I was stagnating at King. So I got a better deal from Leonard Chess and I went over to Chess Records.”17
The irony of the payola scandal was that R&B artists never benefited from it. White radio stations could not be paid enough to put artists like Hank Ballard, Little Willie John and James Brown on the air. This was not to say payola did not exist on black radio stations. For example, one of James Brown’s childhood friends was Allyn Lee, a master of the practice at WAPX in Montgomery, Alabama.18
Lee, who was paid little or nothing by a radio station, made his living from payments by local businesses for on-air promotions. He also arranged local performances by the record artists he broadcasted.19
“Whenever James Brown appeared disk jockeys from within a 200-mile radius came out,” Lee said. “And they would never leave until the manager came out and greeted them because James Brown always gave out an envelope of money. Always. My chauffeur–they once gave him an envelope of money. I said, ‘James, but he’s not a disc jockey.’ And he said, ‘He might be one next week.’ Back then you had 15 to 20 disc jockeys in the area, and depending on your position there might be $50-$500 in the envelope. He would always be appreciating you for you playing his records. ‘Play my records, man, keep me heard.’”20
Jim Crow laws made a black disc jockey in the South like Lee a very powerful person as a promoter for personal appearances by an artist like James Brown. Lee would take 10% for himself and the remainder went to Brown. The reasoning behind this was that the disc jockey had more incentive to sell tickets if some of that money was coming back to him. The disc jockey was now a business partner.21
“That’s why James Brown became more of a legend than the guy who slipped you something in a handshake,” said Bob Patton, a former disc jockey who later was on Brown’s staff. “He made you out to be a businessman, not a whore.”22
Brown may have made some disc jockeys feel like businessmen, but in the mid-1970s, one of them ended up in jail. Frankie Crocker was called one of the most important black disc jockeys in the world. During a new government investigation of payola, Crocker swore to the FBI he had never taken payola; however, the investigators brought in James Brown’s most trusted lieutenant Charles Bobbit who testified he had given Crocker $6,500 over eight years. When Brown took the stand, he claimed he did not know anything about the deal. Crocker went to jail for a year on perjury and Bobbit left Brown’s employ and the country to work for the president of Gabon.23
Footnotes
1 Roland Haneman Interview.
2Ibid.
3Ibid.
4Record Breakers and Makers, 454.
5 Ibid.
6Bryan Powers.
7Fever, 122.
8Record Breakers and Makers, 455.
9Bryan Powers.
10King of Queen City, 158.
11 Ibid. 159.
12Bryan Powers.
13King of Queen City, 29.
14Fever, 122.
15Brian Powers.
16 Roland Hanneman Interview.
17King of Queen City, 93.
18 The One,100.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid., 101.
21 Ibid., 102.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid., 316, 317.

Previously in the book: Nebraskan Hal Neely hit it big with Big Bands in the Midwest and California. After World War II he worked for a record manufacturing company before joining Syd Nathan’s King Records where he produced James Brown’s records.
Perhaps the most important change to occur at King Records–and for James Brown–in 1958 was the hiring of Hal Neely because he became a buffer between Brown and Nathan during the rest of their business relationship.1
One of the first benefits Brown received with Neely on board with King Records was a new contract. “Mr. Neely had been a bandleader and a trumpet player and knew something about music,” Brown said in his autobiography. He credited Neely with getting him a 5% royalty even though 3% was the standard for musicians in the 1950s.
In a May 5, 1958 article, Billboard Magazine reported Neely joining the executive staff of King Records. Nathan said hiring Neely was the first step in a “new look” program. “Neely will team with King Records execs Jack Kelly, Howard Kessel, Al Miller and Jack Pearl in a concentrated drive to attain major status for the label in the next two years.” The drive included expansion of the artist roster, the creation of a larger pop Long Play line, and the revamping of the Deluxe and Federal labels.
Neely also adapted the recording session to Brown’s performing style. Most singers would stand in one place in front of the microphone, but not James Brown. Each time he sang it was a full out performance with dancing and jumping around. Neely realized recording James Brown in the conventional way was virtually impossible because he would always move away from the microphone. He gave him a hand-held microphone so he could prance around the studio for two takes. He also had another microphone placed on the studio piano. Neely would tell the engineer to fadeout to end the song even if Brown was still singing. This was the same technique he had used in his first producing session in California back in the 1940s.2
During one session, Brown headed for the piano, and Neely turned to the engineer and asked if the microphone on the piano was working. When the engineer replied that the microphone was off, Neely told him to bring it up. Brown put down the hand-held microphone and played the piano. When he finished at the piano, he picked up the hand-held microphone and continued singing.3
As soon as the session was over, Brown rushed out the door to catch the tour bus for the next performance destination. Usually the recording session was done after a performance because Brown either “had a girl waiting for him or a bus to catch.” Neely sat with a razor blade to cut the tape so the performance would fit the time the record format allowed. Ten days later the recording was in the stores.4
Neely’s music production savvy was essential for King Records because Nathan did not understand music; he only knew how to play it tough in business. Once he gave $100 to writer Pee Wee King for a song. As King was leaving the building, he heard the pianist play the tune again and decided it was worth more than $100. He turned around and went back into Nathan’s office and asked for more money. Nathan told him to hand over the check which he tore up, handing the music back to King. “You can’t change the deal.” King took his song, “Tennessee Waltz,” to another record company who produced it with Patti Paige, which became a national sensation.5
Nathan did not care if he missed out on a hit as long as he was tough in the deal. He had little respect or compassion for any artist. Neely’s music production style helped soothe the way with musical talent.6
During this time Neely apparently had no problems finding people to work for him and King Records, according to reports in Billboard Magazine. In the Feb. 29, 1960 issue, the magazine reported Neely had signed Gene Redd, Bobby Keyes and Lenny Wilson to recording contracts as the production team for sixty albums. The March 23, 1960, issue had two articles about Neely; one that he had re-signed Earl Bostic to an exclusive King contract for ten years, and another that he devised a clever promotion gimmick for Hawkshaw Hawkins’ latest album. He taped a dime to the press release to all disc jockeys so they could call King’s office for information on the country singer’s music.
This procedure was perhaps an omen of the future practice of payola which shook the music industry to its roots, but somehow did not taint Neely one bit.
Footnotes
1 The Life of James Brown, 54.
2 Roland Hanneman Interview.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.

(Previously in the book: Nebraskan Hal Neely began on the Big Band Circuit, served in World War II, worked for Allied Record Manufacturing and moved on to King Records where he met infamous producer Syd Nathan and up-and-coming Soul singer James Brown.)
(Author’s note: chapters written in italics denote they are the memoirs of Hal Neely and do not necessarily reflect the stories of others involved in the vinyl years of Rock and Roll.)

My first job at King was to rebuild the plant. It was obsolete and in disrepair, needing new modern equipment and a new mill. Its machine shop was good with experienced workmen who could build all of the new machines we needed. I redesigned the whole plant—mill, boiler room, press room and printing, and added a photo and art department and rebuilt the recording studio.
Syd was ill more and more. He and Zella, now married, were spending much of their time in the condo in Miami Beach. When in Cincinnati he usually came in after lunch time and left early, but we talked every day even when he was in Miami.
We rearranged the operations offices and staff over the press room. Syd, Ralph Bass and I had our officers there. Over in the newer third building on the second floor was reception, our general office staff (paperwork, billing, accounting, etc.) and the new art/photo department complete with a darkroom. On the first floor was shipping and inventory. In the back were a parking lot and our re-built recording studio.
Cincinnati was a good record town. Several other small labels called it home. The biggest of these was Fraternity Records owned by Harry Carlson who recorded in our studios and pressed with us. Another big customer was Don Pierce’s Starday Records in Nashville. Our plant was good. Our record sales were good.
James Brown in those early years came out to my house in Cincinnati several times to eat with us. He loved my wife Mary. She taught him the rudiments of correct table manners.
I produced The Famous Flames several more times in the King studio, but it had no more hits. Syd wanted to drop the group. I still believed in them. Syd agreed to let Andy Gibson, a King man in New York, record one more session. He recorded “Bewildered,” and it was an instant hit going to No. 1. (Author’s note: Neely had a penchant for exaggeration. According to music historian John Broven, Bewildered was a No. 8 on the R&B chart in 1961)1 King picked up the Flames option for another three years and now released the group on the King label, but as “James Brown and The Famous Flames.” The rest is history.
I continued to produce the group when I was available. Single record sales soared. James was in charge of all music and shows, and Bobby took care of the books. After several years of constant touring, James took the Flames, with Mr. Brantley’s approval, to a new manager/booker in New York. He was Jack Pearl’s wife’s brother-in-law. Pearl was King’s long-time attorney.
James Brown and The Famous Flames sold out tours/shows/concerts. They worked steady. I saw little of him– only occasionally going to one of the shows. I was always welcome when I did. We remained close for many years. We recorded him in our King studio in Cincinnati. This was the “James Brown Sound.” Ron Lenhoff, our engineer, became James’s favorite engineer.
When it came time for him to record, if the band was too far away on tour, James would fly in, always accompanied by his featured girl singer of the time. He changed his girl singer, whom he never placed under contract, often.
The band personnel also kept changing–for the better, but always with the nomd’ plume ‘the JBs.”
The JBs created a problem one night in Charlotte, South Carolina. They gave James an ultimatum and refused to do that night’s show unless James gave them a big raise. He called me in Cincinnati. We decided to secretly replace the JBs with King’s house band. They had recorded with him several times and knew him well. I chartered a small plane to take them to Charlotte. Bobby Byrd met them and took them to the auditorium to set up their gear.
Bobby delayed the band’s bus driver by picking up the old JBs. When they got to the auditorium Bobby met them.
“You’re fired. Here are your final checks,”he said. It was done.
It was Syd Nathan’s “My way or no way.”
At that time James sold only single records, no albums. In the King Cincinnati studio I produced the album “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag”. It made it to No. 1 on the “soul” charts. It was pure James Brown. From then on it was a “let the good times roll.” Hit after hit. Album after album.

Previously in the book: Nebraskan Hal Neely began with dance bands in the Midwest during the 1930s and became a recording manufacturing exec and record producer at King Records.
(Author’s Note: Chapters written in italics are from Neely’s personal memoirs and do not always agree with outside sources.)
Meanwhile, I was still working for Allied, living in New Jersey. There was a daily Smoke Rise commuter bus to Manhattan leaving at seven each morning and returning at 6 p.m. If I had to go to my Manhattan office in the Port Authority building on 39th Street first, I took No. 507 to No. 17 in Hackensack New Jersey and then to No. 3 in Union City and the Lincoln Tunnel. If I went to the plant first, I got on No. 17 near Lindhurst, then to the Lincoln Tunnel terminal. Going home at night I reversed the procedure.
On many nights, when I couldn’t get home, I stayed at a small hotel on 54th and Broadway. The King Records office was across the street. For all commuters to Manhattan, from wherever, such a complicated procedure was the way it was if you did not live in town. Doing too many jobs was wearing me out. Mr. Broadhead gave me a choice, Allied’s vice president of sales stationed in Manhattan or manager of the new Allied pressing plant in Jersey. I chose sales.
Syd was getting more and more ill. He and Zella were spending much of their time in their condominium in North Miami Beach. I was at King’s in Cincinnati on a regular basis. All the staff and employees treated me like one of them. Allied’s government prime production contract was terminating soon in 1957. It was time for me to move on. I wanted to be a producer.
ZIV/World offered me a contract to produce “I Led Three Lives” and the World Transcription Library. I would be based in New York.
I talked to Syd at least two or three times a week. I was in Manhattan and called Syd in Cincinnati about 10 in the morning.
“Syd, just wanted you to be the first to know. I am leaving Allied to join ZIV/World as a producer tomorrow.”
There was a long silence on the phone.
“Hal, you promised me that if you ever left Allied you would come to work for me.”
“I didn’t remember it that way.”
Syd hung up on me. About seven that night I received a call.
“Hal, can you come and see me? I’m at the Sheraton.” Syd always stayed there when in Manhattan. For Syd, he was being nice and polite.
I had no idea what he wanted to talk about. Syd was like a second Dad to me so of course I would go see him. “Yes, I’ll be there.”
I walked into his room. Sitting with him was Dr. Richard Nathan, Sid’s younger brother from Miami Beach. I was greeted warmly. I’d always been like family. We talked and talked. They wanted to know why I had decided to leave Allied after almost ten years. It soon became evident to me that they were serious about working something out for me to come to King. We got down to the nitty-gritty. I now sensed the ZIV/World may not be what I really wanted. This could be as good or better a deal for me.
“Hal, just what is it you want in the near future?” Richard asked. “You’re not getting any younger.”
Boy, I knew that. This might be my chance. “My own record company someday.”
There it was on the table. We talked and talked some more.
“Hal, we will give you a 10-year contract deal and whatever else you want,” Syd told me. “You will run King. Richard and I have talked it over. We will also give you a first refusal option, no time limit, to buy all the King music and publishing assets, but not my personal property, for $1,676,000.”
It was almost sun-up, time for breakfast. Syd was very, very ill. They gave me everything I asked for. We shook hands. I wrote it up, in my hand, a simple contractual sale agreement on a blank page in a notebook I always carried in my briefcase. We had it notarized in the morning in the Sheraton office. Richard went back to Miami Beach, and Syd stayed in Manhattan a few days with me. I called ZIV and Mr. Broadhead in Hollywood. The plan was that I would join King as vice president and chief operating officer and be a member of the board on January 1, 1958.
I would sell my house in Smoke Rise as soon as possible and King would move my family to Cincinnati. In the interim I would work out of and live in Syd’s brownstone building on 54th Street and Broadway for free. It was across from Al and Dick’s Café, a local music industry hangout. I would be on King’s payroll and help Allied until they replaced me. Mary, our son, and I packed up and moved everything in a moving van to Cincinnati. King furnished me with a new Buick station wagon.
We first moved into a temporary apartment. Mary wanted a house. Jack Kelly, a true Kentucky gentleman of the old school and chief financial officer of King, assisted us in the move. Kelly had helped Syd in his buy-out of the House of the Blind pressing plant in Louisville. We decided on a beautiful small rural residential community, Terrace Park. Mary picked out a house under construction on a dead-end side street. I would be about 30 minutes from the King plant. The house had two stories, a full den and storage room in the basement, a nice front hall entrance, large living room and a dining room with fireplace, and yard. The first thing Mary did was add a big screened porch off the dining room just like the house in Smoke Rise.
We felt we were home, joining the Terrace Park country club and the local Presbyterian Church. Our neighbor was a doctor who became our doctor. We made a host of new friends. At work I was in charge, but Syd was still the boss.

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.