FORWARD
A storyteller never lets facts get in the way of the truth and never lets the truth get in the way of a good story.
Hal Neely was a storyteller.
James Brown was a storyteller.
I am a storyteller.
You have been warned.

Prologue
Hal Neely’s last words to his good friend Roland Hanneman (AKA John St. John) were about his memoirs.
Nothing else mattered more to him than the publication of his memories so that the world would know that James Brown had a “convenient memory.” Hal Neely had a fascinating, enigmatic career beyond his relationship with James Brown which stands alone with his contributions to the history of the music industry. This biography would be incomplete without the rest of his story. For a good reason biography is a part of literature called history, because it is his story, her story, their story, my story and even your story. But it’s never our story because each person views the past with an individual perspective that is not shared with anyone else. Neely viewed much of his life as being in the right place at the right time or, with a shrug, a time to move on.
Hal Neely’s son declined to be a part of his father’s biography, even though he was mentioned in his father’s hand-written memoirs. Hanneman shared many stories Neely had told him through the years which filled in the blanks from the memoir. A long list of people to contact developed from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Nashville, Tennessee, and Tampa, Florida. Other friends, like Dr. Art Williams, recounted memories freely and with affection. Others had tears well up in their eyes as they told stories of Neely. And still others did not want to talk at all about him.
Neely spent his life in the music industry, mostly with independent King Records in Cincinnati and later with Starday Records in Nashville. He traveled the world, met famous people and created careers for entertainers, but no one consumed his thoughts in his final years more than the “Godfather of Soul” and the “Hardest Working Man in Show Business.”
Neely believed Brown did not give him the credit he deserved. After all, Neely was the person who not only acted as Brown’s record producer but also held his personal services contract, served as Brown’s mentor, became the person Brown would call late at night with his problems, even as he acted as Brown’s legal adviser. By the end of his life, Neely told anyone who would listen how Brown denied even knowing him and how he had to sue Brown in federal court for royalties owed on albums. Neely described how his lawyer produced contracts Brown had signed and how Brown had to concede credit owed to Neely.
The italicized sections of this book are Neely’s memoirs as he wrote them. The other chapters are composed of interviews with those who knew him and of research about Neely, Brown and the record industry from the early 1950s to the 1980s. The accounts are not identical.
Everyone has a right to tell his life story in his own words; everybody else has the right to read the other side.