THE BUDWEISER SUPERFEST AND THE BUSINESS OF BLACK MUSIC BY SHELDON TAYLOR: PT 4 Money and the Power

                        

In 1983, Rick James resided in R&B's rare air. Sales for 1981's Street Song were soaring toward four million.  82's Throwin' Down' was gold. New release Cold Blooded was following suit.  James was red-hot and he knew it. Just before hitting the stage at Superfest '83, he demanded an additional $25,000 on top of his scheduled fee. With a packed crowd of 50,000 waiting for Slick Rick to hit the stage, Super Fest tour managers angrily met his terms.

 Wily maneuvers like these were a far cry from a world so complex that writer Dempsey Travis  devoted an entire chapter to it in his book The Autobiography of Black Jazz. That chapter----entitled The Jazz Slave Masters---described a "plantation system" where Black entertainers were the exclusive property of mobbed-up booking agents and club owners. Travis used slavery's 19th-century euphemism---the peculiar institution---to describe these relationships:

"Remember, the Jazz Slave Masters always controlled the cash register, paid the piper, and called the tune. The keepers of the cash box were usually Jewish and Italian and occasionally, mob-connected blacks. Although jazz is a music known for its free forum, the Black people who played it were never free agents."

 Black Jazz tells the story of how bandleader Cab Calloway's contract was "extracted" from his agent by mobsters. In exchange for his "cooperation", the agent received 10% of  Calloway's earnings. Jazz pianist Earl Hines' $150-a week contact was "perpetual," binding him to a Chicago mobster and constructed to be passed down to family heirs forever. Managers herded clients toward exclusive arrangements with booking agencies. Booking agents financed hit contracts on rivals suspected of trying to poach their acts. 

Jews and Italians were the main proponents of these practices but their domain wasn't exclusive. This learned behavior of one-sided industry practices spread over onto Black entertainment circles. In Mayfield biography Traveling Soul: The Life of Curtis Mayfield, the singer's conflicted ambition is placed on full display. Intent on "owning himself" in a music industry where Black artists were unfairly compensated, Mayfield refused to share writer/ publishing revenue with song collaborators or dispense promised business shares with fellow group members who made financial sacrifices for Mayfield to grow his business empire:

"My father grew to love and trust them (group members the Impressions). He looked at them as brothers. But brothers or not, they'd eventually learn that my father could easily separate family from business. He could cherish a filial bond; he could be kind and generous, but as Miles Davis said---geniuses are selfish. My father was a genius and when it came to money, power, and control he wanted all of it."

Jonathon Gould's  Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life describes a world where musicians were expendable. Road work was "debilitating and grinding" but compared to employment options for Black men in Jim Crow America---working as a backing musician was a better alternative.  Band members remember Redding as "pretty selfish with his money" and not "the best paymaster in the world." Gould attributes this to Redding growing up in a place where "labor was cheap" and that "giving a man a job was often construed as doing him a favor. 

In Jimmy McDonough's Soul Survivor: A Biography of Al Green, Green's band members describe the singer as having a reputation for treating musicians poorly: "Al just treated musicians shitty. he didn't treat them good at all! Number one: you're lucky to get paid.  You're lucky to get paid. You had no job security....you have to understand these guys didn't have another gig."  Mayfield and Green's dismissive behavior was attributed to deep-seated insecurities that held them in a vise-like grip from which they would never escape.

James Brown trumped them all. Brown sideman/collaborator Fred Wesley recalls Brown "playing games with people's lives" and "relinquishing credit for my hard work to him without a fuss."  When singer Bobby Byrd---riding high on Brown-produced hits I Know You Got Soul and Hot Pants (I'm Coming) and lucrative touring income ---purchased a new home away from the domineering Brown's clutches---it was taken as intolerable independence. Brown fired his ex-mentor, plunging Byrd and his family into financial dire straits. 

Some tactics were more coercive. On a hot streak with La La La Means I Love You and Didn't I Blow Your Mind This Time, the Delfonics looked to vacate their Philly Groove label and handle their own lucrative concert bookings. An August '73 Philadelphia Inquirer piece ("The Black Mafia") revealed that label owner Stan Watson dispatched a Philly Black Mafia member in 1971 to "straighten out" the group. The Delfonics remained tethered to Philly Groove.

Such activities inspired the need for a protective benefactor. Louis Armstrong would secure such services. During a June 1970 appearance on The David Frost Show, Armstrong shocked audiences with advice received prior to leaving New Orleans for Chicago forty years earlier: "When you get up north, Dipper, be sure and get yourself a white man to put his hand on your shoulder and say this is my nigger." Laurence Bergreen's 2012 Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life  traces"the notion of a white champion" resonated with back to a "survival mechanism" that Black people "reluctantly developed" during Jim Crow-era society.

Above the Mason-Dixon line, Armstrong and Ellington were weary of constant extortion attempts. They secured the services of managers Irving Mills and Joe Glaser---relinquishing large percentages of their publishing rights in exchange for protection and access to lucrative performance outlets.

 John Edward Hasse's Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington, discloses that Ellington's son revealed that Mills "took credit for lyrics never written, 75% of royalties---the entire publishing share and half the author's share."  The younger Ellington concedes that while Mills was "evidently being unfair" he was "also doing good by breaking down so many darned barriers for Negro musicians."  Similar music credit issues defined Billy Strayhorn and Ellington's father-son musical partnership that benefitted Ellington greatly.

In public Ellington passively played up the younger Strayhorne's prolific talents. Behind the scenes, he assumed credit for Strayhorne's creations--- an arrangement accepted by Strayhorn burdened by closeted homosexuality in less accepting times. This limited his ability to cultivate a public persona apart from Ellington's. He reluctantly played the background. 

Building his success around Armstrong, Glaser created Associated Booking Corporation (ABC) to handle the concert bookings of prominent African-American performers. Following his 1969 passing, the company was willed to Armstrong's ex-road manager Oscar Cohen. 80 years after its inception, the company that made Glaser and Cohen millionaires was passed on to Cohen's family after his 2020 death. Armstrong remained financially secure until the end of his life in 1970 but never received a percentage of the business that he helped make a success. 

During the 1970s, lawyer Joseph Vigoda negotiated contracts making Stevie Wonder one of the highest-paid entertainers. Negotiating high royalty rates and contract clauses giving the singer complete autonomy of his career---unbeknownst to Wonder, Vigoda would insert a clause granting six percent of song royalties to family heirs "forever."   

"Well he can't.... you know, he's Black! He's trying to get a little crack in the door but Marv can open the door. And he can get better deals. My face during those years would not allow doors to open for me. As a Black man, you don't get an invitation"---Curtis Mayfield

"It's business, baby. This is business. The man said he could do this for me and do that for me."---Sam Cooke  

White alliances and partnerships were critical to navigating music industry circles during the 1960s and 1970s. Berry Gordy used Motown exec Barney Ales' Italian descent and loose mob affiliations to his advantage when he looked to move the Supremes from the Copacabana to competitor Waldorf Astoria with no problems (" I don't know whether Barney did it or how he did it, but they didn't bother me at all"). 

 Gould's Redding biography expands on Bergreen's assessment in An Extraordinary Life: "the pragmatic philosophy of Negroes in southern towns used to be the way for a Black man to get along is to attach himself to some well-to-do white folks. Just one big white folks is all you need." This dynamic describes Otis Redding's relationship with manager Phil Walden.

Both Georgia-born, Redding was a high school dropout with a budding singing career. Walden was a lower-middle-class Southerner whose love for Black music evolved into concert promotion. Walden became the singer's de-facto booking agent and eventually, Redding's manager. As Redding's star rose, so did Walden's. Following Joe Glaser and Louis Armstrong's historic model---Walden created a lucrative booking agency and publishing company around Redding's talent, signing Black talent and pulling in his father and brother as partners.

An early music video for Redding's Tramp finds the singer in proto-Diddy mode. In one shot,  Redding is adorned in slick continental suits counting a wad of money outside an office building (emblazoned with the sign "Otis Redding Enterprises.") surrounded by a sea of Cadillacs. Another clip finds Redding pitching hay on his massive Big O Ranch.                                                    

                                          

   

                                                                             

                                                                               

Redding's affluence wasn't a sham. In the final year of his life, the singer leased and owned private planes as an alternative to the grueling travel conditions he faced on the road.  These were lofty accomplishments for a Black man in 1967. In the Jim Crow South, Redding's successes defied the racial social status quo he should have been confined to. The singer's drive, talent, and ambition were coupled with  a complex  relationship with his manager that was played out on a familiar script of "white paternalism and Black dependence."

Redding and Walden's pact was complex. Beneath their mutual friendship and admiration lurked benevolent and paternalistic roles reeking of a master-slave dynamic----"traditions" Walden  admitted, "were so ingrained into every fiber of his and Redding's body." Walden's father---an avowed racist who disapproved of his son's "infatuation" and involvement" in Black music would eventually warm to Redding and become his road manager. 

While Walden affirmed family loyalty and that agency's practices were "above board,"  contracts revealed otherwise.  Prefiguring future 360-deals, Walden earned 20% of the singer's gross revenue as manager. He and his brother were partners in Redding's publishing company earning writing and royalty percentages. Verbally, Redding was considered a "partner" in the family business but like Louis Armstrong---never was granted an official share or received revenue. Redding's handlers were heavily ostracized ("nigger lovers")  yet Redding's success provided them an economic pathway from the Southern underclass.

 During the 1960s and early 1970s, Sam Cooke and Curtis Mayfield were breaking new ground but certain industry doors were still closed. Trading in previous ground-floor partnerships during their come-ups,  they secured the services of Allen Klein and Marv (Stuart) Heimann. Results were immediate. Heimann booked Mayfield on coveted television shows. Mayfield groomed him on the business. After Klein and Heimann recovered a combined half-million dollars in unclaimed royalties they were elevated to partners in Cooke and Mayfield's empires. 

These alliances appeared to make sense. Juggling business with writing, producing, and touring was always an elusive balance for Cooke and Mayfield. Taking advantage of this, Klein and Heimann leveraged their industry contacts to advance their clients' careers while inserting themselves as power brokers controlling all aspects of Cooke and Mayfield's businesses.

Near the end of his life, Cooke looked to extract himself from his partnership with Klein after discovering business misappropriations. After Cooke's death, Klein would assume total ownership and rights to Cooke's catalog estimated to be worth 100 million Heimann and Mayfield's partnership would four decades. After Mayfield died in 2000, Heimann continued to manage the singer's estate and business affairs, outlasting criticism and rocky relationships from his late client's family and friends.

 "Reverend, one thing I'm trying to raise you on is, don't mind other folk's business. Mind your business. Your business is you want American dollars."

 "Let me ask me you a question. Can  you sing Get Up On The Good Foot?  You're going to sing it tonight unless you come up with some American money."

                                                                      ---James Brown (1972)

 Some entertainers were more in control of their fate while on tour. Cash was king. The payment was always due upfront. Years after bank wires replaced cash payments, Chuck Berry, Aretha Franklin and James Brown continued to conduct cash-only transactions.

 In 2001, a seventy-six-year-old Berry drove eighty miles for an outdoor concert (to save on airfare), arriving at the venue (late) with an empty briefcase and message to management: "first things first." Only after meticulously counting out his $20,000 fee for a 45-minute performance would Berry hit the stage.

Aretha Franklin shared the same sentiment. With reading glasses perched on her nose, she watched promoters count out the money and hit the stage with money in hand ("the purse would always make it on stage"). Al Green carried a briefcase full of tour money on stage.

 In his book Go And Tell Pharaoh, Al Sharpton recalls his adventures working with Brown as his de-facto road manager. One time Sharpton booked Brown for a London gig. He was a paid an upfront fee in British currency. Their exchange in the aftermath is a lesson in Brown's sharp business acumen:

 Sharpton: "We've got our money". Brown: "Good Reverend." Sharpton: "Yeah, twenty thousand pounds." Brown: "Pounds? Where'd you go to school at Reverend? "

 Sharpton: "Samuel J. Tilden High School & Brooklyn College." Brown: "And where are those schools at, son?" Sharpton: "New York." Brown: "Did any of those schools talk about pounds?  Go tell them I want American money for the show tonight." 

Sharpton: They said it's 10'oclock. Where are we going to get fifty thousand dollars this time at night? Brown: "Reverend, one thing I'm trying to raise you on is, don't mind other folk's business. Mind your business. Your business is you want American dollars."

Despite having only a sixth-grade education, Brown understood the fluctuating value of foreign currency ("Reverend,  they'll drop the value of that pound tonight"). He also wouldn't budge from his demands ( "Let me ask me you a question. Can  you sing Get Up On The Good Foot?  You're going to sing it tonight unless you come up with some American money."). 

Booked to play an all-star concert in support of the Ali-Foreman fight in Zaire for $100,000, Brown's eye remained on the bottom line. Sharpton tells the story:                              

"The day James and the band are leaving. We are riding to the airport. James says, Reverend, where's the money? I said I didn't have it. I didn't think they couldn't give it to us all at once. James said he wasn't leaving until he was paid. He made Don King's people come up with the money, a hundred grand in cash. And they did."

"I asked James why didn't he want to stay and enjoy the fight, he laughed and said Reverend, how many times do I have to tell you. This is a business. I did my show, I made my money. I got things to do. And strangely enough, Mobutu (the Zaire dictator) put everybody on house arrest because of high hotel bills but James was here in America, counting his money and booking new dates. All business."  

 In 2002, Sharpton repeated an abbreviated version of their adventures in Zaire during an interview with The New Yorker---“Reverend, I’m going to be over here making my next dollar while Ali’s making his." 

 

                                NEXT UP: PART 5: THE GRAND FINALE: SHOWTIME