As we draw ever nearer to the 50th anniversary of his first hit, 1956’s “Please Please Please,” not much remains to be said about James Brown that hasn’t been covered by the media (or by Mr. Dynamite himself). But not enough has been said about the amazing bassists who have backed him up throughout these last five decades. Mr. Brown and his Vegas-style R&B revue may not be quite in step with much of the modern music world, but the relevance of his classic work remains undiminished. The vintage music made by J.B. and his ever-changing band is among the most influential made during the 20th century.
Scores of low-enders have bounced in and out of Brown’s band, but Fred Thomas has held the bass chair in the world’s premier funk & soul outfit for the better part of 33 years. He anchored the fort on such hits as “Hot Pants, Pt. 1,” “Make It Funky, Pt. 1,” and “Papa Don’t Take No Mess.” The sheer number of hip-hop tracks that use those lines prompted Brown to refer to Thomas as the “most sampled bass player in the world.” If anyone is warranted to take issue with that statement, it’s another Brown alumnus, William “Bootsy” Collins. Bootsy was involved with Brown’s band only for a short time, but during his tenure he recorded several anthems, including “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine,” “Super Bad,” and “Soul Power, Pts. 1 & 2,” which ushered in an era of deeper funk that Collins later incorporated into his work with Parliament-Funkadelic and his own Rubber Band.
Almost as legendary as the man and the music is the iron-fisted manner in which James Brown runs his band. Tales of fines for missed cues and unshined shoes have loomed large in the lore of working musicians since the bass became electrified. To learn what it was like then and now, we corralled Collins, Thomas, and current co-holder of the bass chair, Ray Brundidge, to dig into what it really means to be a soul man in Soul Band No. 1.
Get Up
When did you first encounter James Brown?
Ray Brundidge: I was 12 years old when “Mother Popcorn” came out in ’69, and my friend and I took a bus to Buffalo to catch James’s show. He had a bigger band than the one we have now—three drummers, multiple horns, dancers—and I think Bernard Odum was on bass. That was actually my first concert, and it made me focus on playing music.
Fred Thomas: I got a chance to see him live as James Brown & the Famous Flames when I was in high school in Georgia.
Bootsy Collins: I met him when I was 15. My brother [Phelps “Catfish” Collins] and I were in the house band at Cincinnati’s King Studios, but when James and his band came to town, it was always a closed session. We couldn’t get near him, but we would hang out with his group on their cigarette breaks. They were like our older brothers, our heroes. Then one day the band went to lunch while James was in the studio recording “Licking Stick.” We were around the door, just buzzin’, when his road manager, Bud, came to the door. He said Mr. Brown wanted us to come in and maybe lay down this bass line. That was my first encounter with him. We worked on it for a while, but we didn’t get the chance to put it to tape before the band came back.
Get Into It
How did you come to be in James Brown’s band?
Bootsy Collins: At first I thought they were kidding when we got the call to play with James that very night, and that his Lear jet was on its way to pick us up. His management said they wanted us to “play with James Brown,” but we didn’t think they meant it literally. We thought, Even if this is true, we’ll probably just be playing our regular set. They didn’t tell us the band had walked out, so we kind of crossed the picket line—unbeknownst to us—until we actually got to the gig. Then we started seeing all these long faces on our friends and our heroes—Charles Sherrell and Bernard Odum were there—and it was like, “Wow, what have we done?” James said, “I want y’all to play the set with me. How much do you want?” We had no alternative but to go on! [Laughs.]
Fred Thomas: When I got to New York in 1965 I hooked up with [guitarist] Hearlon “Cheese” Martin and formed my first band, which I played with until I met James in 1971. One night we were working at this club in Harlem called Small’s Paradise, which was owned by Wilt Chamberlain. James entered with his entourage, and everybody was hollering for him to come up and sing a song. “Sex Machine” was the hot record at the time, and he said, “Can I count it off?” We wore him out, and after that he said, “I want this band.” We were rehearsing within a week or so, because Bootsy and those guys were having a conflict with James at the time. He needed a new band, and we were it.
Ray Brundidge: The funny thing is, I almost wound up in Billy Joel’s band instead. They asked me to join, but I was busy with my band and Billy wasn’t such a big deal then. A short time later I moved to California, and an old guitarist friend of mine who was in James’s band brought me to Mr. Brown’s attention. Years later, in 1998, they called me in to play with James so that Fred wouldn’t get worn out.
How did you go about assimilating the tunes and making them work for your own style?
Bootsy Collins: We didn’t go back and study anything. We just played it the way we felt it should be, which brought a freshness, and James liked it. Continued
Fred Thomas: I already knew James’s music, because my band did all the hot tunes from ’66 until I joined. I did my own thing, which is to keep a nice bottom in the pocket. I never bothered with any fancy stuff because I always did the singing in my bands, and you can’t be fancy and sing. I had to discipline myself to stick to the pattern. I pluck with my thumb and index finger in combination. It’s kind of like a picking thing: down with the thumb and up with the index finger, which makes it more smooth and even than just playing the fast lick with my thumb. I go with the thumb until it goes fast enough that I need more notes, and then I grab them with my pinch [index] finger. For basic tunes like “Good Foot” and “Doing It to Death,” I just scrape the strings with my thumb.
Ray Brundidge: Basically, you learn from the guy who came before you, and I learned by watching Fred. Everything sounded good, but there wasn’t a lot of slapping and popping going on, so I figured that could be my niche. The first time I tried it, I turned up the treble on my amp so I could get a little pop. But James wasn’t used to it and said, “Son, that doesn’t sound like a bass. You don’t know how to adjust an amp—let me do it for you!” Then he readjusted my amp so it was really deep and I couldn’t get a pop out of it [laughs]. I held off on trying to pop again until I got to play “Livin’ in America,” which has a little bit of slap and pop. That was still a slow process because James likes Ampeg SVT amps, and for pluckin’ and poppin’ you need more of an SWR kind of thing. Finally, we did a show where no SVTs were available. They had an SWR with a horn in it, so I did some slapping on “Living in America,” and James loved it. Now he’ll point me in specifically to slap and pop.
Get Involved
What was it like to step onstage with Soul Brother No. 1 for the first time?
Bootsy Collins: I had been playing with everybody who wanted to be James Brown, but it took me a while to realize, I’m actually up here onstage with the James Brown. He told us, “All I’m going to do is call out the songs, drop my hand, and y’all are going to hit it,” and that’s actually what happened. After that first show he reassured us that everything would be fine once we rehearsed the songs and learned how he used his body movements and hand signals for the show. That was actually the first and only time he reassured us that everything was going to be on the one [laughs]. Once we learned the show and got it tight for real, he reversed the psychology on us—like we weren’t happening—but years later I realized that it only made us tighter.
Fred Thomas: We rehearsed for about a week in New York and then we went to Toledo, Ohio, and played the first show. You had to have a memory like an elephant to remember two-and-a-half hours worth of hits, dips, and dancing cues. The gig went fantastic the first time out, and after that, all the butterflies were gone. To go from playing clubs to audiences in the 10,000 range, it was like, “Wow—this is show time!”
Fred, you’ve been with Brown’s band for most of the last three decades. How has the show changed over the years?
Fred Thomas: The show runs basically the same with James. He’s the man—nothing goes without his approval, and you don’t add anything. But he isn’t as strict now. He used to fine cats for unshined shoes, wrinkles in their suits, missed notes, and all kinds of other stuff. He did that diligently, man—I mean, all the time. You really had to mind your P’s and Q’s. At this stage, all he really wants is just for you to sound good so he can go out and do his thing.
Another difference it that there are less of us these days. Right now, we’ve got 11 people in the band: three horns, two bassists, two drummers, a percussionist, and three guitar players. We had four background singers, but now we’ve only got three. Back in the day we always had five or six horns; we used to have a keyboard player, too, and there would be players lurking around in the wings. He’d hold that over you, like, “Go ahead and mess up—I’ve got a cat right here, just waiting for your spot.”
How is the stage set, how does the set work, and what exactly are some of these cues?
Ray Brundidge: The band sets up in a horseshoe configuration. Right now, Fred is in the center and I’m up on a riser on one side. James wants it that way because he wants to be able to make eye contact with everybody at all times, and he’ll check to see if you’re looking. You’ve got to see his hand signals; otherwise you’re lost. Some of the signals are for individuals—in my case, to slap and pop, for instance. Others are for the whole group, like to move right or move left. He has his own language of signals and movements onstage, and you’ve got to be able to understand it, because you have only a split second to decide what he means before it’s too late. He changes the songs, too; the basic idea might stay somewhat consistent, but he can add a lot of other parts until it winds up totally different.
Fred Thomas: He’s got signals for things like “cutoff,” or he might call a little name, like a “deaf bar”—where you play D–Eb–F–B—or he might throw a cue where everybody plays [vocalizes a break part] right in the middle of the song. And he doesn’t have a particular order for the songs. He has a basic set to draw from, but you never know what song he might call. You’ve got to be prepared for anything.
Double Bass
Were there always two bass players in the show?
Bootsy Collins: I was the only bassist at the time. They always said they got two after I left to replace what I was doing [laughs].
Fred Thomas: I was the only one when I first joined, but then he used to bring in all kinds of guys; “Sweet” Charles [Sherrell] and Jimmy Mack were in and out. I think Bernard Odum even came back a couple of times.
How does it work onstage with two bassists?
Fred Thomas: Depending on the song, James will call who he wants to play. Some nights he might hear something different and switch up from the guy who normally plays a certain song. So you’ve got to know everything.
I’ve seen you and Ray play together at certain points. How do you work that out?
Fred Thomas: It’s an experience playing the show with two bassists. Ray plays a 4-string and I play a 5, so we’ll hook up on different songs and do complementary stuff, but we don’t really play the same pattern at the same time. Like on “Try Me,” I’ll use that 5th string just to drop the low C on it, and then I’m out. Little stuff like that adds color. Or, I’ll play “Make It Funky” and Ray will just play a subtle little lick, but you can feel it. You can do a lot to help kick the funk, but we listen and make sure it’s not interfering with anybody—that it’s really helping and not just there. Of course, James looks at everything.
James seems to pay attention to every little detail of what you guys are doing.
Fred Thomas: Yeah, he does [laughs]. He’s got big ol’ beaver ears, believe me! That cat don’t miss nothin’. One time when the band was rehearsing, Ray and I hooked up different lines for playing this song. When James heard it, he was like, [in raspy James Brown voice] “Nobody play—just the bass players.” We played what we came up with, and he said, “Okay.” He didn’t take it out, because it was complementary to the melodic line, and it really worked.
Ray Brundidge: James is always searching for something different. One day on the road he wanted to change the “Sex Machine” bass line to more of a rolling, walking line. Fred did the walk-down line, and James gave me a part that I could put some snaps on. It sounded pretty good, and now it’s in the show like that.
Can I Count It Off?
In the early years, how were bass parts conceived when a new James Brown song was being fleshed out?
Bootsy Collins: James would give you some grunts, and then you’d have to play it back and say, “Is this what you’re talking about?” As long as what you played made him feel good, that was it—whether it was what he meant in the first place or not. The rhythm section didn’t write anything down, because we played by ear and feel. Everybody seemed to like us for doing it that way, so that’s what we built on.The first new James Brown song I played on was “Sex Machine.” We were on the bus after a gig when he and [backup singer] Bobby Byrd hopped on. They didn’t have any paper, so they tore up a paper bag and started writing the lyrics. My brother and I were sitting behind them with our guitar and bass, fooling around with the groove. We went straight from the gig to the studio, and that’s where it all started happening.
Fred Thomas: The line on “Doing It to Death (Funky Good Time)” is the line I felt, but mostly, you played what he told you to play. If the line wasn’t happening, you found your own way to make it funkier by adding a little space or attacking it differently. For instance, he gave me the “Good Foot” line, but it sucked. It wasn’t saying jack, so I put a little James Jamerson-type ghost note in there. It was up to me to make it happen, and I think that was the case with all of his musicians.
Fred, inside Brown’s Star Time box set [Polydor], it says the bassist on “Papa Don’t Take No Mess” was either you or Charles Sherrell. Can you clear that up?
Fred Thomas: It was definitely me—Sweets doesn’t play like that. He has more of a thump and a light picking thing, whereas my notes are more laid down, more played. [Contrary to the liner notes] Sweet Charles did play on “The Payback,” though. James gave him that line, but Sweets put a little pickup note in there that changed the feel and made it flow better.
Was the touring band and the studio band always the same entity?
Fred Thomas: Mostly it was, especially with the rhythm section, but the last of James’s recording heydays were ’71 through ’76; after that, he did no more recordings that really made noise, except [1985’s] “Living in America.” I played on nothing after 1976.
Papa Don’t Take No Mess
Can you give us a good story about being disciplined by James?
Ray Brundidge: I was studying Fred a lot, and I was amazed at the tone he was getting. Fred plays “down” with his thumb. That was something I had to learn. James said, “You play good, but I want you to play down.” Most fingerstyle players like myself sort of play “up”—that’s the direction the fingers are going when they pluck a note. But James thinks like a drummer—that when you are playing on a downbeat, your thumb should literally strike down on the string. That cleans it up so you aren’t playing all those extra notes. James mentioned that he was going to charge me $25 every time he caught me not playing “down” [laughs]. After a couple of fines, I learned it’s better to give him what he wants!
Fred Thomas: The last time I got fired was in 1995. I like to play with my eyes closed. I can just feel and hear better that way—but James is not with that. I usually manage to keep one eye cracked, but that last time he fired me, I had stayed under too long. When I did look up, he was right in my face throwing his hand down with his fingers pointing out, and every one of those means you’re fined five bucks. He fined me 50 bucks and fired me, even though I didn’t mess up anything. I was only out for about a month.
Bootsy Collins: James was like a father to me, and he treated me like a son. He lectured me every night after the show, and he would always tell me, [in a low, scratchy James Brown voice] “Son, I’m sorry. You just ain’t on the one.” He kept doing that to me—so one night I took acid, and I cannot remember what happened during the set. All I remember is thinking that the bass turned into a snake. I broke all the strings, threw it down, and left the stage. I don’t know how they finished the show, but afterwards, James called me back to the dressing room. He started lecturing me again, and I was trippin’—I just fell on the floor and could not stop laughing. James told his bodyguard, “Get that fool out of here!” They kicked me out of the dressing room, and from that night on, he never called me in there again for another lecture! [Laughs.]
The Hardest Working Bassists In Show Business
What other projects are you working on at the moment?
Bootsy Collins: I’m worked on a Jimi Hendrix tribute album called Power of Soul [Image] put out by the Hendrix family. They got a bunch of different artists contributing, and I redid the title song—playing bass, producing, and playing drums, too.
Fred Thomas: I’m coming out with my first solo CD, which is going to be called Funky People. Some of the guys in the band will be on it, and I’m trying to get Stanley Banks, who plays bass with George Benson. I’m also trying to get the Fred Thomas School of Music set up, and I intend to do an instructional video.
Can you share some thoughts about the future with James Brown?
Ray Brundidge: This whole music thing is more than just a job; it’s a lifestyle. You’ve got to be comfortable traveling. I enjoy myself on the road, and I’ll keep going until that’s it!
Bootsy Collins: I’m definitely looking forward to getting together again with James and the gang, like we did in Seattle in 2000 for the Soul Music Hall of Fame. That was a blast. We were so glad to be able to get back together with all the original guys. It’s just a matter of Mr. Brown saying, “It’s cool. Let’s do this.”
Fred, you’ve been with James’s band the longest. Can you offer some perspective on playing in his bands, and his music’s place in history?
Fred Thomas: I have a lot to be proud of. I don’t have a lot of money, but I’m fine—and I did something. I’ve been involved in one of the biggest, most legendary acts in the world. It’s gone on for a long time—33 years, on and off—and I feel good about the musicians I’ve played with, like Bootsy and Ray. The Soul Music Hall of Fame videotaped that show we all did together there, which is great because my grandkids and my great-grandkids can go there and see me long after I’m gone out of this place. I feel real good about the fact that I’ll go down in history.