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Authors: James McBride
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rich, Joe was never without a new Lincoln and his favorite things on the front seat: a cigar, a pack of cards for a game of skin, a bag of pork skins, and a jar of hot sauce. His grandson Terry would recall his grandfather Joe, whom everyone affectionately called Pop, ripping up the streets in Augusta in a new Lincoln that James had paid for, extinguishing his cigars on the plush leather front seat. “Pop, this is a new car!” Terry would protest. “I d-d-d-d-don’t care about no d-d-d-damn car!” Pop would laugh, stubbing out the cigar and roaring down the street like a madman, speed limit be damned. He lived well because he’d grown up hard. Life without pulling cotton was gravy.
But Joe knew where he came from. He’d spent his young life hearing stories from his aunts about his great-great-uncle Oscar Gaines, who’d tricked the white man on the chain gang to toss him into the Savannah so he could escape, and his great-uncle Cutter who was murdered, and his uncle Shorty who was a hell-raiser who died in prison, and his grandmother who was murdered by his grandfather.
He slipped out of Ellenton as a young man and wandered over to the town of Bamberg, where he met a fine girl named Susie Behling. She was a small woman, barely five feet tall. Susie Behling was a stranger to the Gaines clan. Bamberg was forty-five miles away from Ellenton, and in the world of mules, wagons, and no telephones, it might as well have been the moon. Nobody knew much about Susie but that she was musical and religious. Her family could sing. She and Joe had a son named James Joseph Brown, born in Snelling. Joe called James “Junior.”
James Brown later told the world that he was born in Barnwell, in a shack, and that his mother, Susie, left him when he was four or five or six years old. The bare truth is that Joe’s marriage was fraught with problems. Handsome Joe Brown flirted with women all his life. When I asked about Joe in the Barnwell area twenty years after his 1993 death, I heard talk of the women he knew or reportedly chased after. The inside rumor, according to one James Brown friend who asked that her name not be used, was, “Joe and Susie had a fight, Joe pulled out his gun, and Susie jumped out the window and took off running and didn’t stop till she got to New York.”
However the split occurred, Joe was alone with a boy he knew he couldn’t raise alone. Junior needed family. Joe had one. A big one. He didn’t have one mother—he had five aunts who were all just like his mother, all those
-ree
s: Iveree, Zazaree, Saree. He knew they would take care of James, just as they had taken care of him. These were the women James Brown was raised by before Joe took him to his “cousin” (read: sister) Honey’s house in Augusta, the fabled “whorehouse” James talked of being raised in. During those young years among the Gaines, Scott, and Evans families in Ellenton, James Brown did what all the children of that family did: he picked cotton and walked barefoot, attending church on Sunday in his one pair of shoes, which he took off on the way home and stored for the next week’s service, thanking God for the one pair that he did have. His great-aunts, Iveree, Saree, and the other Gaines women, saw to that. They understood Junior. His life was tough. He was the only son of an only son. His ma and pa didn’t get along and his pa was a stuttering rascal who left him for long stretches, but he left James in the right place: with family. A family that knew how to work, because the Gaineses pulled their own weight in the world. They loved Junior, and in the little time Joe spent with his son, he always reminded Junior of that—the importance of family.
But Junior did not always remember.
Fifty years later, when Joe Brown and his now-famous son James Brown pulled up to a gas station in Barnwell, Joe looked out the window and saw his cousin pumping gas into James Brown’s Lincoln Town Car. Joe Brown rolled down the window and
But Joe knew where he came from. He’d spent his young life hearing stories from his aunts about his great-great-uncle Oscar Gaines, who’d tricked the white man on the chain gang to toss him into the Savannah so he could escape, and his great-uncle Cutter who was murdered, and his uncle Shorty who was a hell-raiser who died in prison, and his grandmother who was murdered by his grandfather.
He slipped out of Ellenton as a young man and wandered over to the town of Bamberg, where he met a fine girl named Susie Behling. She was a small woman, barely five feet tall. Susie Behling was a stranger to the Gaines clan. Bamberg was forty-five miles away from Ellenton, and in the world of mules, wagons, and no telephones, it might as well have been the moon. Nobody knew much about Susie but that she was musical and religious. Her family could sing. She and Joe had a son named James Joseph Brown, born in Snelling. Joe called James “Junior.”
James Brown later told the world that he was born in Barnwell, in a shack, and that his mother, Susie, left him when he was four or five or six years old. The bare truth is that Joe’s marriage was fraught with problems. Handsome Joe Brown flirted with women all his life. When I asked about Joe in the Barnwell area twenty years after his 1993 death, I heard talk of the women he knew or reportedly chased after. The inside rumor, according to one James Brown friend who asked that her name not be used, was, “Joe and Susie had a fight, Joe pulled out his gun, and Susie jumped out the window and took off running and didn’t stop till she got to New York.”
However the split occurred, Joe was alone with a boy he knew he couldn’t raise alone. Junior needed family. Joe had one. A big one. He didn’t have one mother—he had five aunts who were all just like his mother, all those
-ree
s: Iveree, Zazaree, Saree. He knew they would take care of James, just as they had taken care of him. These were the women James Brown was raised by before Joe took him to his “cousin” (read: sister) Honey’s house in Augusta, the fabled “whorehouse” James talked of being raised in. During those young years among the Gaines, Scott, and Evans families in Ellenton, James Brown did what all the children of that family did: he picked cotton and walked barefoot, attending church on Sunday in his one pair of shoes, which he took off on the way home and stored for the next week’s service, thanking God for the one pair that he did have. His great-aunts, Iveree, Saree, and the other Gaines women, saw to that. They understood Junior. His life was tough. He was the only son of an only son. His ma and pa didn’t get along and his pa was a stuttering rascal who left him for long stretches, but he left James in the right place: with family. A family that knew how to work, because the Gaineses pulled their own weight in the world. They loved Junior, and in the little time Joe spent with his son, he always reminded Junior of that—the importance of family.
But Junior did not always remember.
Fifty years later, when Joe Brown and his now-famous son James Brown pulled up to a gas station in Barnwell, Joe looked out the window and saw his cousin pumping gas into James Brown’s Lincoln Town Car. Joe Brown rolled down the window and
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