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Tommy Brown the Atlanta blues and r & B scene was small almost to the point of nonexistence —titusturner, Billy wright, andtommy Brown, plus throw in disc jockey Zenas Sears at pioneering r & B radio stationwteS. Ironic, then, that a scene with such a limited cast should exert such a tremendous impact on pop music. Zenas Sears was one of a handful of trailblazing disc jockey/star makers, among the first hosts who broadcast blues on the radio and brought r & B of the late 1940s and early 1950s to the postwar generation. Billy wright, a dynamic vocalist and quietly gay was the template and firsthand influence on the frantic, flamboyant, and fabulous Little richard, while vocalist tommy Brown’s pioneering stage show, with his spins, splits, and microphone tossing, was the acknowledged role model for the Godfather of Soul, James Brown. tommy, in fact, ran the gamut— starting as an r & B vocalist, making Chicago-style blues records with harmonica virtuoso Bigwalter Horton, trading wives with bandleader/guitarist/ producer /icon Iketurner, taking time out to write the classic “Honkytonk” for Bill Doggett, dabbling as a stand-up comedian, and finally producing the very first recordings by a local protégé named Gladys Knight. tommy Brown. Photo courtesy oftommy Brown. As of this writing,tommy is largely retired from show business (he will take an occasional festival gig or overseas engagement) and until recently operated a private nursing home in the Atlanta area. Members of the Atlanta Blues Society got in touch to suggest thattommy would make a great interview, and they were right!this interview took place on May 31, 2003. ■ ■ ■ I was born 1931—May 27, 1931. I’m what they call a Grady baby. That’s the city hospital. Grady Hospital, in Atlanta. Well, really what happened was my mother would make me stay in the house. I was so small that she’d make me stay in the house. I couldn’t get out and play football and baseball and stuff with the other kids. And she’d make me sit in the kitchen and watch her cook. And so I thought that she was going to make a girl out of me. So I started listening to the Major Bowles program and the people tap dancing. And so I’d come home from school every day and put on my Sunday shoes and get on the porch and make my feet sound like they did on TV. And I had an uncle who was a buck dancer and I’d watched him, and so I got into that. And just, as a dancer, which gave me good rhythm. When I was a dancer, Cab Calloway’s brother, Elmer Calloway, was teaching at the school. And so he was doing the show for the school. I was about seven years old then—between six and seven, because I started at six. And he had this show at the Royal Theater on a Saturday morning for the school. And I got on that show as a dancer. And I danced on that show, and somebody saw me and hired me to do a show at the YMCA the following week and paid me seven dollars, which was big money then. And the following week, I danced at the Peacock and I got paid. And from that down to a club called the Five o’Clock Supper Club, which was a white club my uncle worked in as a clean-up man. And so I guess that started my professional career right there. Later on, my mother got me a piano and I played that for a year. And then I lost interest in that, because I didn’t want to take lessons. So I got interested in playing drums. I didn’t get to play them, though, until I got to the sixth grade in school. I decided I wanted to get into the band when I got into the sixth grade. And I went down to the band director’s in the band room and told him I wanted to play drums. He said, “Well, we’ve got all the drummers we need.” He had a kid named Paul Magahey was playing drums and playing the cadence on the drums. And I said, “I’ll play anything he play.” He gave me some sticks, because he didn’t believe me. Well, I had the rhythm, because I was a dancer. 158 esoterica [3.144.250.169] Project MUSE (2024-04-20 01...

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