The Godfather’s Last Appearance at the Apollo
I remember coming into “the City” from white bread, Long Island back in Eisenhower’s immaculate, buttoned-down 50s.
Just as we’d cross over the Williamsburg Bridge onto Delancey Street approaching the Bowery, my father would say,
“Roll up the windows and lock the doors.”
This was always a little bit scary but odd to me, as we’d drive by all the homeless “bums” who surrounded our Chevy Impalla station wagon at the stop lights, each attempting to wash our windshields for any spare change we could offer. We’d offer none, for we were buttoned-down and rolled up tight.
The other thing and place we’d avoid at all costs was heading uptown to Harlem. You know, the place above 125th Street where all the “Negroes” lived in their own, over-crowded, swarming-with-danger-and-violence, “ghetto”.
I remember driving past the Apollo Theatre one time, reading the famous marquee… LIVE, JAMES BROWN…
or was it a dream?
I certainly never got out of the car to see any of my boyhood soul singer hero-icons like Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Bobby Blue Bland, or the Godfather of Soul, himself, James Brown.
Of course, I did drag my timid suburban friends with me to Central Park’s Wollman Skating Rink every summer where we saw the easier to swallow Motown acts like the Four Tops, The Temptations, and Martha and the Vandellas. Never did you catch me with Berry Gordy’s watered-down dream girls, the Supremes.
So, as you might imagine, it came as quite a thrill and surprise to me in the last weeks of 2006, as I found myself visiting New Yawk with my Indonesian wife, house sitting on 122nd and Amsterdam… just a few blocks from… Harlem.
This was, of course, the cloistered world of Columbia University, where we had five ethnic restaurants on the same block, just down the street from Grant’s Tomb and Riverside Church.
But just three blocks to the East was the Forbidden Land, Harlem, still with the jazz-deco Lenox Lounge and all the soul food you could eat.
I could hardly believe myself walking through Morningside Park at 122nd Street, up Saint Nicholas to 125th Street, seeing all the street hawkers, pirate DVD sellers, and homeboys and homegirls “on the street”.
Soho, Tri-beca, Wall Street, the Upper Westside, the Upper Eastside…. not.
As we walked past the Apollo on 125th Street between Adam Clayton Powell Blvd (7th Ave.) and Frederick Douglass Blvd. (8th Ave.), my wife snapped me several times doing my best homeboy/Kanye West imitation.
It was a kick for me, sort of a settling of a personal suburban score.
The day after Christmas, we walked over to the Magic Johnson theatres on 124th Street and caught the ten o’clock in the morning show of Dream Girls.
I was the only honky in the house. Another soul point.
And the movie…. just looking at Beyonce, listening to Jennifer Hudson, and watching Eddie Murphy do his best James Brown impression was both a soulful flashback to the pre-cover, R&B music of the day and, a contemporary cinematic treat. Both my wife and I walked out singing and “dancing in the streets”.
The next day, Wednesday, December 27th, I saw it.
The headline over the shoulder of a fellow passenger on the uptown A train:
“James Brown Dead”.
Followed by:
“Body to Lie in State Tomorrow at the Apollo.”
Damn. I was supposed to go visit a friend in Sussex Count, New Jersey, on Thursday. Hang out by the lake. Breathe the fresh air.
But c’mon, one has to have their priorities straight, right?
Here I was around the corner. I was “living” in the hood (almost).
I had just seen Eddie do his Godfather turn in Dream Girls.
And now The Man himself up and dies the next day.
He’s going to be carried by horse and carriage through the streets of Harlem by the Reverend Al Sharpton, to a memorial at the Apollo right down the street. I mean, talk about synchronicity; talk about loyalty; talk about,
“I’m going to the Apollo, honey. I’ll be back in a few hours.”
And there Iam. Ten o’clock in the morning on Thursday. There’s only a few hundred people this early, lined up on 125th Street, squeezed in between the barricades and the dominating presence of the omnipresent press corps and NYPD.
People are hawking James Brown t-shirts, dvd collections; 98.7 KISS FM is handing out 8×11 handbills “remembering James Brown”, but only one to a customer.
I’m standing there in front of the theatre, amongst the teaming press corps, in my honky gray tweed overcoat, blending into the scene .
No one is bothering me.
The Chief of Police says hello, asking “Is your name Syd?”
I say, “Yeah.”
Why not? It’s still hours before the Godfather’s body will actually appear, hours before thousands more will curl around the corner onto to Frederick Douglas in a fury of mourning and party. It’s a carnival-like atmosphere, and I’m an invisible fly on the pavement.
Then all of sudden, there’s a great stir amongst the crowd. It’s pandemonium. I crane my head to see – the impossible. Pushing his way through the throng, in his sad-as-tears, soulful way, is… the Godfather himself.
James Brown. It’s him!
The press corps is popping and pushing.
The crowd is moaning and screaming. The Godfather is being carried forward by centrifugal force – right towards me.
I lift my camera above the crowd. I click the digital shutter.
The Godfather is right there, a foot in front of me!
James Brown lives!
He’s pulled another fast one.
Hi death is a sham. A publicity stunt.
The Godfather’s walking there right in front of my eyes.
But then the murmur trickles through the crowd.
“An impersonator”.
“Look at him, dude. The spittin’ image!”
And it is. Obviously.
Because James Brown is being driven at this moment from the airport in a van by the Reverend Al Sharpton. He’s dead.
But hell. This nameless charlatan looks exactly like him. And more importantly, we all don’t have anything else to do for the next three hours – but wait.
So this impersonator-dude is the next best thing.
The crowd screams, sings,
“Owwwww! I feel goooood.”
We all answer in our collective minds:
“Like I knew that I would! Bah! Bah! Bah! Bah!”
And who knows where each and every one of the thousands of fans are in their own minds, in their individual memories? Thinking of the hits, the performances, where they were at the time, the legacy: “Sex Machine”, “Papa’s Gotta Brand New Bag””, and “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud”.
Hell, I’m not black, but I’m proud to be here in Harlem on 12/28/2006. Thinking of Cassius Clay, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, Amira Baraka…
…my dad rolling up the windows and locking the doors.
The crowd is festive and impatient at the same time. Apparently JB has had a late arrival to the airport. “The Hardest Working Man in Show Biz” almost doesn’t make it to the Apollo for his own memorial.
But then, as another stir rises from the crowd, this time for real, he’s there.
Buggy, carriage, two white horses with feather plumes, pulling a gold casket.
The casket is escorted inside the legendary theatre.
The crowd begins to file by to pay their last respects.
The Apollo marquee says it all:
“Rest in Peace: Apollo Legend, The Godfather of Soul, James Brown, 1933-2006”.
Tomorrow the Godfather will be buried in Augusta, Georgia. The crowd will have dispersed. Dream Girls, the movie, will be raking in the ticket sales. Life will be moving on.
Me? I’ll be going to comfortable, scenic New Jersey to visit an old suburban friend who most likely came with me to Wollman Skating Rink to see The Temps back in the day.
I know my pal will forgive me for being a day late. I know he’ll understand.
And I know he’ll be sorry… he wasn’t with me at the Apollo.
For the last Appearance of the Godfather of Soul.
R.I.P.
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