About the Book
A behind-the-scenes look at the Chitlin' Circuit during America's most vital period of soul music--from the eyes and ears of a young, Jewish kid from Queens who joined the team of the hardest working man in show business and learned the art of the music business at the hand of the performer who mastered it. In the mid-'60s, Alan Leeds was a young DJ looking for his way into the music business. An interview with James Brown to promote a local show in Virginia led to an opportunity to promote one of Brown's concerts, which then led to Brown hiring him to help run his tours. Soon Leeds was wearing many hats and traveling around the country as Brown battled a complicated web of local promoters and managers, all too willing to try to rip him off. In this riveting book--part memoir, part history--Leeds weaves a wholly new and remarkable portrait of Brown as an idiosyncratic iconoclast, determined artist, and forceful businessman. It is a rare look into a world little known to white America immediately following the Civil Rights Movement. Leeds discovers that Brown is a fascinatingly complex man and their experiences, both business and personal, range from emotional to humorous. All the while, they navigate the complicated world of popular black music in America, told by someone who actually lived it.
About the Author :
Writer-producer-tour manager, New-York-born Alan Leeds is a music business veteran. First hired by James Brown as a publicist in 1970, Leeds was soon Soul Brother #1's tour director. From 1975 until 1983 Leeds was a freelance tour manager, working with Kool and the Gang, Bootsy's Rubber Band, and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes featuring Teddy Pendergrass, Kiss, and Cameo. In 1983 he moved to Minneapolis to begin a ten-year stint as Prince's personal tour manager and then president of his Paisley Park Records joint venture with Warner Brothers. In 1992 Alan formed a tour management company whose clients have included Sheila E., Bootsy Collins, Morris Day and The Time, the late Barry White, Maxwell, D'Angelo, Raphael Saadiq, Roy Hargrove, Renee Neufville, and Chris Rock. As a writer-producer Leeds has a long-standing consultancy agreement with Universal Music to coproduce their ongoing schedule of James Brown-related products, including writing liner notes and helping compile over thirty different albums. He has also contributed to the production and liner notes for CDs by Prince, Weather Report, Funkadelic, Mavis Staples, Hugh Masekela, D'Angelo, Bootsy Collins, Eddie Palmieri, LP Music, and Bob Belden. Leeds won a Grammy Award in 1992 for his liner notes to the James Brown Star Time box set. Alan was also a regular contributor to Wax Poetics magazine, and in 2008, Penguin Books released the critically acclaimed The James Brown Reader, edited by Leeds and Nelson George. Alan currently resides in Minneapolis with his wife of thirty-plus years, Gwen. Questlove is a six-time Grammy Award-winning musician, Academy Award-winning filmmaker, drummer, DJ, producer, director, culinary entrepreneur, New York Times bestselling author, cofounder of the Roots, and the musical director for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where the Roots serves as the house band. He made his directorial debut with the Academy Award-, Grammy Award-, and BAFTA Award-winning documentary film Summer of Soul, which broke the record for the highest-selling documentary to come out of the Sundance Film Festival. He is a cofounder of Two One Five Entertainment. He is the publisher of AUWA Books, an imprint of MCD / Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Questlove is a six-time Grammy Award-winning musician, Academy Award-winning filmmaker, drummer, DJ, producer, director, culinary entrepreneur, New York Times bestselling author, cofounder of the Roots, and the musical director for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where the Roots serves as the house band. He made his directorial debut with the Academy Award-, Grammy Award-, and BAFTA Award-winning documentary film Summer of Soul, which broke the record for the highest-selling documentary to come out of the Sundance Film Festival. He is a cofounder of Two One Five Entertainment. He is the publisher of AUWA Books, an imprint of MCD / Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
A veteran of stage and screen, Peter Berkrot's career spans four decades. Highlights include feature roles in Caddyshack and Showtime's Brotherhood, and appearances on America's Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries. His voice can be heard on television, radio, video games, documentaries, and industrials. He is a prominent acting coach and a regular contributor to the award-winning news program Frontline produced by WGBH in Boston. Peter served as director of narration for the Emmy-nominated The Truth About Cancer. Peter has recorded over 170 audiobooks, over 100 for children. He has been nominated for an Audie Award and has received a number of AudioFile Earphones Awards and starred reviews. His favorite titles include Toby and the Secrets of the Tree by Timotee de Fombelle, Unholy Night by Seth Grahame-Smith, The Accident by Linwood Barclay, and the Last Policeman trilogy by Ben H. Winters.
