Road man

Chandler, Ariz.

On some nights it’s a grand old theater or an arena, but on this particular evening James Brown and his band are crowded onto a stage in a bingo hall. The main spotlight is perched in front of the cashier’s cage and, when Brown dances his famous stutter steps, the stage lights cast his long shadow up to the tote board that usually shows the day’s triple-play winner.

Brown turned 70 on May 3. He doesn’t do those scissor-splits anymore and, for much of his one-hour show here, he relied on his band members and dancers to handle most of the heavy lifting. Instead of packing the performance with dance moves, he sprinkles them economically, wisely, and the mostly middle-aged crowd of 1,300 goes wild each time.

It’s safe to say the singer never expected to be working this late in life, especially not 30 or 40 years ago when he was creating some of the most influential rhythmic music in American history.

“When I go out on that stage, I still give it everything,” the singer says backstage before the show at the Wild Horse Pass Casino up the highway from Phoenix. “You wouldn’t be able to tell I’m 70. It couldn’t happen anywhere else, only in America. It’s like Don King said. Come from the lowest people and end up on the top. I thank God. But it has not been easy.”

No, the years have been hard on Brown -- money has been tight, he did prison time for a bizarre gun and drug episode in the late 1980s, and his family life has been marked by lawsuits, loss and upheaval -- but he is still the No. 1 Soul Brother, and that counts for something. So he goes on the road to pay the bills and hear the applause. “I wish people could hear and see me more,” he says. “When they do, I appreciate it.”

The venue’s dressing room is tiny, and Brown, in an immaculate striped suit, sits between a mirror and a travel-sized ironing board. He is wearing large sunglasses that, with his famously unmoving halo of hair and perfectly ordered grin, make the singer’s face appear set in ebony stone. His music is certainly bedrock; his frenetic style and rhythm-above-melody approach in “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag, Pt. 1,” “(I Got You) I Feel Good” and “Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine Pt. 1” not only made him a hero of R&B; and soul, they created an alphabet for the later languages of funk, disco and hip-hop.

“I appreciate the knowledge of the fact that, with God’s guidance, I was able to come up with ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’ and change all the music,” Brown says. “When I hear music now -- I know that I’m in there. I changed the format. I gave the basic training.”

Veteran pop artists know that the years bring ups and downs, stints in arenas followed by seasons on the club circuit hoping for a new hit. Brown, though, is among those legacy artists who have no new music of note but a considerable bank of nostalgia and flashes of heritage-appreciation. That can lead to a strange itinerary that veers between the luminous and the modest.

For example, two nights before the casino show, Brown was on national television at the third annual BET Awards. Steve Harvey presented him with a lifetime achievement award, and a weepy Michael Jackson cited Brown as his most important role model. Will Smith, Magic Johnson and Stevie Wonder were among those taking part in the loving, extended ovation.

The next night Brown played a free-admission show at the San Diego County Fair. His next two gigs are a country club in Duanesburg, N.Y., and the Royal Albert Hall in London. He returns to Southern California for a Hollywood Bowl show Sept. 27; 24 hours later, he’ll be at the Lancaster Performing Arts Center.

The performance at the BET Awards show was a memorable one.

“That was one of the great moments in my life, along with Ed Sullivan many, many years ago, and the Apollo Theatre stage ... I’ll never forget those days,” the singer says.

“I sit here and I can really isolate some of the moments that made my life better than I ever thought it would be.”

Diverse influences

James Joe Brown Jr. was born in 1933 in Barnwell, S.C. (although that date and place have been a matter of some contention through the years) and raised in poverty by his father, who sapped trees for a local turpentine manufacturer. Between age 4 and adulthood, he would not see his mother. By 1940, the boy was being raised in the home of his aunt Minnie, who ran a roadhouse brothel in Augusta, Ga. The brothel’s pipe organ, local gospel preachers and the exuberant music of Louis Jordan all inspired the youngster to pursue music.

“Please Please Please” in 1956 would be his first major hit, but in the 1960s his music veered to the sonically unconventional -- he would yelp, scream, screech, creating songs that were like fever dreams. Hits such as “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” and “Say It Loud -- I’m Black and I’m Proud” would add a social underpinning, but the rhythm was king.

“He knew then and has always known how to make people move,” says Danny Ray. The dapper Ray has one of the most unusual jobs in show business: He introduces “Mr. James Brown” to the stage and throughout the revue exhorts the crowd by repeating the star’s name. (“If I had a penny for every time I’ve said his name....”) He has held that singular post more than four decades. Ray brings out the shimmering cape, too, for the mandatory segment of the show when Brown is escorted from the stage, only to return again and again.

Ray won’t speculate on when Brown might go backstage in that cape and never return.

“He is a trouper. And troupers don’t quit. He will go as long as they let him go on,” Ray says. “I’ve seen him sing everywhere -- Paris, Casablanca, in Kenya, all over South America -- and he will go on as long as there are new places to go.”

One new place: the offices of the South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services. “I sang ‘God Bless America,’ because that is how I felt that day,” the singer says of his May visit. It was a few weeks after his birthday when Brown was given a full pardon for his crimes in the state, most notoriously a 1988 bender on PCP that saw him brandish a shotgun at an insurance seminar and demand to know who had used his private bathroom. In short order, Brown was fleeing from police who shot out his truck tires. He spent 15 months in prison and 10 more on work release.

Brown looks back for a bright side to his troubles with the law.

“I’m not angry,” he said. “I served two years and I got rest. And I just thank America for having their arms open for me when I came back.”

The road rigors are clear when Brown speaks. He has a 2-year-old son now, too, the child of one of his backup singers, and he discusses the boy with a mix of pride and weariness. “The little ones

Brown shakes his head. Then, like his show, the beat abruptly changes. He’s talking about the Hollywood Bowl, again, the two-hour set he has planned with an added string section. He is in trouper mode, ready to sing and dance and move on.

“In any type of battle, any type of war, somebody’s going to get hurt,” he says. “And I’ve gotten hurt many, many, many times. But somehow I came back. God brought me back. Now, all of a sudden, people are in my corner and thanking me for what I have given them for the last 55 years. And for that, I am thankful.”