Riding on James Brown’s tour bus in 1964, sax player Maceo Parker was joking with his brother Melvin, the band’s drummer, about their boss. Clowning around, Maceo pulled off a James Brown impression so spot-on that Melvin laughed out loud.
Word of Maceo’s performance got back to the hardest-working man in show business. He was not happy.
“The next time you want to talk about me,” Brown said with all seriousness as he patted down his infamously well-coiffed head of hair, “you better have your guns ready.”
In his new memoir, “98% Funky Stuff: My Life in Music,” Parker paints a picture of Soul Brother No. 1 as paranoid, petty, controlling and abusive. He fined or fired band members for the slightest infractions, and even sabotaged Parker’s efforts to branch out on his own.
“He was trying to show his authority,” Parker tells The Post about the “have your guns” incident. “He thought we were plotting some sort of takeover.”
Brown demonstrated that authority with ruthlessness. At one tour stop, a band member complained that the bus parked too far from the hotel, requiring serious schlepping.
The next day, the bus stopped right by the town’s “City Limits” sign. Brown said: “Our agreement was that I’m supposed to provide you transportation to the city. Well, we’re here. Now find your own rides to the hotel — and you’d better be ready for rehearsal on time.”
Tired of Brown’s abuse, most of the band left in 1970 to form Maceo & All the King’s Men.
Brown got out his guns.
When the group asked deejays to play its new record, they refused. Brown had paid them to ignore it.
“It’s funny how he felt it had to be that way,” says Parker. “His thing was, ‘I’m gonna make sure you’re not gonna make it on your own. The only way you can make it is through me.’ ”
Parker left Brown’s band several times. When he rejoined in 1984, he found that the strictly disciplined group had been replaced by heavy drug users, Brown included, with nowhere near the talent and discipline of previous incarnations.
“I don’t think he knew how to accept the fact that he was getting older,” he says. “He was slowing down, he couldn’t do the screams like he could at one time, couldn’t do the fast footwork. So he resorted to the drug thing.”
Despite all he tolerated, though, Parker remains grateful to Brown for giving him a career that allowed him to spend his life doing the thing he loved the most — playing music.
“I looked at him like a conductor on a train,” says Parker. “If you wanna ride, you gotta take it in stride.”