The J.B.'s - Doing It To Death
The J.B.'s - Doing It To Death

CF: This record was around the time that Tina and I started going out, dancing in bars to ‘Doing It To Death’ and also ‘Gimme Some More’ and ‘Pass the Peas’. There are so many great James Brown albums but this one is nice because James isn’t even on it!

TW: I mean, James is great, but he’s the kind of guy who’d be in a room and the band would be jamming and he’d walk from one person to the next and listen to them and go “yeah, yeah, yeah, love it, that’s great.” He’d learn what they were doing and at the end of it he’d say, “I wrote this!” So I love this one because, in our own way, we’re saying, man, what a band. Even without James.

CF: I met him in Compass Point. My father, who was an army general and an attorney, was visiting and I took the opportunity to introduce him to James Brown. He said “Mr Brown, my son made you famous”, because our Tom Tom Club song ‘Genius Of Love’ was a hit at the time, with the lines “James Brown, James Brown”. James Brown said, “General Frantz, your son might be a genius, but I was already famous.”

Then we met him a couple of other times. Tina I think you had a nice conversation with him at Sigma Sound?

TW: Well, he was working in the studio attempting to help La Toya Jackson put something together. We were working on Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers’ first album. This was 1987. One of his assistants asked me to tell him his limousine was there. I said “Mr Brown! I’m told your limousine has arrived!” He had no idea who I was, but introductions were made and he said: “You’re my children. You’re all my children!”