Entertainment industry veterans hail James Brown for his business acumen

By Sherrel Wheeler Stewart
BlackAmericaWeb.com
(December 29, 2006) He topped record charts and dazzled crowds on stage for more than five decades, but behind the stage, James Brown was about making money and working to control his financial destiny, friends and industry observers say.
 
“He knew the importance of owning your music. He knew the significance of blacks owning media and owning their own radio stations,” Shelley Stewart, a marketing company CEO who has owned radio stations and promoted entertainment nationwide, told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
 
Brown, a man whose music showcased the fabric of black culture for the world to see, died Christmas Day at the age of 73. He will be buried on Saturday in Augusta, Ga. Thousands poured into New York’s Apollo Theater on Thursday to see the soul man’s body at rest in a hall where he performed many times in a packed house.
 
While the songs he sang often related to the social, political and economic struggle of blacks in the '60s and '70s, they also reflected Brown’s economic philosophy. "'Say it Loud' was about being proud of who you are and striving to be the best,” said Stewart, who still has, at his home in Birmingham, Alabama, photos of he and Brown during the good times. When the two met, Brown was performing on the "chitlin circuit" -- clubs and music halls where blacks went for entertainment during segregation.
 
As he made money, Brown used it to build his businesses. When it wasn’t a common thing, Brown owned three radio stations in the late 60s and early 70s. If you check the credits on all of hits, you’ll find that he’s the writer or the co-writer. And Brown didn’t use an outside company to handle his promotions. It was done through a company he owned.

“He was different from other black entertainers of his era,” media entrepreneur Lee Bailey told BlackAmericaWeb.com. “Nobody thought about owning their own radio station or owning their own jet. He was not flamboyant. He was just a businessman. I have to give him his props.”
 
He traveled on his private airplane, something that biographer Marc Eliot said annoyed some whites because they viewed it as arrogance.
 
“Donald Trump flies on his on plane, but that’s what you expect. He inherited money,” Eliot told BlackAmericaWeb.com. James Brown earned his money on stage and through the selling his chart topping music. Eliot wrote Brown’s memoir, “I Feel Good,” published in 2005.
 
“James Brown was loud and proud. The person you saw performing on stage was not an act. It was an extension of the man and who he really was,” Eliot said.
 
“He started his own publishing company because he didn’t trust anybody,” Eliot said. “It wasn’t a racial thing. It was about being in business for yourself to control your own organization.”
 
Entertainment journalist Tanya Kersey said Brown pioneered a business style that now is duplicated by other major entertainers. Like Brown, entertainers like Prince today handle much of their own promotion and business arrangements.
 
“You can see his influence on so many artists,” Kersey told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
 
While some black entertainers would change their style to appeal to a crossover audience, Brown didn’t think a move like that was necessary, Eliot said.  “He became an ambassador without softening his act.”
 
His music still is sold today worldwide and has been used by hip-hop artists in their music for years.
 
Brown in 1999 saw the potential on the horizon and made a deal with a New York financier to get money in his hand based on the future royalties from his work. That was one of the biggest deals of Brown’s business career, providing about $30 million, said David Pullman, the man who sold the James Brown bonds.
 
The money would be repaid using royalties from Brown’s work from the start of his career through the 1990s, Pullman told Black America Web.com.
 
“It works like a mortgage, so the money is tax-free,” Pullman said. James Brown bonds were sold to insurers at a yield of about 8 percent.
 
“He used some of that money to pay back taxes. He invested some of it,” said Pullman.
 
Seven years later, Brown’s representatives wanted to refinance the deal, but Pullman said he rejected it. “They were trying to do it through another bank," he said. "We have exclusive refinancing rights."
 
At the time of his death, Brown still had not resolved a lawsuit over that deal. He, his lawyers and his manager questioned the terms of the deal and the length of time Pullman’s company could hold the royalty rights.
 
While Brown tried to keep his business in order, there were public downfalls. His business suffered because of troubles with the Internal Revenue Service and because of his bout with drugs and the law.
 
But the arrest in 2004 had a significant impact on Brown’s life, the singer told Eliot during interviews for the memoir. Eliot asked him to talk about the arrest and Brown told him, “The arrest may have saved my life because that was the only place I could go to get off of drugs.’”
 
Brown performed and toured until days before his hospitalization in Atlanta. “He never stopped performing,” Kersey said. “What other 73-year-old do you know who can do it like that? Now that he’s gone, people are taking a look at what was there, and what was lost.”


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