When he was just a teenager, Alfred Sharpton was invited out on the road with the Godfather of Soul, James Brown. The young preacher styled his hair after Brown, and shortened his name to Al at Brown’s advice. Brown became his surrogate dad. In these excerpts from his new book, “The Rejected Stone,” Sharpton describes losing that father figure — and dealing with a surprise guest at his funeral.
BY REVEREND AL SHARPTON
At about 1:30 a.m., my cell phone started ringing. It was being charged in the living room, so I decided not to get up. I thought it was one of my daughters, who always had a contest between the two of them to see who would be first to call me on the major holidays and say “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Thanksgiving” or “Happy Father’s Day.” But it kept ringing. The person on the other end kept hanging up and calling again. So I went to get my phone — and saw that the number was blocked. Again, I thought it was one of my daughters, trying to be funny.
“Hello?” I said, finally answering when it started again.
“Rev? It’s Charles Bobbit.”
“How you doin’, Mr. Bobbit?” I asked him.
“Mr. Brown is gone,” he said.
“What do you mean, Mr. Brown is gone?”
“James Brown is dead,” he said.
“Huh? I thought you said he was all right!”
“I don’t know what happened,” he said, his voice drifting away. “He’s dead.”
I sat down on the couch, not even realizing I had hung up the phone. I convinced myself that I was having a nightmare — nothing I’d just heard or done had been real. But I was on the couch. My phone was in my hand. I had to call back Mr. Bobbit.
“Mr. Bobbit, did you just call me?” I asked him.
“Rev, are you sitting down?” he said. “James Brown, your dad, is dead. You’re not having a nightmare. He’s gone.”
I hung up the phone again, the numbing dread starting slowly to creep through my body. I turned on the television and just sat there, blankly, dumbly, my mind in a fog. It was about two in the morning. I sat there for three hours without moving. At about 5 a.m., the words crawled across the bottom of the screen: “James Brown is dead at age 73.” That’s when I really started believing it, when the reality of my world without James came crashing down on me. Less than a decade after my dad had walked out on me, James Brown came into my life, about as epic and manly as a father figure could ever get. For nearly thirty-five years, all of my adult life, he had been there for me, a strong, assuring presence, a wise word, a sun-eclipsing superstar. Now he was gone. I later found out that among James’s final words to Bobbit were, “Look out for Reverend Sharpton.”
I called my traveling companion to let him know my plans had changed. Oprah and South Africa would have to be put aside; I was going to Augusta. I called my secretary and told her to make me a reservation. She asked who was traveling with me. I told her I didn’t have time to think about that so I wasn’t taking anybody. And besides, it was Christmas. “You’re going alone?” she asked, surprised. I never traveled alone. But I would have to make an exception on Christmas. Besides, I wanted to be by myself while I processed it all. But then I remembered something — my annual Christmas appointment in Harlem.
“Wait, I still want to feed the hungry. He would want me to feed the hungry. So get me a flight to Augusta at about noon, after I go up to Harlem.” And that’s what I did after James Brown died — I fed the hungry in Harlem. Then I got on a plane to Augusta.
The next three days in my memory are a staggering blur of funerals, sadness, and tears. On Thursday, we had him laid out in state at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, where tens of thousands paid their respects. Then on Friday, we had a small family funeral in Augusta, and finally, on Saturday, we were going to have his big hometown farewell at the arena that had just been stamped with his name a few weeks earlier. I rode with the body for the entire journey. I was exhausted, physically and emotionally spent. At three in the morning, while I was asleep in an Augusta hotel room, my phone rang, another wee-hour summoning to jar me from my dreams. This time it was the mortician, Charlie Reid.
“Rev. Sharpton?” he said, his deep Southern accent slowly oozing through my phone.
“Yeah, Mr. Reid. Please don’t tell me something’s wrong now. We done got through the worst of it,” I said.
“Nah, nothing’s wrong, Rev. Sharpton,” he said. “I just wanted you to give me authorization. I just got a call from Michael Jackson.”
I could still hear the wonder in his voice.
“He’s in town and he wants to come by the funeral home and see the body,” he said.
“Michael Jackson? But Michael is in Bahrain.”
“Nah, he’s here. He wants to come by and see Mr. Brown,” Mr. Reid said. “I didn’t want to wake the girls up.”
I was shaking my head, shocked again by one of Michael’s moves. “Yeah, he’s authorized. But tell Michael to call me.”
“All right, I will, Rev. Sharpton.”
I sat there waiting, not able to get back to sleep. An hour passed with no call. An hour and a half. So I called back Mr. Reid.
“Mr. Reid, did Michael come?”
“Yeah, he came,” Mr. Reid said. “He sat here a whole hour. He told me I combed James’s hair wrong. He took a comb and he recombed it.”
“Wait a minute — he recombed the hair?”
“Yeah, he redid it,” Mr. Reed said. “Said I did it wrong. He sat here with the body for an hour.”
“Did you tell him to call me?”
“Yeah, he said he was going to call you.”
So I called Michael myself and told him he shouldn’t leave. I knew Michael well — he’d come and sit with the body and then get out of town.
“One day you’re going to have to reappear in public,” I told him.
He had not been in the States and had not been seen in public since the trial, which had ended a year and a half earlier.
“What better time to do it? You came to show your respect to your idol,” I continued.
“I’ll think about it,” he said and hung up.
Word got out that Michael had been in town, but everyone assumed he was gone. However, the next day, halfway through the funeral at the James Brown Arena, Michael walked in. He came over and sat next to me and the family. The band broke into a memorial tribute to James, playing some of his biggest songs. The band members started motioning for Michael to come join them on the stage.
“Sit there — don’t go,” I said into Michael’s ear.
“What do you mean?” he asked me.
“Don’t move,” I said.
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t want the first time you come back and are in public and the picture everybody sees is you on the stage boogying and dancing and moonwalking. You came to mourn James. Don’t get up there with the band.”
“OK,” he said, nodding his head. “But I want to see the body one more time.”
So we stood up and walked over to the casket. The family all gathered around. Michael leaned over and gave James a tender kiss, saying his final good-bye. When I got up to do the eulogy, I talked in the beginning about Michael, how much he looked up to James and the standard of music they had created. Then I asked Michael to say a few words. This was the statement that went around the world, Michael’s reintroduction to the public.
“James Brown is my greatest inspiration,” Michael said. “Ever since I was a small child, no more than six years old, my mother would wake me no matter what time it was, if I was sleeping, no matter what I was doing, to watch the television to see the master at work. And when I saw him move, I was mesmerized. I never saw a performer perform like James Brown. And right then and there, I knew that was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life, because of James Brown. James Brown, I shall miss you, and I love you so much and thank you for everything.”
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