The Saturday after Mr. James Brown died, I had a house party for which I practically filled the memory of my iPod docking system with several dozen of his funky hits and Motown ballads in a kind of tribute.
As I watched my guests—a multiracial, multiethnic crowd of neighbors, co-workers and friends from the Tony Bennett to the hip hop generations—get their grooves on, I began to wonder: What if Mr. Brown had opened a restaurant, or at least, lent his Name to one? Would its appeal be as diverse as the dance floor before me?
What if he brought the same passion, discipline and energy to running a restaurant that he brought to music and dance?
One obituary I found online said he was a fast-food franchisee, but it did not mention the brand. (If you know, please tell me.)
Say his place were called “The Godfather of Soul’s Ribs & Juke Joynt,” would it have had signature dishes like “Make It Funky Fried Chicken,” “Say It Loud Blackened Catfish,” “Big Payback Peach Cobbler,” “Get On The Good Foot Gumbo,” “Super Bad BBQ Ribs,” or “The Hardest Working Hamburger in Show Business”?
Would the servers make even a Hooters Girl blush? Would they be plus-size curvy girls like the ones who danced on stage behind him in those oversized Afro wigs, miniskirts and thigh-high boots?
No, says Leah Chase, busting my fantasy. “The last thing he would have done was open a restaurant,” says Leah, the 84-year-old Queen of Creole cuisine. “He had his own thing with music and dance, and he never mentioned [foodservice aspirations] to me.”
She would know. She knew Mr. Brown simply as “James” for 40-plus years, reflecting countless restaurant industry relationships in which entertainment, sports and political personalities are able to drop their celebrity status and just be customers in an eatery they love with owners they consider friends.
Leah recalls how early in Mr. Brown’s career when he was on tour and Jim Crow apartheid was alive and well, her now 65-year-old restaurant, Dooky Chase in New Orleans, was the only mainstream, full-service restaurant where blacks, celebrity or not, could eat in the dining room.
Leah says Mr. Brown loved her gumbo. She says the last time she saw him in the restaurant—which has been closed since Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005 and will finally reopen next month—was about two years Ago during lunch. “James always had that straw hat and a cane, and he took pictures with these little old ladies having a business meeting here and they were having the time of their lives with him,” she recalls. She adds that he was “just grinning, making folks happy. And that’s the key to it. He was about making people happy.
“He made us so proud,” she continues. “He was about music and dance, but he is really a historic person. He changed things, got people to talking, and yet, when he came here, he was just a regular fella. Just James.”