James Brown, Pee Wee Ellis and Me...

When I was growing up in Texas, I was always the smallest guy, and I was hanging out with older guys playing music. I was a skinny little kid. That was a long time ago, but it stuck. The first time I auditioned for James Brown, I went up to him and said, 'Hey I'm Pee Wee," but he didn't like to call me Pee Wee, he called me Alfred. Him and me.

Pee Wee Ellis

I wasn't from a musical family, although my stepfather did manage a local band and there were musicians around the house all the time. I guess I was quite impressionable and these guys seem to lead exciting lives. One of them taught me "In My Solitude" on the piano. I was fascinated how he voiced the chords, not from the roots upwards, but in different configurations. I was hooked. I guess that's how music became such an important part of my life. As well as being shy and a bit of a loner too, I gravitated towards music as my best friend and something I could be a part of unconditionally, and was mine alone. That sounds a little selfish, but it really wasn't because I always wanted to share it, just on my own terms I guess.

Pee Wee Ellis

James Brown Plays James Brown (1966) signed by Pee Wee, James Brown, Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley

In 1965, I joined the James Brown Revue. I got a phone call from Waymon Reed, a trumpet player who had come to Rochester to go to the Eastman School Of Music a few years earlier and we'd become mates, playing together in clubs while I was still in high school. Anyway, Wayman had joined the JB show and they needed a saxophone player. I took the job and met the show in Washington, DC at the Howard Theater. The show was amazing. As I watched from the sideline, I was blown away by the intricate movements and tight arrangements. I mean, my jaw was on the floor. There were moments when I wondered if I would ever be able to do that. But after about a week watching the show, I got my uniform and started rehearsing with the band. By the time we left Washington, I had a seat on the bus and almost knew the show. Six months later, I was the bandleader. The first arrangement I did for the band was "Let Yourself Go." Mr. Brown liked my work and we went forward from there and never looked back for four years... and twenty-six songs.

Pee Wee Ellis

I respected him and he respected me. I questioned him and he was a fantastic innovator. He had the insight and the raw energy and imagination. He was such a determined, forceful character. He didn't adhere to the basic rules of music at that time. His kinda thing was, '"If it feels good, do it, if it sounds good, then it's right," He was just raw talent.

Pee Wee Ellis on James Brown

Grits & Soul (1965) signed by Pee Wee, James Brown, Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley

Best known for his association as James Brown's music director from 1965 to 1969, Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis had a remarkable career as an arranger, composer and tenor saxophonist. While he is celebrated for co-writing the James Brown classics “Cold Sweat," "Licking Stick," "Mother Popcorn," and "The Chicken," perhaps his most compelling contribution to the JB canon is "Say It Loud ~ I'm Black and I'm Proud.” The song, introduced during the turbulent turmoil of 1968, became an important civil rights anthem and, sadly, remains increasingly relevant now. In collaboration, Pee Wee provided the music while James wrote the lyrics, as Pee Wee recounted, "I had no idea what he was going to write. It was a surprise to me. It was in the studio when I first found out what that was all about. But my biggest memory of that is the first time we played it live, in New York at The Apollo, shortly after we recorded it. Didn't seem like there would have been enough time for people to have heard it, but when James Brown said, "Say It Loud!" and the whole theater said, "I'm black and I'm proud!" It sent chills up my spine. It was amazing, it was like an anthem." No less than a towering figure of hip hop, eminence griot Chuck D of Public Enemy explained its significance, "Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud" was a record that really convinced me to say I was black instead of a negro. Back then black folks were called negroes, but James said you can "Say It Loud," that being black is a great thing instead of something you have to apologize for."

Born in Bradenton, Florida, Pee Wee initially played piano, "I took piano lessons, my first organized form of studying music. I must've been eight or nine years old. My Aunt Mary used to ride me there on the handlebars of her bicycle. Let's say that was 1949 or '50, just before moving to Lubbock, Texas where I got more serious about music." Thank goodness for Aunt Mary's care and dedication in skillfully transporting one of the future founders of Funk! For his part, Pee Wee was humble about his credit and contributions to all things Funk, "Well, I don't mind it, since it wasn't me by myself that invented it - James Brown had something to do with it! But I did bring some jazz influence to his projects and that had something to do with the transformation from R&B."

In Lubbock, Pee Wee developed his skills and garnered his nickname which would endure for the rest of his life. So long Alfred, hello Pee Wee! He remembered his Lubbock musical experiences, "When I was twelve, I tried out for the band at Dunbar Junior High School in the summer of 1953 on clarinet... Although I wanted to play the saxophone, a very wise band director, Roy Roberts, started me on clarinet. He was an alto sax player and really knew his stuff. After a short while, I got very good on clarinet and was given a tenor saxophone. I remember feeling like, 'Wow, this is home.' "

Lubbock was a welcome respite musically, although it did provide a jarring family tragedy several years later, as Pee Wee ruefully recounted, "Well, I was doing fine in Lubbock with great support from the band director Mr. Roberts, my mother and stepfather. My stepfather, Ezell Ellis, managed local bands in local bars for dancing and once in a while would roust me out of bed in the middle of the night to play piano because the piano player was drunk. It was in one of those bars where he was stabbed to death by an irate customer for dancing with a white lady that insisted he did so. He died at the hospital in the hallway because he was black and they wouldn't take him in." It was an attack as violent as it was vile and it reverberated throughout Pee Wee's life as you would expect. "How did that affect me? Well, I'm not sure if I'm still not working on it,” Pee Wee said in a 2010 interview. “ It surely disrupted my life in a major way. That's when and why we relocated to Rochester, New York, it was September 1955."

The Ellis family, including his two younger sisters, moved to Rochester to live with an aunt and they slowly recovered from the trauma and rebuilt their lives. It was an uneasy transition, "It was a real culture shock. I was uprooted from my school, my friends, and my bandleader in Lubbock, Mr. Roberts, who had been my mentor..." Pee Wee persevered and, still in high school, he started playing gigs and earning money at local Rochester clubs. When he retrieved his saxophone from a repair shop in New York City, a chance encounter with the Saxophone Colossus forever altered his life. Pee Wee explained, "In 1957, I was walking down Broadway in New York City and had my saxophone fresh out of the repair shop. There was someone walking towards me with a saxophone that turned out to be Sonny Rollins on his way to a practice room on 48th Street. I asked him if he'd give me a lesson, being young and cheeky. He said 'Yes,' and from that moment, my life changed forever. I still lived in Rochester but every Wednesday I would fly to New York City and meet Sonny for a lesson. It was time well spent. Sonny was a great teacher, focusing mostly on the basics and what and how to practice. I was like a kid in a candy store...a sponge in deep water." Pee Wee financed the lessons with his $90 weekly earnings from the Pythodd Club, which covered the $55 round trip flights from Rochester to NYC, and still left money for Sonny who, according to Pee Wee, didn't charge him much money at all.

Please Please Please (1963) signed by James Brown

Soon, Pee Wee was recruited to join the indefatigable James Brown. The road pace was dizzying, the squabbles were wearying as James Brown was a legendary taskmaster who fined band members for missing notes or cues on stage, and for not polishing their shoes to his liking. James Brown's reputation as a martinet was certainly well earned as nothing escaped his voracious attention to detail. Despite the success, Pee Wee left, "I was kind of tired of it at that time. It was a full time job. I wanted to do other things and I couldn't do them when I was working with James Brown. It was a learning experience but it had run its course. After four years, it was like being in the Army. And I was the bandleader, so the band would come to me with issues about James Brown, and James Brown would come to me with his issues with the band. I was the mediator."

Free from the bondage of James Brown, Pee Wee began work with noted record producer Creed Taylor and his then nascent record label CTI, " In 1970, I left the JB Revue to expand my horizons and became closely involved with CTI KUDU records as arranger, conductor, contractor. I had the privilege to work with many wonderful artists like George Benson, Hank Crawford, and Esther Phillips to name a few." In 1977, Pee Wee moved to San Francisco, and he lived for a while on a houseboat near Sausalito while forming a band with fellow saxophonist David Leibman. They released two albums together, both released in 1977, Home In The Country and Light'n Up Please!.

Pee Wee also began a long musical partnership with another mercurial genius, the great Van Morrison, "In 1979, I started working with Van Morrison who was also living in the Bay Area. The first thing I did with him was Into The Music, which remains one of my favorites. I think I'm most proud of that one as well. It started with one track, "You Make Me Feel So Free," and Van loved it and said, 'Let's do another one.' Pretty soon I was doing the whole record with him. That led to becoming his music director for the next eight years." They remained good friends and Pee Wee contributed his talents as an arranger and performer on ten albums in Van's voluminous and always expanding discography.

Pee Wee also found time to work with his expats from James Brown: the formidable frontline of Pee Wee on tenor, Fred Wesley on trombone and Maceo Parker on alto, tenor and baritone saxophone. What was unmistakably evident in all their recordings and performances was their collective skill and talents in bringing the funk! Pee Wee recalled their concerts fondly, "Yes, in between all the other stuff, I found time to get together with my old friends and ex-JB front men Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker. We formed a band called The JB Horns, recording several albums and touring extensively during the '90s. My favorite memory from that time is being on the bandstand with those two guys and letting it rip. We were like on automatic pilot, three voices in one mind, it was amazing. We would come off the stage and you could ring our clothes out. No one ever left one of our shows unsatisfied."

A Blow For Me, A Toot For Me (1974) signed by Pee Wee, Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley

Regrettably, Erin and I only saw Pee Wee once. He had repaired more than thirty years earlier to the English countryside outside of London, had become a proper English gentleman and toured infrequently in the United States, although he continued to record and release albums intermittently. He played a gig at The Iridium in New York City in April 2010 and convened an all star band including Mulgrew Miller on piano, the ubiquitous Ron Carter on bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums, the last surviving member of Miles Davis' epochal Kind Of Blue, a gateway drug for jazz collectors and enthusiasts everywhere. Pee Wee and Ron Carter were old friends from Rochester, when Ron attended The Eastman School of Music, and, while they had done studio work at CTI in the 1970s, they had not performed together on a stage in over fifty years. They played mostly jazz standards in a straight ahead groove - "There Is No Greater Love," "Airegin," from the Sonny Rollins songbook and Tadd Dameron's "Good Bait." Sadly, there was no funk from the James Brown songbook, just a mid tempo groover, "Blue Bell Pepper," a track off Different Rooms, Pee Wee's most recent CD. After the show, Pee Wee was gracious as he signed some James Brown vinyl. He hesitated when I handed him A Blow For Me, A Toot For You, "Yeah, I'm not on this one," he said. 'But your friends Maceo and Fred are!" I replied, and he was happy to add his name to his illustrious compadres. We thanked him for his time and especially his music.

Pee Wee Ellis left the bandstand on September 23, 2021 after a short illness. He was eighty years old. Arranger, composer, performer extraordinaire, a somewhat reluctant founder of funk, a real jazz artist at his core, what a legacy he leaves!

Choice Pee Wee Ellis Cuts (per BKs request)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2yPKU9lrPc

“Cold Sweat” live with James Brown at the Olympia, Paris 1967

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hj1iWqoYEc

"Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud" Say It Loud 1968

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hco9bCh7Nes

“Tupelo Honey” live with Van Morrison, Montreux 1980

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nP_i6MeK1Q&list=PLdktF-lL0yEaXlzZwZ_QCTvvttPCWh5qg

"Wavelength" live with Van Morrison at Montreux 1980

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chFE3kZTMec

"You Make Me Feel So Free" Into The Music with Van Morrison 1979

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odWm7TbUkc4

"Do Dee Dum Diddy" Yellin' Blue 1994

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzpzYbkHXxI

"The Chicken" The Cologne Concerts 2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evzGIJHdFA0

"Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" live with James Brown at the Olympia 1967

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-c2WtZmObM

"Licking Stick" with James Brown 1968

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95_vma5e494

"That's Life" live with Van Morrison 1998

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eoSXpNZD9o

"Mother Popcorn" live with James Brown 1969

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fu35rcAPEQQ

"I'm So Tired Of Being Alone" A New Shift 2013 Pee Wee plays Al Green!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WMo84SviY8

"Boogie On Reggae Woman" Different Rooms 2007 Pee Wee plays Stevie!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mM9tbxW-oq8

"Pass The Peas" live with Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley 1993

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFR6_QYdHyg

"Funky Good Time" live with Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley

A New Shift (1996) signed by Pee Wee

Blues Mission (1993) signed by Pee Wee

Live And Funky (2001) signed by Pee Wee