ECHOES
Echoes is a biweekly one-sided conversation with the Obituary page. Every two weeks, Mordecai Martin takes a deeper look at a notable life, and in doing so, addresses how death, celebrity and history intersect.
Echoes addresses how we grieve, how we celebrate life, and how we close chapters in the history books, all while questioning the objectivity of the conventional obituary.
Mordecai Martin is a 5th generation New York Jew, an obsessive reader of the NY Times obits, and a writer. Having lived in Jerusalem and Mexico City, he now resides in Philadelphia with his wife Atenea and Pharaoh-Let-My-People-Go the cat. His fiction work has appeared in Sortes, Gone Lawn, the Bitchin' Kitsch, and Toho Journal. He tweets @mordecaipmartin and blogs at http://www.mordecaimartin.net.
18.2.21
A man walks onto the stage. But first, a man walks onto the stage. The point of the first man is the second. That is, he’s there to get the heart thumping, get the blood pumping, get the people jumping. The first man is there to begin the show, the second man IS the show. The show is over, and both men are dead. But the music keeps on going.
Celebrities are called stars not just because they shine, but because they have orbits. James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, with his sequined costumes and achingly beautiful scream of passion, was not just a man but an industry, a small dynamic force that needed harnessing, encouragement, direction. Some of that came internally from James Brown himself, some of it came externally from the music industry and the public, our ideas of performers, what we want them to be, but much of it is mediated through men like Danny Ray.
Daniel Brown Ray died on February 2nd, at the age of 85. He had battled bankruptcy, addiction, and bored and restless crowds for most of the life he spent as a loyal and nattily dressed right hand to James Brown. He would introduce the singer, drawing out his vowels. Are you ready to get doooooooooooown with Jaaaaaaaaaaaames Brooooooooooooown?! He matched Brown’s showmanship, playing straight man to the tragic, temperamental figure of the singer, who would collapse periodically and theatrically, on the beat. Shielded from the roars of the disappointed and concerned crowd by a cape-it was Danny Ray who had covered him- James Brown would hobble off stage, weakened by his passion for the music, and then, in a final bursting forth, throw off the cape-again, on the beat-push Danny Ray out of the way, and perform an encore!
What does it mean to get a crowd going before the big show? What does it take to take a raw, tittering stadium full of people, ask for their attention, and leave them primed for the greatest show of their lives? Danny Ray knew a secret alchemical combination of words and intonations, a spell. It transformed individual audience members into a mass-as in mass hysteria, as in a massive success-a screaming writhing force of energy for James Brown to twist into any shape he liked that night. Danny Ray wasn’t just a hype man, he was a magician. Or rather, he was just a hype man, and hype is magic. In any case, are you ready to get down? It’s Star Time.
ECHOES ARCHIVE