Soul Man

While I was waiting for the festivities of James Brown's birthday tribute to begin for over an hour, I spotted two older men and a woman sitting on a bench waiting for the music, too.

 

(sidenote: Augusta, Georgia was the home of the Godfather. There's a statue of him downtown and people are always putting flowers around it and having their photo taken by it. I guess you can say James Brown is Augusta's claim to fame. so that explains why there was a birthday party for a dead man)

 

So I wandered over and chatted with the bench trio for a while. They are huge James Brown fans (as any loyal native Augustan is) and it turned out this man, John Culbreath, used to play the drums for James Brown on tour in the 1950s.

 

He said he loved James Brown's music because "it's soul."

"And we're soul people," his friend Annie Glover chimed in.

 

it was nice to talk to some interesting people with interesting stories before i had to start shooting the assignment.

 

but really, I was just mesmerized by John's eyes.

 

Done