I was born in South Carolina during the Great Depression. As a child, I picked cotton, danced for spare change and shined shoes. At 16, I landed in reform school for three years where I met Bobby Byrd, leader of a gospel group and life-long friend. I even tried semi-pro boxing and baseball, but a leg injury put me on the path to pursue music as a career.I joined my friend Bobby Byrd in a group that sang gospel in and around Toccoa, Georgia. After seeing Hank Ballard and Fats Domino in a blues revue, Byrd and I were lured into the realm of secular music. Naming our band the Flames, we formed a tightly knit ensemble of singers, dancers and multi-instrumentalists.
So I became an icon of the music industry. With my signature one-three beat, I directly influenced the evolutionary beat of soul music in the Sixties, funk music in the Seventies and rap music in the Eighties.
