Graylin Brown

By Rodney Saulsberry

Graylin Brown is the tender heartwarming story of William Bell, an African­-American entertainer who was cut down in his prime by Multiple Sclerosis. The story spans from Detroit, Michigan 1965, to Hollywood, California, in the early 90's. After the onset of the disease in 1965, William went into a nine-year remission always worried about the possibility of a relapse.

Along the way William nurtured his oldest son, Randy, who at an early age showed an inherited musical talent. After graduating from college, Randy went West to California and a successful career in show business. He promised his father that whenever he achieved enough success to be a guest on the Johnny Carson Tonight Show equivalent, the fictional Ziggy Bright Show, he would fly his father and his father's two best friends to California, where they could be right there with him on the show.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tomdor Publishing
• Release date: Dec 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781540168825

Rodney Saulsberry

Rodney Saulsberry is one of the premier voice-over talents and vocal coaches in the country. He is also a published author with three bestselling books, You Can Bank on Your Voice, Step Up to the Mic and Rodney Saulsberry's Tongue Twisters and Vocal Warm-Ups.  Saulsberry’s distinctive announcer voice is literally everywhere. He has announced promos for Dancing With The Stars on ABC. He live announced the 34th NAACP Image Awards on FOX and voiced promos for the Grammys and Country Music Awards on CBS. Currently his voice can be heard promoting Penn and Teller Fool Us and Masters of Illusion on the CW Network and International promos for Telemundo. Rodney's acting credits include guest star appearances on Monk, Without a Trace, Law & Order: LA and Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman. He reoccurs as Anthony Walker a street musician and former homeless man on the Daytime Drama The Bold and the Beautiful.

Book preview

GRAYLIN

BROWN

A Novel

RODNEY SAULSBERRY

© Copyright 2016 by Rodney Saulsberry

First Edition

Tomdor Publishing

Agoura Hills, California

––––––––

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner or form whatsoever, by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying or recording, or by any information or retrieval system, without the expressed, written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages for reviews or articles about the book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author’s use of places or businesses is not intended to change the entirely fictional character of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to person living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

For my mother, father, sister and brother with love

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my parents for giving me the confidence to succeed in life.

I am grateful for the love and support from my wife and daughter.

I am thankful for my dear friends who listen to my dreams and ideas every day.

And a special thanks to the city of Detroit for launching so many successful careers!

1

DETROIT, 1965

It was the Ed Sullivan Show that consumed the screen of the 19 inch black-and-white television that hung from the ceiling this Sunday evening in Room 366 above bed 2 at Harper Hospital. As Mr. Sullivan announced the night’s line-up, William Bell lay motionless, paralyzed from the neck down. His beautiful young wife, Alice Bell, sat in a chair by his side. Separated only by the pleated plastic curtain from their beds, William’s roommate, the man in bed one, was also tuned in to the Sullivan Show, and was super excited about the fact that the Temptin’ Temptations were coming on.

Didn’t you used to sing with them cats, Bell? he asked. There was no response. William and Alice sat quietly wondering why they were at Harper Hospital in the first place, instead of at home with their three kids, Randy the oldest, Larry and the newborn, a precious little girl named Yolanda. There was no diagnosis for William’s condition. This young, virile man that spent his teens singing on street corners, do-wopping with Detroit’s finest harmonizers, fighting with the East Side’s toughest gangs, and out dancing the motor cities best dancers with a swiftness of feet, couldn’t even move his legs now. Tough Bell, as he was known in the neighborhood, was down for the count, and the doctors did not and weren’t sure if they ever would know why.

In their dead silence, William and Alice might have been thinking to themselves, but in perpetual unison, about the events that lead to this forced union with the man in bed one, who upon seeing David Ruffin, the leader of the Temptations, slide across the stage, spin like a top and fall in line with the other Temps shouted out, Hey Bell, didn’t you used to dance with these cats?

Eleven days ago, life was grand. Alice had just started a new job working for the government. With the new addition to the Bell family, this new job was a gift sent directly from the good Lord above. Three kids took a lot more income than that provided by William’s unpredictable at best, singing career.

He sang first tenor in a group on the Backstreet Records label, called the Dial Tones. Backstreet’s chairman, Bobby Fluker, was short in stature but tall on talent. He started Backstreet Records in the basement of his grandmother’s house almost four years ago. In a relatively short time, he turned this homegrown enterprise into one of the biggest black-owned companies in Detroit. His biggest competition was right in his own back yard. Berry Gordy’s Motown Records had a stable of stars like Marvin Gaye, Stevie wonder, the Supremes and the Temptations, the group by which all other groups were measured.

Bobby Fluker was constantly trying to find a group to rival the Temptations. Unfortunately for William, the Dial Tones were not the ones Bobby had in mind. Most of the songs he recorded on the group were left on the shelf and never released. However, one day recently out of nowhere, William got a call from the record company. They wanted to confirm his date of birth, his social security number and some other personal information.

This was odd, he thought. Why did Backstreet suddenly have so much interest in his personal stats?

Bobby Fluker’s real passion in life was song writing. It was commonplace for Bobby to write a song, try it out on one of his shelf groups, only to let one of his so-called star groups cut it and release a record for radio. He wrote a song called It’s Alright, and he asked the Dial Tones to sing it. This mid-tempo ditty was a great song, and William sang a fantastic lead vocal on it that everyone in the company knew couldn’t be topped. But Bobby put it on the shelf anyway. He said that it would be recorded at a later date by one of his star groups, the Teardrops.

Well, they say every dog has his day. The reason they wanted to update all of William’s personal information was because Bobby Fluker decided to actually release the Dial Tones version of It’s Alright.  You would think, William, boasted to Alice, That Bobby would really push this shit, since he did write it. Alice smiled and nodded her head in agreement. It did make sense to her that Bobby would have a special interest in a song he wrote, and the Dial Tones performed so well.

William and Alice looked forward to the release of the record and a brighter tomorrow.

Monday morning. The alarm clock did its job. The voice of a female disc jockey named Martha Jean the Queen blared out from the clock radio that sat on the nightstand on Alice’s side of the bed. Martha Jean the Queen’s show was mostly of a religious theme—the gospel sounds of James Cleveland, the Mighty Clouds of Joy, and some occasional Aretha Franklin was what Alice liked to wake up to. She’d deal with the secular world of music on her car radio on her way to work. She felt good, well rested. The baby had slept pretty much all through the night. It was as if she knew that Mommy needed her rest so that she would be alive and chipper her first day on the government job.

The boys were up soon after their mother. The sound of the shower water beating down on the tub was their cue to rise—and it worked every time. The gathering up of all the toy army men in the bedroom, and tossing them under the covers and then going under themselves and forming a human body-held tent. As their bodies held up the blanket on both ends, they had a silent battle, miming the death of fallen soldiers one-by-one, careful not to wake the little baby who was asleep in the crib next to the boy’s beds.

Daddies wake-up call was the sound of a thud from the boys crashing to the floor as their battle took on oral dimensions that could be matched only by the sonic boom itself, and just like every morning, that sonic boom woke up Daddies little girl.

On most mornings, like clockwork, William springs up from his bed and dashes to his daughter’s crib. The boys are lucky to get eye contact, let alone a good morning from daddy, first things first. Alice swears that the baby screams the word Daddy every morning—which at three months is almost impossible. But you don’t have to twist Daddies arm to make him believe that his daughter is exceptional—and probably a genius already.

Today, when the baby screamed, William didn’t get right up to tend to her. The boys took advantage of the prolonged world War III and escalated to even higher vocal decibels. Alice, slowly drying off in the bathroom, wondered why the boys were shouting and the baby was crying for so long.

Oh, what the heck, she thought, William was probably in never-never land dreaming about the Dial Tones being number one on Billboard’s Hot 100. Or, about the group performing on the Ed Sullivan Show, or American Bandstand. Let him sleep she thought, he deserves some happiness.

Being a young man growing up in the mid-sixties was no picnic for the so-called Negro in Detroit. The Motor City was just that—filled with cars and motors. You either worked at one of the Big Three auto factories—Ford, Chrysler, or General Motors, or you hustled. Hustling usually led to trouble, and trouble led to jail. The advent of companies like Motown and Backstreet Records was a new way out of poverty. This was William’s big shot. Alice put on her robe and headed for the kids’ bedroom. On the way, at a glance, she could see that