Well, it has been a very rough 2 weeks, as some of you know, I lost a good friend & entertainer. In the 20 years that I knew & worked with him, I had never seen any of his kids at a show (3 live in Atlanta, one currently in DC) they would say they would be at some of the big ones, but never show, it always broke his heart.. Well, last week, I learned what kind of people the really are, and it was very saddening.. The oldest lives in DC, said he didn't have the money to get, we get him a ticket and a place to stay for a few days. Since none of the boys could take the time to come visit him while he was alive, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that it took 4 days for them to get to town.. Well, after picking up the one we flew in, having him driven around and setting up a funeral home so we could get the ball rolling as paper work was needed for the VA cemetery (he was the
1st Black band leader in the US Army) and knowing that he didn't have allot of money (he literally gave it away to help other musicians, young & old, he was a Pure Musician, that was all he ever wanted to be) so the owner of the funeral home (his wife run a charity to help kids, and our guy spent a lot of time teaching there as well as giving tickets to shows so these kids could be there) said he would do it at dead cost. So far, so good, well, we have everything going well, then one of his ex wives and the other kids show up, now she has bragged about how successful these 2 boys are in the past, and the first thing they did was start calling people in his book and telling them they didn't have the money to bury him, and were telling people twice the needed amount of the actual cost
They even called the city to try and get them to pay for it.. Then started telling people (remember, 2 of the somes do have pretty good jobs & one is married to a family worth millions) that the funeral wasn't going to happen as they didn't have the money (FYI, it was only $2,500, I said it was dead cost) unless "we" raised the money.. Of course at the last minute, they came up with it. Then at the funeral, the 3rd ex wive is going on TV telling everyone that they were still married, putting on a big BS show while asking how the family can make money off his death... OK, we have a major venue offer a location for all his old pictures and trinkets (this guy loved to share the things he had from close to 70 years of entertaing including a few Gold Records James Brown & pix of him playing with everyone from the 50s, 60s & 70s....) and the family would have control. The local Historical Society was willing to help with everything, family was to have a meeting with both the venue & Historical Society. They turned around and left town to get a truck to clean out the place so now, most likely will just trash what they can't e-bay and the memory of their father, his wishes (he wanted his thing to be shared, that was always his wish) are not what he wanted. After they left, we found out that the son we flew down from DC had a very large insurance settlement a few years back(like a lottery sized one) the other brother was staying at the Omni hotel, yet all were playng the broke card to get everyone else to pick up their tabs. If you don't think enough of me while I'm alive to visit or see me perform, don't bother after I'm dead.. My reward for helping, lied too and conned.... Of course finding out today that 2 other good friends have their wives in the hospital isn't making it any easier...
Sorry for the rant, I just needed to vent...