Funk that

Eventually, "Cecil," as she called herself, let on that she sang a bit too, and did some background vocals for records (including the odd Rod Stewart album), TV shows, and movies--she sang on Brown's track for Dr. Detroit, though he didn't know about it. By the time she left the Record Plant in 1988, she was the studio's operations manager. That was also about when she started to hear her voice all over the radio again.

"Oh, I can remember the first time I heard 'It Takes Two,'" she says. "At first, I was angry. Maybe for a day, until I thought about it. And then I said: Wait a minute. I really did what I set out to do. I wanted to make a name for myself and learn as much as I could possibly learn."

On the other hand, Collins was still frustrated that she wasn't seeing any money from it. To capitalize on the buzz, she hooked up with Anderson, Byrd, and a few other Brown veterans, and the women started touring in Europe, where "Think" became a hit again. A few years ago, they recorded a live album, Finally Getting Paid (though Anderson claims they somehow didn't get paid), which also featured the first released recordings in more than 15 years by soul screamer Marva Whitney.

Nearly every track on Marva Whitney's sole Brown-produced studio album, It's My Thing, finds her revving up into full-on hysterics within a matter of seconds. It's a trick she picked up when she was growing up in Kansas City, singing gospel in the Church of God in Christ.

Whitney ended up in Brown's show at a particularly adventurous time. On April 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. had been killed, the revue played in Boston. The show was televised live and repeated several times that night, in the (successful) hope of preventing riots from breaking out in the city. And it was a magnificent performance. A videotape of it finds Whitney, during her solo spot, screaming so hard that a stagehand runs out to switch her microphone so she won't blow it out.

A few months later, Whitney was part of the small group Brown took on a tour of Vietnam. The bond between Whitney and Brown showed up on record too--check out "You Got to Have a Job," a duet on Original Funky Divas, where they go at each other like duelists--Whitney howling for saxophonist Maceo Parker to blow, and Brown goading her, "Call him! call him!" Brown also says in his autobiography that Whitney was his girlfriend for a while.

"Now, wait a minute," she says. "Let me say this. James, first and foremost, loved women. OK? Loved women. And as far as being a one and only? I don't know, OK? As far as me being with him a lot? Yes! He was saving me! Yes, we went to dinner, you know, but if I was that much of a girlfriend, I wouldn't have to have left. But he's a man, you know, and I don't think I was that ugly."

In any event, she did leave in early 1970 to start a solo career. A handful of singles came out on the soul labels Excello and T-Neck, but none really took off. Eventually, Whitney returned to gospel singing; these days, she's minister of music at a Baptist church back in Kansas City. That's not all she's doing, though: Whitney, Anderson, and Collins have joined forces with Martha High, a mellow slow-burner with a multi-octave range who clocked nearly 32 years (on and off) with the Godfather before leaving his show for good earlier this year. (Strangely, she only recorded half a dozen or so Brown-produced songs in all this time; two, including a bizarre cover of "Summertime," are on Original Funky Divas.)

They've formed a group called the King's Queens, which has recorded an album, Pure Deep Pleasure, soon to be released in Europe. They'll be touring over there this summer, with a band including Bobby Byrd and his and Vicki's children, and they're thrilled about the prospect of singing together again--and maybe, perhaps, finally getting paid.

"We've always been very close," High says. "I did a tour with them during the time that Mr. Brown was incarcerated, and we kept in contact with each other. We got in touch with Bobby Byrd and Fred Wesley and Bootsy Collins, and they agreed that they'd work with us and help us to get some songs together. And talk about a family reunion, oh boy...When we all got to Cincinnati, if you would've seen us, you would've said, Look at them, they're like children! We were hollerin' and screamin' and cryin' and kissin' each other...we were just so excited."

"We're just as good or better singers than we were," Whitney says. "And that's a blessing. God has given us our health to keep our pipes, and that's four different funky sounds.