bandit records, chicago reader 2005

April 22, 2005

Section One Letters 3ColumnsHot Type 4Media hate

The Straight Dope 5Who’s healthier, tall or short people?

The Works 7A failed parking experiment in Wrigleyville

Chicago Antisocial 9Tax this!

Scientists 10Why diabetes is more fun than AIDS

Our Town 11WhiskyFest 2005

ComicChris Ware 14ReviewsMovies 30Kung Fu Hustle, The Amityville Horror

Photography 34Tokihiro Sato at the Art Institute

Opera 35The Lyric Opera’s Ring cycle

Television 37Disney’s Little House on the Prairie

Plus Ink Well

I t looked as if a tornado had passed through the house,picked up the remnants of Arrow Brown’s strange, sordidlife, and dumped them in the alley.

September 1990: Brown had been dead only a few weeks,but the passageway behind his two-story graystone at 4114 S.Martin Luther King Drive was already a mess. His papers werescattered, riffling in the breeze, his 45s lay in a thousand jaggedpieces, and all around, spools of master tape were reduced totangles of black ribbon glinting in the late summer sun.

This was the fate of Brown and his empire, a tiny, illusorykingdom built on ego, deceit, and love—and one of the morebizarre, if little known, chapters in Chicago music history.

For a decade or so beginning in the late 60s, ArrowBrown was the head of Bandit Records. Although he neversang or played a note, he was the undisputed star of thelabel, tapping the talent, writing and producing the songs,and putting his imprimatur on everything from his groups’names—the Arrows, the Majestic Arrows—to their stagemoves. Between 1969 and 1981, Bandit released more thana dozen singles and one full-length. None of them cameclose to being a major hit, but Brown didn’t need airplayor sales receipts to keep going. He financed his label withthe money he collected from the harem of women he livedwith and lorded over. Brown juggled as many as a dozenladies at a time, among them his wife, his longtimemistress, and a bevy of young girls he referred to as hisdaughters, lost souls he seduced with hollow promises ofstardom. It was a soul-music commune of continued on page 14

Brown with Eileen Hughes and Mary Ann Davis

ON THE COVER: ABC/CHRIS LARGE (LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE)

The Godfather ofKing Drive Arrow Brown wanted

badly to be a player—he wore a black hat,packed heat even inchurch, and exploited a houseful of wives andconcubines to finance arecord label. But his tinyempire wouldn’t last.By Bob Mehr

CHICAGO READER | APRIL 22, 2005 | SECTION ONE 15

sorts—Motown meets theManson family.

Brown’s outsize lifestylematched his outsize character.He was rarely without his signa-ture cigar, .38 special, and blackhomburg—a rogue image thateven served as Bandit’s logo for atime. Among his other acces-sories was a wood-handled icepick, which he would idly pullout and hurl at some target—atree stump, a can. A simple back-woods boy to start, a migrant toChicago from the small-townsouth, Brown saw in the big cityall the things he was not—sharp,tough, powerful, glamorous—butwanted to become. With a silvertongue and an iron will, hecarved a life for himself of littlework and lots of pleasure. Tosome he was a predator, to othersa protector. To many he was both.

Brown was not an educatedman, but he understood the cruelverities at the core of the musicbusiness: looks fade, voices dete-riorate, the weak are exploited,carefully tended dreams are still-born. Savvier than many small-time operators, he surroundedhimself with multiple genera-tions of young people who couldserve as the rungs on his ladderto wealth and fame. As his sonKevin recalls, “He dared todream. Only he let that dreambecome a nightmare for every-one else.” In the end the night-mare would become Brown’s too:he died abandoned and unful-filled, his life’s work to be strewnabout like garbage.

A line about him from hismemorial service is telling: “Heknew no strangers, so he left a lotof acquaintances.” No one wasever allowed to really knowArrow Brown. As a result fewremembered him in the decadeafter his death. He might haveremained forgotten if not for aChicago-based reissue label, theNumero Group, which released aBandit anthology last fall.

In the liner notes to theirpainstakingly compiled CD,Numero principals Ken Shipley,Tom Lunt, and Rob Sevier writethat the history of Bandit “couldalmost be fiction.” Unraveling thathistory, separating fact from talltale, isn’t easy. Brown took muchof his remarkable story to thegrave with him. Many involvedwith him have passed away; oth-ers, like his longtime engineerPaul Serrano, who now hasParkinson’s, cannot recall theirexperiences with the man. Some,like Brown’s first wife, simplyrefuse to conjure up the memoryof one who caused so much pain.

I t’s a measure of the mysteryArrow Brown shrouded himself

in that even his funeral programhedges about the city of his birth.What is known is that Brown was born on September 10, 1923,most likely in Merigold,Mississippi. A tiny, predominantlyAfrican-American community inthe northwest part of the statejust off Highway 61, Merigold is

best known as a stomping groundfor Delta blues legend CharliePatton, whose 1927 tune “TomRushen Blues” name checked anumber of local characters.

Brown was the youngest of 22children. His father, a sharecrop-per, died when Arrow was young,during a botched attempt toremove his own appendix. Arrowand his mother moved to Chicagoin 1929, just before the greatstock market crash, settling onthe city’s south side. A couple ofhis siblings eventually joinedthem in Chicago, among them hisbrother W. C., a Baptist minister.During Brown’s adolescence theChicago papers were dominatedby the criminal exploits of AlCapone. The image of the notori-ous mob boss would have a last-ing impact on Brown, who in lateryears styled himself after Big Al.

Brown attended WendellPhillips High School, and accord-ing to his family showed a gift formusic. “He had an abundance oftalent,” says his son Kevin. “Hesang just like [jazz and R & Bvocalist] Arthur Prysock. Hecould play just about any instru-ment: guitar, especially the dou-ble organ and keyboards.” Studio

pros Brown later worked with, onthe other hand, describe him aseither marginally musical orcompletely tone-deaf.

Following the repeal ofProhibition in 1933, Chicago’snightlife underwent a renaissancethat only intensified after the endof the Depression. “The south sideand west side, the black neighbor-hoods, just erupted with bars andtaverns,” says Chicago music andcultural historian Robert Pruter.“It was a thriving and excitingnightclub scene. There were livebands, mostly jazz combos, at allthese places. The 30s, 40s, and50s was the golden age of theblack tavern, and a lot of peoplejust soaked it up.”

Brown was one of them. “Hegot hold to the city, and then thecity got hold to him, so he justtook off with it,” says Kevin. Buthis was a wild, often violent envi-ronment where carousing couldlead to bloodshed. “It was a roughtime to be out in the street, Iremember him saying that,” Kevinsays. “It was razor-totin’ time.”

Brown soon learned to brawland whore with the best of them.Although not handsome in theclassical sense, he had a languid

smile, bedroom eyes, and anunerring instinct for the slightesthint of invitation or weakness.He was a chameleon as well: hecould act like a refined gentle-man, a streetwise tough, or any-thing else the situation, or thelady, called for.

“He definitely had his way withthe ladies. So whatever moneythey got hold of he would get,”Kevin says. “In all the years, Inever saw him drive a rag. Healways had a brand-new car.”Often the ride would be a shinyCadillac that some woman—orwomen—had paid for.

The onset of World War IIinterrupted Brown’s leisure. Hewas drafted into the army andserved a term overseas. Soonafter returning in 1945, he metMary Louise Tate around theschool yard at Wendell Phillips.She was 15 years old and musical-ly inclined, a skilled bongo and

conga player. Brown was imme-diately smitten. They married thefollowing year and had three chil-dren: Arrow Jr., Kevin, and Tridia,each born 14 months apart.

For a time Brown played thepart of dutiful husband, settlingdown, getting a job at theCampbell’s soup factory on thewest side, and bringing home asteady paycheck. But the lure ofyoung flesh and barroom neonproved too great. He and MaryLouise split in 1953, with Tridiabarely out of diapers. Although itwould be more than a decadebefore the pair legally divorced,he rarely saw his family in theyears to come.

It wasn’t long before Brownhad hooked up with anotheryoung woman. Lilliane “Pepper”Powell, whom he would eventual-ly marry, was a long-suffering butloyal spouse, giving Arrow the

Arrow Brown

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Clockwise from top left: Linda Balentine, Gloria Brown, Johnny Davis, DenoCO

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16 CHICAGO READER | APRIL 22, 2005 | SECTION ONE

paychecks from her post officejob and tolerating his obviousinfidelities. The suspicion amongsurviving family members is thatPepper couldn’t have childrenand gave Brown carte blanche tohave outside relationships. It wasa freedom he took advantage of.

By the late 50s Brown had set-tled into the graystone at 4114 S.Park Boulevard (later renamedMartin Luther King Drive), whichwas apparently owned by hisstepfather, Asabee Whitehead.Sometime around 1962 Brownbefriended Johnny Davis and hisyoung sister Mary Ann. Theywere introduced to him by theirgrandmother, whom according tofamily lore he’d saved from a vio-lent attack outside a hotel. Johnnywas a street-corner doo-wopsinger, blessed with an elasticvoice that could manage both theheights of Curtis Mayfield’s falset-to and the grittiness of BobbyWomack’s tenor. Bonding overmusic, he and Arrow became fastfriends and running buddies.“They were like two peas in apod,” says Mary Ann, who at ageten was entrusted to Brown byher alcoholic mother. Three yearslater she had the first of their

three sons, Altyrone Deno.By the early 60s Brown had

begun throwing elaborate partiesat the house on weekends, invit-ing friends and neighbors. Hesupplied the booze and the enter-tainment, a crude karaoke systemwhere people would get up andsing to records with the volumeturned down low. “He loved toparty. Not meaning getting high,but he loved music,” says MaryAnn. “He loved entertainment.That’s how we was well-known,especially in the neighborhood.’Cause people came to the house.”

Through these weekend bashesBrown developed a network oflocal music biz contacts. Amongthose who dropped by weremembers of the Pieces of Peaceand the Chi-Lites. Brown alsodiscovered new talent there,singers like Allen “Po’ Boy”Stevenson and Larry Johnson.

As the decade wore on, Brown—still working at the soup facto-ry—kept searching for a chanceto harness his talents in a waythat would yield big dividends.One tempting prospect was theindependent record business.

During World War II, with therationing of materials needed toproduce shellac, major record

companies lost interest in whatwas then called “vernacularmusic”—country and western, R& B, blues—and instead focusedon the broader and more prof-itable pop market. Out of thisvacuum independent labels wereborn, many of them specializingin black music idioms. Two ofthe biggest were based inChicago: Chess and Vee-Jay.

The growth of such labelsaccelerated over the next twodecades, abetted by the exponen-tial increase in the city’s African-American population—from 8.2percent to 22.9 percent—thatcame with the Great Migration.Seemingly anyone with a song anda band could be in business. “Thatwas the beauty of the independentlabels,” says Pruter. “All you need-ed was a few hundred dollars torecord some tracks in the studio,press up 500 or 1,000 copies, and

hope that lightning struck.” That’s precisely what happened

in 1962, when Chicagoans CarlDavis and Bill Sheppard recordeda song by Gene Chandler called“Duke of Earl.” The session cost$600, and they released it ontheir own Constellation labelbefore the single was picked upfor distribution by Vee-Jay.“Within a few weeks it had sold amillion copies,” says Pruter. “Davisand Sheppard got huge checks forlike $30,000 a piece. They wentout and bought cars and every-thing. It was almost like winningthe lottery. All of a sudden the citywas awash with little entrepre-neurs looking to get the big hit.”

Arrow Brown decided to jumpinto the fray. As he wrote in ashort biography for a musicawards ceremony in the mid-70s,“I have always loved music, so in1966 I thought I could try a little

bit at songwriting. I wrote somesongs. . . . The problem was Ihad no one to sing them.”

Eventually inspiration struckand Brown put Johnny and MaryAnn Davis, Johnny’s wife, Linda,and Po’ Boy Stevenson togetheras a vocal group called theArrows. He’d write and producetheir music, then release therecords on his own label.Ultimately, he hoped, he wouldexpand to stage and screen.

Just as Bugsy Siegel, stuck ona Nevada roadside, looked overthe vast expanse of empty desertand envisioned a neon-lit para-dise called Las Vegas, ArrowBrown surveyed the nothingnessof his own landscape andwrought a shimmering dream.As a nod to the outlaw imagehe’d been enamored of since thedays of Capone, he named hisnew company Bandit.

Arrow Brown


Brown’s son Kevin says part of his father’stalent was his ability to manufacture andsustain an image: “He made his ghetto familylook like we were from Beverly Hills.”


A lthough he quit theCampbell’s factory in 1965

and would never work again, inhis biography Brown claims hehad to juggle two jobs to financehis label. This was patently false,according to family members. Theseed money for Bandit came fromPepper’s weekly earnings and fromthe welfare money collected by thegrowing stable of ladies who livedin the graystone. By the late 60sthere were half a dozen ranging inage from their teens to their 30s.Brown signed on as legal guardianfor many of the younger girls, tak-ing them from broken homes orfrom parents whom he promisedstardom and riches. In at least onecase there is evidence that hebought the guardianship of a 13-

year-old girl outright. Brown’s family was expanding

rapidly. Over the course of thenext decade he would have twomore children with Davis andanother two with Eileen Hughes.He would also have a child withLoretha, Hughes’s daughter froma previous relationship.

Before launching Bandit, Brownsolicited advice from a handful ofestablished artists and label own-ers, including Chi-Lites leaderMarshall Thompson. Thompsonremembers him turning up at thegroup’s rehearsal space. “He’d callon me for musical advice,”Thompson says. “I helped him asmuch as I could with somethings, tried to get him withsome major labels at that time.”

Thompson played drums onand helped produce the firstBandit single, the Arrows’ 1969effort “We Have Love.” He remem-bers Brown as a “very nice” butaggressive character. “He pushed,pushed, pushed,” Thompson says.“But he was very smart because healways wanted to be around theones that had success.”

Through a combination of per-sistence and bullshit, Brownmanaged to talk his way intoworking with some of the city’smajor R & B players: the ScottBrothers Orchestra, Derf Reklawof the Pharaohs, studio ownerand engineer Paul Serrano,arrangers David Baldwin andBenjamin Wright. Of course,since Brown was circumventing

the local musicians’ union, theseplayers generally went uncredit-ed on the records.

Wright—who would go on tohave an illustrious career doingarrangements for everyone fromAretha Franklin and MichaelJackson to OutKast and JustinTimberlake—had migrated toChicago from Mississippi in 1968and soon found himself indemand as a session man. “WhenDonny Hathaway left town I wasone of the cats that came up pret-ty fast as far as arranging went,”Wright says. “I was getting callsfrom quite a few independentrecord makers, and Mr. Brownwas one of them. I did some workand he appeared to be happywith it, and it grew from there.”

The long-term associationswith Wright and Serrano wouldprove crucial. Wright could takeBrown’s rough ideas and lyricsand transform them into realsongs, while Serrano was able totranslate Brown’s poorly articu-lated studio suggestions (a run-ning joke was that he referred toacetates as “agitates”) intoenthralling, artful production.

Few among Brown’s musicindustry associates knew abouthis unusual domestic arrange-ments or how the label was fund-ed. “I had been over to the housea couple times, but I didn’t knowwhat Mr. Brown was doing andwho all was involved and thewhole bit,” Wright says. “Butcontinued on page 18


things did appear to be veryclose-knit over there.”

Brown’s son Kevin says part ofhis father’s talent was his abilityto manufacture and sustain animage. “He made his ghetto fami-ly look like we were from BeverlyHills,” he says. “He could make uslook like we was the greatest inthe world, even though we wasjust raggedy little people.”

Those who didn’t buy theexplanation that all the women inthe house were Brown’s daugh-ters didn’t bother asking ques-tions. “No one said anything,”says Altyrone Deno Brown. “ButI’m sure they did wonder whatwas going on. They probablywanted to know how did oneman have so many women in onehouse. I wondered that myself.But by living there and seeing it,you figured it out. My father hadan aura with women. That’s put-ting it politely. He just lovedwomen, and back in the day heknew how to pursue them.”

“He was able to juggle eight,nine women ’cause they all need-ed something too,” Kevin says.“They needed shelter, they need-ed someplace to go, somebody toguide them. Plus he got them allright out of the cradle. So he nur-tured them and took them to thepoint where he made them afraidto go out on their own. He madethem dependent on him.”

Fear of disappointing or dis-pleasing Brown was commonamong both his artists and hiswomen. The Arrows had begunmaking live appearances at localclubs like the High Chaparral,and rehearsals were conducteddaily, often turning into gruelingrituals with Brown, a sterntaskmaster, micromanagingevery note and inflection.Recording sessions were similar-ly tense and drawn out. “Itwouldn’t be no quick session,”recalls Mary Ann of the Arrows’first forays into the studio. “Itwould always be a long session.We’d go in and do some partsand have to go the next day, beup till two and three o’clock inthe morning doing stuff.”

After the Arrows’ debut Brownwrote and produced a pair ofone-offs. A song called “My HeartWould Never Lie to Me,” by awoman named Sandy Cleveland,may or may not have been issuedon Bandit—no copies of the vinylhave been discovered—but even-tually appeared on the Chicago-based USA label. Brown also pro-duced a single, “Glad AboutThat” backed with “You’re a HardHabit to Break,” for a new discov-ery, 16-year-old Linda Balentine.

Balentine, who was recentlylocated by Numero Groupresearcher Rob Sevier, figured asa part of the Bandit scene onlybriefly. She was introduced toBrown in 1969 by members of agroup she’d sung with called theSoul Providers, who were doingstudio sessions for the label. “Myimpression of Mr. Brown as ateenager was that basically hewas a user,” she says. “I was pret-

ty afraid of him once I found outhow he lived. In fact, my motherused to go down to the housewith me most of the timebecause I was underage.”

Balentine’s funky, gospel-flecked single is a Bandit stand-out, but it was never commer-

cially released—just pressed upas a promo. It may be thatBrown lost interest in releasingthe disc when Balentine fled,appalled by the notion of becom-ing another of his “daughters.”

Although the records weren’tselling in huge numbers, Bandit

was slowly picking up speed andbecoming a more regular con-cern, aided in part by the contin-uing influx of income from hiswomen, of whom there were adozen by the early 70s. In 1971and ’72 Bandit released severalmore singles, variously credited

to the Arrows or to JohnnyDavis. The company hit its fullcreative stride with the Davissolo track “You Got to Crawl toMe,” a haunting revenge tunewith typically evocative Bandittouches—a dark, slow-burn

Arrow Brown


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Clockwise from top left: Deno Brown and his mother, Mary Ann Davis; Tridia Brown; Bandit headquarters at 4114 S. Martin Luther King Drive; the Numero Group’s Rob Sevier, Tom Lunt, and Ken Shipley; inside the graystone today

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groove, persistent wah-wah gui-tar, and needling Morse-codeorgan. The label’s productionwould grow increasingly moreaudacious as the years went on.

“The Bandit stuff is unlike any-thing in soul in a lot of ways, it’sso grandiose,” says the NumeroGroup’s Ken Shipley. “I think[Brown] wanted it to be bigger,to set himself apart in a way. Hedidn’t care about the rules ofhow you make a hit. His thoughtprocess was, ‘People are going tohear this and be blown away bythe sheer spectacle of it.’”

Davis was the label’s mainattraction. But in early 1973 his body was discovered in aDumpster where he’d landedheadfirst after dropping a dozenstories off the roof of a south-sidewarehouse. Chicago PoliceDepartment files show that aninvestigation into the death wasconducted, but the results wereinconclusive: Davis may have fall-en, jumped to his death, or per-haps even have been pushed. Butwith no eyewitnesses or evidence,a murder case was never opened,and no one was ever chargedwith a crime. Davis’s sister MaryAnn still insists it was murder.

“Somebody hit him with a pipeand dropped him on his head,that’s what happened,” she says.

In the wake of the tragedy theArrows fell apart. Davis’s widow,Linda, stayed on as Brown’s secre-tary; Mary Ann stopped perform-ing, and Po’ Boy Stevenson fadedfrom the scene. Davis’s deathdealt an immense blow to ArrowBrown’s plans, but it wouldn’tmark the end of Bandit Records.

The last rays of afternoon sun-light are filtering through the

windows of Tridia Brown’s HydePark apartment. As the trafficwhizzes down the street below,she tunes the radio to WVONand pulls up a chair. She’s thespitting image of her late father,a man she barely knew for thefirst 21 years of her life.

Tridia’s earliest memory of herdad came at age four, when sherecalls a large man playing thepiano for her. “I grew up think-ing he was Fats Domino,” shesays, laughing. In the interveningyears, Tridia got her first taste ofshowbiz, performing in a harmo-ny group, the LaSonics, with herbrother Kevin. She attendedKenwood High School, sang inchurch, and taught herself to

play congas and bongos. In 1969 Tridia joined a

Motown-style girl group calledthe Au Naturals. After they wona talent show at the AuditoriumTheatre, her mother suggestedthey go down to Paul Serrano’sstudio to see if he would considerrecording them. Unbeknownst toTridia, Serrano was also workingwith Arrow Brown. “My dad waskinda distant at that point. Wehadn’t seen him in years,” she says.“And I had no inkling at all wherehe was or what he was doing.”

The Au Naturals broke upafter a couple of years. In late1972, with Tridia desperate tobreak into the music business,her mother reluctantly told herthat her father was producingrecords for his own label, Bandit.In fact Brown was living and

operating the company just a fewblocks away from them.

Scared to face him alone,Tridia went to the house with herboyfriend. They found Brown onthe porch holding court amid agaggle of women and children. “Iwouldn’t get out of the car,” shesays. “So my boyfriend walked upto him and asked if he had anolder daughter named Tridia andtold him the whole story. He gotreally excited and says, ‘Where isshe?’ So I got out of the car andintroduced myself. He huggedme . . . and that was the beginning.”

Tridia became a frequent visi-tor to the house. At one of theweekend parties she got up anddid a rendition of a GladysKnight song. “My father wasactually shocked, ’cause he didn’tknow I could sing,” she says.

Brown was putting together anew act around the talents ofLarry Johnson, a powerful tenorwho’d made a small name forhimself singing with doo-wopoutfits like the Moroccos and thePersuaders. He’d christened thefledgling outfit the MajesticArrows. “They were looking forsomeone else to join,” Tridiarecalls, “so he asked me if I wasinterested. I said, ‘Yeah!’”

Tridia soon moved into anapartment across the street fromher father’s house. She says shewas initially oblivious to whatwas really happening there. “I’dmostly led a sheltered life, so itwas a couple months before I fig-ured out what was going on,” shesays. “I didn’t tell my mom,’cause she probably would’ve toldme to stay away from him.

Arrow Brown


Johnny Davis was the label’s main attraction,but in early 1973 his body was discovered in a Dumpster where he’d landed headfirst after dropping a dozen stories off the roof of a south-side warehouse.


“I got along well with all thewomen in the house,” she contin-ues, “but I didn’t like the situation,didn’t like the way my dad was liv-ing. But I didn’t say anything. Iguess I was in love with the ideathat I finally got with my father,’cause I had missed that part of mylife. And I really wanted to get intothe music business. Plus, youknow, dad was a charmer. Hecould charm the pants off of any-body, to put it bluntly.”

“More so than charming, hewas cunning,” says Gloria “Poolie”Brown (no relation). Gloria was17 years old, an attractive aspir-ing singer, when she met Brownand joined the Majestic Arrows.

“My uncle’s girlfriend knew him,”she says. “He was looking forsomeone to sing background. Iwent and auditioned for him andended up getting chosen.”

Since Gloria was underage andunable to travel to perform shows,her mother signed over guardian-ship to Brown. But she says shenever moved into the house orbecame sexually involved withhim. “Nooooo, I never lived there.Never spent one night there,” shesays. “My mother wouldn’t let me,thank you Jesus!”

However, Gloria did see first-hand how Brown kept his labelgoing. “The majority of moneycame from his ladies,” she says.

“They were all on welfare and hekept all of their checks. Theyeven gave him their food stamps.I’ve seen that with my own eyes.”

The ladies lived an ascetic exis-tence, in contrast to Brown’sindulgence. “Oh, he had a joyouslife,” Tridia says. “Dad hadwomen that rubbed his feet,rubbed his back, gave him a mas-sage, combed his hair, fed himwhenever he liked. And it waslike if he’s eating beef, you’regoing to be eating pork. Believeme, that’s how dad was.”

Brown maintained order in hishouse through a variety of con-trolling methods. “He had inter-coms set up in all the rooms,”

says Tridia. “You’d have to reallybe careful what you said becausehe might be listening.” He alsokept nude pictures of hisladies—“glamour shots,” hecalled them—pinned up aroundthe house. It was a means ofasserting his dominance.

For the outside world Brownactively cultivated his gangsterpersona. “He’d keep a gunhandy during the parties, incase somebody wanted to getdrunk and act the fool,” saysGloria. “And he would let peopleknow he wasn’t taking no mess.He wouldn’t be very loud oranything, but he would let themknow what time it was.

“Really, he was just afraidsomebody would take his ladiesaway. I figured that one out,” sheadds. “He was very protective ofthem. And they were very attrac-tive ladies, a few of them anyway.[He] would get mad if they flirt-ed with men. He was always try-ing to be a tough guy.”

Some in the neighborhood tookBrown’s persona seriously, callinghim “Godfather” and asking himfor counsel or a quick loan. Browncould be generous, but he was abad person to be indebted to. “Ifyou borrowed money from himand you couldn’t pay him back itwas awful,” says Gloria. “It wascontinued on page 24


something to hold on to you with.He preyed on weaker people.”

On Sundays, after the week-end’s partying was over, Brownwould dutifully take his entirebrood over to Zion TravelersMissionary Baptist Church, wherehis brother W.C. had served aspastor. Even in the house of Godhe remained an outlaw. “We’d bein church and dad would leanover to pray, and I’d see he’d havea gun under his coat in a holster,”says Tridia, shaking her head. “I’mthinking, How you gonna come tochurch with a gun?”

In 1973 Brown came as close ashe ever would to having a hit, a

tune he’d written and recordedwith Larry Johnson called “TheMagic of Your Love.” TheMajestic Arrows—Larry Johnson,Tridia, a singer named Palario,and the recently arrived GloriaBrown—began performing on asmall circuit of south-side clubsand featured the song in theirsets. Brown and Mary Ann’s sonAltyrone Deno Brown also madehis recording debut that year. Thecherub-cheeked Deno was a nat-ural theatrical talent, his impas-sioned performance carrying thesong “Sweet Pea” and its pleadingB side, “If You Love Me.”

Brown’s vision of an entertain-ment empire was finally startingto take shape—or at least that’show he saw it. “He wanted it tobe like a Jackson family thing.Like how they started in a smallhouse and then developed andgot big,” Tridia says. “Deno wasgoing to be his Michael Jackson,and then he was going to buildall his groups from there. He hadbig plans for all of that.”

The sound of Brown’s raised

voice coming from the basementof the house, which doubled asBandit’s rehearsal space, was notuncommon. “There was a lot ofyelling,” Deno recalls. “He was ayeller, for sure.” But there was aflip side to Brown’s temper. Hecould often be found at thepiano, gathering his family at hisfeet to work out a new song oridea. In the midst of a bleak andsometimes rough neighborhood,he instilled in his odd family asense of community and a defi-ant pride in their talents. “Hemade you think all of the successwas really going to happen,” saysTridia. “He had us convinced.”

Outside the confines of hishouse and neighborhood,however, Brown was not the figureof unquestioned power andauthority he strove to be. Duringthe summer and fall of ’73 “TheMagic of Your Love” slowly grewin popularity. The MajesticArrows were invited to performthe song on Soul Train, and thetrack got regular airplay on anumber of local stations. Butalthough “The Magic of YourLove” sold as many as 5,000copies, Brown was hard-pressed toget any money back on it, unableto force the hand of unscrupulousdistributors. And when DJ Herb“the Cool Gent” Kent played thesong on WVON, he spoofed itslong intro by rapping a lengthydialogue about wild-west trainbandits over the opening.

Around this time Brownformed a company, BrownProductions, and signed on torelease a single by an up-and-coming local act called theChosen Few, a rerecording ofElvin Spencer’s hit on theTwinight label, “Lift This Hurt.”It was an unusual project for

Bandit, as Brown had nothing todo with the writing or produc-tion, and not a successful one.While touring in support of therecord the group was unable tofind copies anywhere; Brownhadn’t gotten them into stores.“He didn’t understand distribu-tion,” Sevier says. “He was anisland unto himself. He wasinsulated and didn’t grasp thebusiness at all really.” TheChosen Few severed ties withBrown and ended up reissuingthe single on their own label.

Brown spent much of the nextyear working to complete theMajestic Arrows’ album, the onlyBandit full-length ever issued.Among the few surviving docu-ments from the label is a cassettecapturing him at work in PaulSerrano’s studio during an over-dub session for the song “Goingto Make a Time Machine.” In thecourse of a few minutes hecharms and chides a late-arriv-ing Benjamin Wright (“I wouldshake your hand, Ben, but yougot a cup in it”), scolds singerLarry Johnson (“You gonna haveto do a new vocal”), and at onepoint, when Serrano jokes “Youknow a man could sell 18,000records in one minute,” cockilyshoots back with “Less than that,Paul—30 seconds.”

The Magic of the MajesticArrows was finally released in1975. The cover art features ahand-colored drawing of thegroup members caught in theswirling cyclone emanatingfrom a genie’s lamp.

The image was apt. Despitetheir apparent potential, the endfor the Majestic Arrows cameabruptly just a year later, whenan infuriated Brown discoveredthat “one of the girls was frater-

nizing—as dad called it—withone of the guys in the group,”says Tridia. “Secretly, I think dadliked her himself. That kindamade him jealous.” Brown decid-ed to disband the group then andthere. “We were getting quite abit of attention, but dad gotangry about what was going on,so he blew up the whole thing,”Tridia says. “That was it.”

“He had the right instinctswhen it came to the creative sideof things,” says Sevier. “But hehad this overwhelming need forcontrol. It was a double-edgedsword: it served him well when itcame to keeping his little king-dom together, but also was thething that destroyed him as faras the business went.”

“He was a power monger andneeded to be in control,” sonKevin agrees. “As good a singeras Larry was, the MajesticArrows really should have beensomething big.”

At the time the loss probablyseemed negligible to ArrowBrown. He already had a new meal ticket.

Arrow Brown

Deno, the Majestic Arrows


In the lobby of the MerchandiseMart’s Apparel Center, the

marble floors echo with thesound of commerce. Behind alarge reception desk, clad in atwo-tone security guard uniform,is Deno Brown. He looks a gooddecade younger than his 39years. But his skin is darker, hisfeatures are more chiseled, thanin publicity photos of the chubbychild prodigy from the 70s.

As he makes his way up theescalator and past the foodcourt, Deno moves with the con-fident air of a star, waving andglad-handing nearly every shop-keeper he passes. Beyond a doormarked EMPLOYEES ONLY hereaches into a metal locker andpulls out a weathered leatherportfolio with the initials ADBembossed in gold. Flippingthrough the tattered pages,Deno pores over the vestiges ofhis showbiz career—newspaperstories, theater programs, headshots, movie stills. Yellowingclips hail him as the nextMichael Jackson; one headlineimprobably proclaims, “Watch


Out Dylan, Here Comes Deno!” “I was about four when I start-

ed singing,” he says. “That wasthe beginning stages of my fathertrying to train me how to carrymy voice and things like that. Hesaw the talent in me, so he want-ed to invest a little bit and seewhere it was gonna go.”

Unlike Brown’s other charges,Deno actually went places in ahurry. Response to his debut sin-gle was muted, but as a childactor he quickly graduated fromsmall parts in cereal commercialsto movie roles. Brown, serving ashis agent and manager, orches-trated plans to turn his son intothe next Rodney Allen Rippey,best remembered now for hisJack in the Box commercials.

Deno spent his days audition-ing for parts and his nights sere-nading patrons at south-sideclubs, which left little time fornormal childhood pursuits.Publicity photos show him withfriends laughing and playing; henow admits the shots were allstaged, that he’d never met anyof the other kids. “As I look backnow, there’s a lot of childhoodmissing,” he says. “I don’t regretit, but I would like to know whatit would’ve felt like to do somechildren things, to grow up as achild. I had to grow up fast.”

In 1974 Deno beat out severalhundred other children in anopen audition to win a role as ayouth gang leader in The MonkeyHustle, a blaxploitation flick

starring Yaphet Kotto and RudyRay “Dolemite” Moore andfilmed in Chicago. In 1975 hescored the lead part in aBroadway touring production ofRaisin, a musical adaptation of ARaisin in the Sun that starredTony-Award-winning actressVirginia Capers. Deno droppedout of grammar school, got atutor, and spent the next twoyears traveling across the coun-try with the show.

In Chicago, especially in theblack press, Deno’s every movewas covered in detail. “I didn’tknow the word celebrity backthen,” he says. “I just knew I waswell-known, and I loved it.”

Deno’s success—and themoney he brought in—allowed

his father to expand the familybusiness. He leased a penthouseoffice suite on West Washingtonand made Bandit Records a“subsidiary” of BrownProductions. (Since Brown neverestablished any formal business-es, or even paid taxes, these divi-sions were window dressing.)

During this period Brownbrought his son Kevin on as vicepresident. Kevin had been pur-suing music on his own as theleader of a successful 15-piecefunk outfit called UltimatePower. “I worked for BrownProductions until dad tried to dosomething slick with my band,”he says. “He wanted me to signthem to his label, and I didn’ttrust him.” Kevin left the job

after just a few months. Meanwhile, with so much rid-

ing on him, Deno felt tremen-dous pressure to keep on earn-ing. “Dad was real hard on him,”says Tridia. “Deno could get any-thing he wanted, but he was hardon him at the same time.”According to her, Brown favoredDeno heavily over his other sonswith Mary Ann, K.K. andDelbert. Deno, in his father’swords, was the “money machine.”

No one is sure how much Denomade during this period, orwhere his acting income went.“What I was hearing is that, fromthe movies, he was practically amillionaire,” says Tridia. “And themoney got squandered because ofcontinued on page 26


mismanagement on dad’s part.” What is certain is that after

years of working and touring,Deno ended up with no trustfund or savings. “I don’t knowwhat happened to it,” he says. “Iguess it just went to maintain[Brown’s] regular lifestyle orwhatever. I wish I could ask himthat question myself.”

Eventually, as Deno grew intoan awkward adolescence, theroles stopped coming. His finalfilm appearances were as an extrain The Blues Brothers and a bitpart in Bad Boys, with Sean Penn.

Still, Brown held out hope thatthe big time was within reach forhis son. Benjamin Wright, who’dleft Chicago for LA to becomemusical director for theTemptations in 1975, would fre-quently get calls from Brown.“He was still trying to pursue hisrecord thing, but I was too busyto come back and work with himanymore,” says Wright. “He’dsend me videotapes of [Deno]performing, but there was noth-ing I could do to help.”

“It was all selfishness,” saysKevin. “If it wasn’t for his selfish-ness Deno would’ve made it. If hehad left Deno alone and given him

to another manager and just tooka piece of it, Deno would’ve beenbig. There’s no telling how big.”

At 15, Deno was all but out ofshow business and enrolled inhigh school. By age 17 he was afather himself. “I had my firstchild, so I had to come into mymanhood. Get a job like a regu-lar person,” he says. “My fatherwas on his way out as far as thebusiness went. There was noth-ing too much he could do for me,and I wasn’t too keen on how Icould pursue my career. So I justlet everything fall away.”

Brown did make one lastattempt to try and revive Deno’scareer, a forgettable synth-ladenR & B cut, “The Eclipse of Love,”that he recorded in 1981. Thetrack was the final Bandit release.Unopened boxes of the single canbe found in record shops on thesouth side even today.

The demise of his son’s careermarked the beginning of the endfor Brown. “I was his last bigchance,” says Deno. “And when Ifailed, that crushed him.”

In the last decade of ArrowBrown’s life, his little empire

was slowly torn apart. Tridia con-tinued to sing at her father’s par-

ties and with the Touch of Love,an all-female Bandit group thatincluded her cousin ReginaBrown and another of Arrow’s“daughters,” Gwendolyn Hughes,Loretha’s sister. But starting inthe mid-70s Tridia had been dis-creetly encouraging the ladies inArrow’s house to take their chil-dren and leave. “I loved my fatherwith all my heart, but I didn’tapprove of the way he lived,” shesays. The birth of her daughter in1978 made her even more deter-mined to put an end to themenage. “There wasn’t no agelimit. Ten years old was the start.That’s what turned me off. Tenyears old? I mean, c’mon, dad.”

“Arrow didn’t try and fight it,”says Sevier. “What was he goingto do? He didn’t have a job, hewas running this bizarre com-mune, he was helpless to stop it.”

One by one, the women left,their departures devastating forBrown. “I think deep downArrow Brown probably had avery strong sense that none ofit—the label, the records—wasever really gonna be successful,”Sevier says. “All he wanted was tohave this little world of his thathe controlled. When that fellapart that was the end.”

By the late 70s the ladies at theBandit house had been replacedwith an array of hangers-on.Among them was the “Birdman,”a cabdriver and musician namedSteve Byrd, whose group theMichigan Avenue SoundOrchestra released a single called“Poontang Thump” on Bandit. “Idon’t remember much abouthim, except that he was differ-ent,” says Tridia. “He wasn’t youraverage type of person, let’s saythat.” Among the items RobSevier and Ken Shipley foundwhen they searched the aban-doned house last year was a 1981receipt recording a transfer ofguardianship of Byrd’s two chil-dren, one of them a daughter, toBrown in exchange for $100.

Eventually someone robbedthe house, taking much ofBrown’s musical and recordingequipment. That seems to havebeen the last straw for Brown.The rest of his days were spent inbitter moods and bad health. Inthe late 80s he suffered a heartattack and series of strokes.

“He just lived day to day untilhe got really sick the last yearbefore he died,” says Tridia. “Iremember looking at him as hewas laying in the bed near the

end. And he gave me this halfsmile like ‘I’m not dead yet.’”

Even Gloria Brown made a finalvisit to the ailing Bandit patri-arch. “I really didn’t want to, but Idid it anyway, out of respect,” shesays. “He was by himself then. Alot of the ladies had gone. Therewas maybe a couple left.”

“He had a leaky valve in hisheart that needed to be fixed,”Tridia says, “but he was too oldand weak for the operation.”Arrow Brown died at home in bedon August 30, 1990. He was 66.

The memorial service, held atGatling’s Funeral Home, was alavishly staged production. Denoand Kevin sang, as did cousinRegina; Paul Serrano spoke; aminister from Zion Travelersprovided the eulogy. “I was toobroken up to do anything butcry,” says Tridia. “It was a packedfuneral, though. He was quitepopular, and unpopular at thesame time. It was a mixture offeelings towards him, but therewere a lot of people there.”

A month later Tridia Brownwas visiting some friends nearthe graystone. They told her thatin a fit of rage Deno’s little broth-er K.K. had tossed all of theirfather’s belongings—including

Arrow Brown



the Bandit master tapes—outbehind the house. “All of dad’spapers, records, everything wassprawled down the alley,” saysTridia. “People picked some ofthe [45s] up, and the rest of thestuff . . . the rest just blew away.”

In the years after Brown’s pass-ing the peculiar history of

Bandit Records was lost. LindaDavis and Po’ Boy Stevenson hadfaded from sight. Larry Johnsonand Lilliane “Pepper” Browndied, and Regina Brown andGloria Brown left the state.

In early 2003 Ken Shipley andTom Lunt, co-owners of the fledg-ling Chicago reissue label NumeroGroup, were looking for their nextproject. They’d just completed

work on their first release in aseries called “Eccentric Soul,” ananthology of the tiny Ohio R & Blabel Capsoul. “With these smallindependent companies, peoplebuilt them up with their hands,”says Shipley, who ran his own ill-fated indie label, Wood Records,in the 90s. “When we saw whatthese people went through itstruck a chord.”

They decided to tap independ-ent music researcher Rob Sevierto compile a similar collectionfocused on a Chicago imprint. Inthe summer of 2003 Sevierbrought a box of old indie-labelsingles to Shipley’s apartment.Among the 45s were copies ofDeno Brown’s “Sweet Pea” andJohnny Davis’s “You Got to

Crawl to Me.” “It just blew meaway,” says Shipley. “And werealized there’s got to be more ofthis stuff out there.

“It became a hunt in a way,” hecontinues. “We wanted to turn upmore records, but we also wantedto find the artists and find outabout the history of this weird lit-tle label. We thought, Let’s notjust find these people and get therights to their records, but let’sget their stories as well.”

The problem was that hardlyanyone knew anything aboutBandit or Arrow Brown. “Andwhat little knowledge we hadabout the label was all false,” saysShipley. “For one, we thoughtthat Arrow Brown was the leadsinger of the Arrows and Majestic

Arrows.” Shipley and Sevier man-aged to get a partial label discog-raphy from local collector DanteCarfagna, but their researchturned up more dead ends thanleads. Even Chicago soul expertslike author Robert Pruter andcollectors like Robert Stallworthproved unable to help.

The pair eventually did theobvious: they searched thephone book, which yielded anumber for an Arrow Brown,who turned out to be Arrow Sr.’snephew. He referred them toRegina Brown, who was living inLas Vegas and singing backupfor Gladys Knight. Shipley con-tacted Regina, but she put himoff for months. The Numerocrew spent nearly a year search-

ing for other leads, to no avail. Desperate, Shipley began call-

ing Regina and her husbanddaily until the couple finallycracked and gave him a localnumber for Tridia Brown. “Wereally had no idea who she was,”he says. “But we rang her up, andtwo days later we were at herapartment talking.”

Tridia was immediately able toclear up some of their misconcep-tions about the label, but it wasn’tuntil their second or third meet-ing that the subject of her father’sunusual living arrangementscame up. “We kept hitting thesedead ends in our conversationsthat made no sense to us,” hesays. “We kept asking, ‘Well whocontinued on page 28


were all these women, what wastheir relationship to Arrow?’ Shewas hesitant: to her, to the family,it was a big deal that all thesewomen lived in the house. It wasn’tnormal, and they were probably alittle embarrassed talking about itat first. Finally we just had to ask,‘Well, was he a pimp?’ And shewas like, ‘No, he wasn’t a pimp,but he was like a pimp.’ Out ofthat more and more informationstarted coming out.”

The Numero Group crew’snext step was to explore thehouse at 4114 S. Martin LutherKing Drive. “Which was a totallytenuous, scary thing,” says

Shipley. The property, nowowned by a funeral home butabandoned since shortly afterBrown’s death, had been strippedand torched years earlier andwas in a state of total disrepair:the front staircase missing, theinterior a mass of collapsingwoodwork. Shipley and Seviermanaged to salvage a singleshoebox full of Brown’s lettersand papers, mostly odds andends: a shopping list, an insur-ance card, a receipt book.

After negotiating the rights tothe label’s catalog with theBrown children, the NumeroGroup team began the arduoustask of tracking down pristine

copies of the singles, since themasters were long gone. Some45s were readily available, whileothers—like the Linda Balentinetrack, of which only two copiesare known to exist—proved elu-sive. Numero digitally cleanedup those it could find.

During their search TridiaBrown remembered that she’dsaved a pair of cassettes, boom-box recordings of MajesticArrows rehearsals and variousother audio snippets, includingArrow’s telephone conversationsand studio chatter. The tapesyielded several stunning a cap-pella versions of Bandit material,including a song called “I’ll

Never Cry for Another Boy” thatTridia says she wrote and herfather took credit for. Three ofthese takes are on the NumeroGroup CD as bonus tracks.

Released last November,Eccentric Soul: The Bandit Labelhas gotten rave reviews in Mojoand the Onion and landed theNumero Group on NPR’s NextBig Thing and in the New YorkTimes. The continuing mysterysurrounding the Bandit label ispart of the allure for many.“We’ve been getting responsesfrom people like Greil Marcus: hedoesn’t quite know what to makeof the music but he’s so caught upin what the story is,” says

Numero’s Tom Lunt. “JonathanLethem sent us a note saying,‘This is a great thing. It’s like a lit-tle novel.’ The Bandit record hasits own life story, as a musical col-lection and as an object. And thegreat thing is, the story isn’t over.It could go on forever as we turnup more little bits.”

Indeed, since the CD wasreleased a few months ago thelabel has already discovered sever-al other Arrow Brown and Bandit-related works, including the SandyCleveland single and tracks bythe Michigan Avenue SoundOrchestra. The Numero Groupplans to add these to a new deluxeversion of the Bandit disc slated

Arrow Brown


for release sometime next year. For the surviving members of

the Brown family, initial wari-ness about the project has givenway to pride in seeing a piece oftheir past restored and presentedto the public. “I honestly wel-come it,” says Tridia. “I don’thave hate in my heart. I may beupset about some things thathappened. But what can you do?It’s over; it’s all water under thebridge. I wish the other membersof the group could be here andsee what’s being done.”

“I’m ecstatic about it,” Denosays, “just to know there’s peopleinterested in what I was. Thatwas a big chapter that was leftout of my life for a long time.”

Deno, who has four childrennow, has moved back in with hismother, Mary Ann. It’s his sixthyear working security at theMerchandise Mart. It’s a goodjob, he says, but it’s clear he stillpines for more. He’s optimisticthat his story will have a happyending. “I hope someone wouldget inquisitive hearing the CDand want to meet the peoplebehind the music and see whatthey’re about now and whatthey’re capable of,” he says.“ ’Cause I’m very interested intasting the world again. I’mthirsty for it.”

These days Tridia spends mostof her time at home caring for her17-year-old son Erik, who has aninoperable hydrocephalic cyst atthe base of his brain, but she toowould like to make music again.“I still have dreams of singingmyself,” she says. “I still write. I’vegot a couple tunes I’d like to givesome famous people to record.”In the meantime she hopes inter-est in the Bandit project will helpher 26-year-old daughter Toika,an aspiring singer: “The otherday she asked me, ‘If they make amovie on granddad and the com-pany, can I play you?’”

A few days after Brown’s pass-ing, Tridia recalls, a couple offriends and neighbors swore thatthey’d seen him standing on theporch of the graystone. The fami-ly decided to spread his ashesand some of his possessions inthe yard where so many used togather. Today under the crum-bling roof of 4114 S. MartinLuther King Drive, a single relicremains: a dusty Baldwin organ.Outside the streets and alleysstretch out, silent and bare. v


bandit records, chicago reader 2005

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