A tale of a bitter, past-his-prime musician and his first close encounter with fluffies for March to the Beat
Rhythm & Blues & Fluffies: The Grady Rollins Story (Part 1)
by Strangeways Pigg Strangeways
Lately, life hadn’t been so good for Grady Rollins.
Grady had paid his dues to rhythm & blues. It was a phrase he tended to say a lot, he even called an album I Paid My Dues to Rhythm & Blues. But these days he was feeling like he’d paid his dues without much to show for it.
Rhythm & blues, not R&B. He’d been making that distinction ever since the 1990’s, when it became clear that “R&B” had turned into limp-dick rhythms and no blues in sight and that wasn’t going to change any time soon.
Grady played the real deal. Full band, a horn section. He’d paid his dues since the beginning, blowing harp for Muscat Jackson before going solo. Did they even call it “blowing harp” anymore? He said “playing the harmonica” like a white boy these days, lest people think he was doing some kind of fag shit.
Grady had hits. Big Fat Fluffy Mama (Shake That Tushy-Tush) was still a classic ass-shaker. Herpin’ an’ Derpin’ was novelty-ass filler, but the royalty checks were good. His 15 minute-long version of Stagger Lee from Grady Live came out at just the right time, when saying “bad motherfucker” wouldn’t get your record pulled from stores, but before faggy white boys were saying it on the radio. That one and Nasty Man still got him some attention in those “OMG I can’t believe blues music used to be so dirty!” videos on Twit Talk or whatever that channel with the one-minute shows that the kids all watched on their phones these days was called. His kids were always asking him to buy them smart phones. Pussies. They probably wanted to go on the Tinder because the guys didn’t know how to make booty calls like a real man and the girls wanted to ho it up like their mothers. The kids only ever called when they wanted money, or something that cost money. Probably all bitter that he left their mamas for the next mama. Whose fault was that?
Their mamas should be buying them phones anyway. Each one took more money than the last in his divorces. Left him without much more than his condominium in Atlanta and a job voicing a motherfucking chipmunk puppet.
The condo used to be in a half-decent neighborhood. Then the fluffies came to town, right in the middle of the garbage strikes. Of all the states Hasbio could have put their warehouses in, it had to be Georgia. And of course they had to go and let those little shitlets escape. Now he couldn’t go outside without hearing “Nice mistah!” or “Be nu da-“, which was about as far as they usually got before getting a size 14 cowboy boot to the motherfucking face. There goes the neighborhood. He couldn’t move to another city, because his property value was a fraction of what it once was. Should have rented.
Now fluffies were threatening his job too, as he saw it. He’d been voicing Cousin Deez on The Busta Nutz Show for 15 years, and it was on the verge of cancelation. Sure, it had been canceled and brought back seven times before. Motherfucking parent groups always bitching and moaning about the content. The racy jokes were for the grown-ups, the producers would always retort, they’d go over the kids’ heads. No one believed that, but it was enough to inevitably get brought back on a new network more popular than ever after fan campaigns. This time cancelation was looming because of low ratings, though. Kids actually liked those motherfucking fluffies. Apparently if they wanted to watch something “kid friendly” that obviously wasn’t, they’d watch those little fuckers shitting, pissing, and fucking on TV rather than chipmunk puppets making bad puns about their nuts.
Grady had just gotten a call from his manager, Telemachus Shame. Grady called him Telly. Telly wanted him to come to a meeting about using one of his songs in a commercial. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d done that for some quick cash. Usually ended up being some white folks dancing around to Herpin’ an’ Derpin’ because they got a lower mortgage rate or some shit. Worth it to pad out his wallet for a few months. The fact that Telly had said that this ad agency wanted to use Big Fat Fluffy Mama intrigued Grady, though. That was something of a sacred song to him, a song about the greatest woman he had ever fucked.
It was 1975. Grady had been playing a packed joint somewhere in the south. The night was hot and the music was hotter. He owned the stage, but all night long his eyes were on one lady in the audience. She had a big fat ass on her like he had never seen, and she could dance like nobody’s business. Shaking that ass all night long.
That. Ass.
She may not have been a supermodel, but as his band liked to say, Grady Rollins would fuck a snake if it had an ass on it. They were coming to the end of their last song, but Grady wasn’t about to let that ass stop shaking.
“We’re gonna play one more song,” Grady said into the mic, confusing his band. They’d played every song that they knew. “It’s a song I just wrote… a song I just wrote right about now. A song about that fiiine-ass mama up front who’s been shaking that fine, fiiine ass all night long!”
He gestured to the lady, and as the spotlight found her the crowd went wild.
“Play the stankiest groove you’ve ever grooved, boys!”
The first few bars were a bit rocky, but the band’s MVP in those days was Horsehair Williams on the drums, and Horsehair came right out of the gate with a slutty four on the floor cowbell-heavy groove. The bass player locked in with an ass-shaking thump, and once the rest of the band found the key, it was on.
“Big fat fluffy maow-maw, shake that tushy-tush!”
Grady couldn’t repeat that chorus enough, growling into it harder every time. The verses, such as they were, were scat-singing and ad-libbing all the things he wanted to do to that fluffy mama and her tushy-tush.
“Big fat fluffy maow-maw, shake that tushy-tush!” Grady bellowed from the depths of his balls.
“Shake that tushy! Shake that tushy!”
Genius that he was, Horsehair had started a chant following that line that had the whole band joining in.
Grady and the band grooved on that new song for over half an hour before making their final bows. You’d best believe that Grady invited that big fat mama backstage.
He fucked her. He fucked her good. Then he fucked her again.
With an attachment to a song like that, Grady was more hesitant to pimp it out than something like Herpin’ an’ Derpin’, but he wasn’t opposed. He figured whatever ad they wanted it for must be something sexy, sassy, and slutty. Maybe a trailer for a movie about college girls who learn how to get their groove on, or for pills that make your dick hard.
Fluffies.
Mother. Fucking. Fluffies.
Happy Mare Fluffy Kibble, for pregnant “soon-mummahs.”
Grady and Telly were seated across the desk from some white boy yuppy advertising exec, and it was taking Grady all the strength in his soul not to punch the guy in his smug motherfucking face. He was seriously considering firing Telly when the meeting was over.
They didn’t want to just use his song, they wanted him to re-record it, and sing “mummah” like a fucking pre-schooler.
No man alive could growl “maow-maw” in a way that conveyed in no uncertain terms that he was about to get all up in them guts like Grady Rollins could, and he conveyed that to the exec.
That was one of several reasons they wanted to change it for the ad, the executive tried to explain to him.
They wanted to add fluffies lispily shouting “Shake dat tushy!” like a bunch of little girls playing Double Dutch on the playground. When it was sung by a gang of coked-up rhythm and blues players ready for a gang-bang, you knew exactly what they meant.
That, again, was one of several reasons for changing it for the ad.
Telly tried to ensure Grady that the original song could likely have a resurgence in popularity if the ads were successful. If they were lucky, it could even be a comeback hit, he went into something about the “Stranger Things effect.”
Stranger Things? Wasn’t that the show with the bitch who slapped him at the 1992 Grammy Awards and a bunch of kids who get buggered by aliens or some shit?
Grady hadn’t been this mad in decades. Maybe not since he caught his third wife in bed with Horsehair Williams and his big ol’ schlong.
The exec showed him how much they were willing to pay. Grady asked if that was the right amount of zeroes.
“Where do I sign?”