Part 2 of the story of Grady Rollins and his misadventures with fluffies. Real life got in the way for about three weeks, so the promise of Part 2 coming shortly after the first one obviously didn’t happen. The good news (at least if you’re a fan of Grady) is that while polishing up Part 2, I ended up expanding the story considerably, so now it will be 3 or 4 parts (hopefully with much shorter gaps between them), so it is no longer just a 2-part story (I updated the title of Part 1 to reflect that). Quite late for it now, but I guess it’s still March… this story started for the March to the Beat event.
As it’s been a bit, if you want a refresher before we rejoin Grady and his long-suffering manager Telly as they arrive in LA to record the ad, you can check out Chapter 1 again here.
Rhythm & Blues & Fluffies: The Grady Rollins Story (Part 2) - In Which Grady Discovers That They Don’t Make LA Women Like They Used To
by Strangeways Pigg Strangeways
Grady Rollins and his manager Telemachus “Telly” Shame stepped off a plane into LAX Airport. It was the first time in a long while that Grady had flown first class. There was even a driver waiting to take them to the hotel holding a fancy sign that said “Mr. Rollins.”
The ad agency had flown Grady and Telly out to LA. Not only did they want him to re-record his song Big Fat Fluffy Mama (Shake That Tushy-Tush), he was going to appear in the ad with a bunch of fluffy backup singers. Happy Mare fluffy kibble for pregnant mares. Not Grady’s most dignified job, but Telly had negotiated an additional fee for him to appear in the ad on top of the hefty sum for using the song. It was all a blow to Grady’s pride, but it was a blow considerably softened by the fact that he was making more money from this than he had from the last five years of The Busta Nutz Show, and that was before residuals.
Grady got settled in to the hotel, had a drink or three at the hotel bar, and waited for the car to take him to the studio. Even if he was there for a glorified jingle, Grady couldn’t help but feel nostalgic about going to the studio. He hadn’t been in one since 2017. Not a real one where they made music, anyway. That hole in the wall in the middle of an Atlanta office building where Grady dubbed his bad jokes as “Cousin Deez” might generously count as a recording studio, but that was a far cry from being where the magic happened.
It was 2017. Uncle Grady’s House was supposed to be Grady’s comeback album. One of those fancy neo-soul producers out of England, the ones who could make a skinny girl from Manchester sound black, had grown up on Grady’s music and took the project on as a personal thing. Dude had a vanity label he was going to put it out on and everything. He even had the marketing hook: “The Uncle of Rhythm and Blues is back!”
The Uncle of Rhythm and Blues. It might not be The Godfather of Soul, but it had a ring to it that Grady liked.
It wasn’t quite like the old days. The whole band laying down a stanky take to the tape, that was how Grady liked to do it. The wine, the weed, the women, it was all faster back in the day in more ways than one. Grady had barely finished fucking that big fat fluffy mama when he was on the horn with Old Man Shame (Telly’s father and Grady’s manager back then) having him book a day at Stax Records studios in Memphis, and one off-day of the tour was all it took Grady and the band to cut a classic. These days it was all computers, vocal takes put together piecemeal, and track-by-track layers of instruments from a bunch of session cats who looked more like college students than road-tested rhythm and blues warriors. It sometimes took as long to do one song as it took Grady to do a whole album in the olds days.
Still, Grady couldn’t argue with results. Overproduced or not, Uncle Grady’s House was his best album since I Paid My Dues to Rhythm and Blues. By the time the record came out late in the year though, 2017 was the year of Me Too. Suddenly the music critics who would have been shaking their asses to Fuck Her Right in the Fartbox, Nasty Uncle, and All Up in Dem Guts (Again) six months ago were wringing their hands over “problematic lyrics.” Fuckers even complained about (Ain’t) Too Woke to Smoke. Didn’t seem like anything that would stop the momentum of the album, though. Critics thinking it was a little too nasty might even give him more street cred.
Then the articles hit the web. Backup singers from the Uncle Grady’s House sessions talking about “a hostile environment” in the studio. Then some of the backup singers on his older records started talking. The producer distanced himself from the project shortly thereafter, and the record label dropped him. Motherfuck.
Walking into the studio, Grady was dressed to the nines in a pinstripe suit. He had debated doing so, afraid of getting fluffy shit on his suit. But even in the early days he always dressed like a gentleman in the studio. The backup singers liked it, and it wasn’t like he couldn’t afford dry-cleaning now.
Grady was surprised to not hear the idiotic babble so familiar from the streets of Atlanta when he walked through the doors. Maybe the fluffies weren’t there yet, or maybe they had them in a sound-proof booth already.
Grady recognized the producer, Telly had gotten him on a Zoom call a few days earlier. They had already re-recorded the backing track with session guys. Grady knew they’d never get anything close to the stank of the original, but he’d accepted that stank was not what the ad agents were looking for. Plus, not using the original track came with the benefit of not having to deal with the estate of Horsehair Williams. Litigious motherfucker, always trying to come after those co-writing credits for himself and the rest of the band. Yeah, they had come up with the stankiest groove they’d ever grooved for Big Fat Fluffy Mama, but who the fuck did they think told them to do that?
There were only two people in the control room besides the producer. Some nerdy little recording engineer, and an Asian lady who was mighty fine even if she looked to be about seven months pregnant.
“She’ll be doing the fluffy voices.”
Apparently, they weren’t going to use actual fluffies for the track. Grady found the producer’s explanation of “it’s just easier that way” to be quite compelling in fact. It seemed that lady was one of the top fluffy-voicers in the business, specializing in their “singing” voices, if they could be called that. She was a regular for musical numbers on My Little Fluffy and had done more tracks for Fluff Bop than she could remember. Grady shuddered at the mention, he’d seen way too many ads for those albums on daytime TV. As if contemporary pop music wasn’t limp-dick enough already, watered-down versions with “fluffies” singing sounded like something that should only be played in Guantanamo Bay.
They were only recording the chorus for the ad, and Grady had been singing that song for decades. What could it take, five minutes?
Countless takes in the vocal booth later, Grady seemed to finally be getting the pronunciation of “mummah” down, but the producer still had more to say over the talkback mic. “Sound more chipper,” “you’re singing this for fluffies and kids,” etc.
Basically, “don’t sing like you’re ready to get down and fuck.” Motherfuckers should have thought of that before they used a song about being ready to get down and fuck for their commercial. The producer suggested a break for them to clear their heads.
Grady was on the prowl and scoped things out until the “fluffy” singer was alone in the break room. This was why he always dressed fancy. He had even put on cologne.
“Damn, I don’t know if I’ve ever fucked a bitch who was pregnant and oriental! Safe to say I’m feeling some yellow breeder fever right about now!”
“Excuse me?”
“You wanna slobber on my dick right here, or should we wait until after the session and you can come back to my hotel room and love me long time?”
Telly was at the studio within half an hour, and the backup singer agreed to come out of the locked vocal booth if a security guard was present. A substantial cash payment was made, and it was agreed that she would come back to record her parts after Grady was no longer on the premises.
Well shit. Back in the day, fucking the backup singers came with the studio.
The rest of the session went smoothly, relatively speaking. Perhaps it helped Grady to not sound like he had fucking on his mind now that he couldn’t stare at them big ol’ pregnant titties through the recording booth glass. He noticed the producer was more distant though. Even saw him discreetly making a few phone calls. During a break, Grady noticed that the producer had an article up on his phone, one where they had interviewed the backup singers on Uncle Grady’s House. Fucking backup singers, they didn’t make them like they used to.
There was a day in between the recording session and the shoot for the commercial. Telly told Grady to stay out of trouble and try not to cause any more “incidents,” then fucked off to do whatever it is that managers do all day. Pitching more fluffy commercials to his other clients, perhaps? Telly managed numerous musical artists throughout the southern United States, but the rest were all cracker-ass hillbilly music or mush-mouthed New Orleans boys. What could their songs sell? Incest for fluffies, when it came to the former? Grady didn’t know the details of fluffy reproductive etiquette, nor did he want to, but judging by their prolific rate of breeding, he doubted that was anything that needed to be advertised. Maybe some of those freaks from the bayou could advertise fluffy voodoo dolls? Sticking pins in fluffies, that wasn’t a half-bad idea now that he thought about it. Maybe he ought to pitch that to Telly.
With nothing else to do that day, Grady decided to rent a Cadillac and drive by some of his favorite haunts from back in the days when he’d often come to the city to record.
Grady discovered that it wasn’t as easy to find a hooker in LA as it used to be. The feral problem wasn’t as bad as in Atlanta, but it seemed like they’d run the girls off some of the reliable street corners nonetheless. Grady couldn’t really blame them, who would want to fuck a hooker with fluffy shit on her leg?
Hitting up a karaoke bar did the trick. Grady sang a few of his old hits and his karaoke favorite, Big Ten Inch (Record of the Blues) by Bull Moose Jackson & His Buffalo Bearcats (from the all-time classic album Big Fat Mamas are Back in Style Again). Before long he’d picked up a fine young honey and was taking her for a ride back to the hotel to play her his own big ten inch record of the blues, metaphorically speaking.
It wasn’t until after some wine and some weed at his hotel room that Grady discovered that the lady didn’t know he was Grady Rollins. She thought he was just some old guy with money to burn and a good karaoke voice. Emphasis on the money to burn. She didn’t even know who Grady Rollins was.
She did say that he sounded like Cousin Deez from The Busta Nutz Show though. Grady told her to get the fuck out.
Still, Grady hadn’t lost his groove. Tomorrow was the day they would film the commercial. Lights, camera, action.