OF SOUL’S DEATH
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wanted to do corporate gigs. He told me he told David Cannon. And then he was dead in 24 hours.”
Tomi Rae had been in rehab in Miami when Brown died. She says his managers told her to fly home, only to find she had been locked out – while Brown’s corpse lay in a hospital in Atlanta.
Her suspicions grew af ter Cannon was sentenced to three years of home confinement in 2011 for taking more money than he was entitled to while managing Brown.
Tomi Rae was Brown’s fourth wife. They met in the mid-90s in Las Vegas, where she was a Janis Joplin impersonator. They lived together for a decade and in 2001 had a son – James Brown Junior.
Tomi Rae added: “Me and my son are really tight. It’s been me and
A judge ruled last yearear that the union was legal. Butut nine of Brown’s heirs are stilll pursuing a claim that Tomi Rae “embarked on a series of duplicitoustous busi-business machinations calculatedlculated to deprive Brown’s childrenren of their rightful interests inn Brown’s music under the Copyrightyright Act”.
Tomi Rae says she feelfeelss “betrayed” af ter years of caring for Brown.
She said: “I would rub his legs down eight hours a day.y. Curl his hair before a show,, then curl it after. He was hard work. I held this man when he had cancer, for 10 years I put up with some heavy duty, not so fun hard stuff, helping his children when he told me not to. Then they betrayed me – and ttheir little brother. I was ‘Mama Rae’Rae to them but I’d no idea how much they hated me.” Tomi RaRae, whose new fiance Pete Wassif is a gguitarist in The Tomirae Brown Band,Ban said Michael Jackson came to her aid after Brown’s death – ggiving her £ 8000 when she was penniless. She sasaid: “Michael was so nice to me.me He was a sweetheart. He sasaid, ‘ I’m so sorry what they are doing to you.’ He sent sen me money after James died.die It saved me, it got me an apartment, it enabled us to live.” Tomi Rae now gets loans from the James Brown Estate, pending an eventual payout. She wants the family infighting to end and hopes to make peace with her in-laws.
She added: “Just let this end. I can’t do it any more. I’m tired. They keep coming, they are rabid and I don’t know why.
“Everything from the court case to having to endure his father’s legs getting cut off. That’s the lowest thing I have ever seen anybody do. It was inhuman.
“I have never fought for anything except to be my husband’s wife.
“I just want to bury him, get him off his daughter’s front yard – last place he wants to be. I hold out an olive branch and I forgive them. I know how hard it was to be a family member of James.”