artist info

Get ready for a funky good time when Martha High’s Funky Divas, backed by the Fred Wesley and The New JBs, performed a power-packed show of hots and standards from those played and sang with the Godfather of Soul, James Brown.

Martha Harvin began singing in The Four Jewels, whose members attended the same church and school and went on tour with James Brown in 1964. They did record two singles while they toured with Brown, but after a year and a half with Brown the group split up. Not ready to leave the tour, Harvin asked Brown if she could stay. Brown agreed, but he required her name change from Harvin to the stage name High.

She continued singing with Brown for the next 30-plus years, including her unmistakable high soprano falsetto wail on “The Big Payback.” She appeared with Brown on the track “Summertime” and on the Original Funky Divas album.

Joining Martha in the Divas will be Kelly Jarrell, who sang in Brown’s background group The Bittersweets from 1994 until his death in 2006, and Darlene Parker, who along with Martha were backing vocalists in the touring band of Maceo Parker, Brown’s iconic and beloved sax player.

Legendary bandleader, trombonist and author Fred Wesley is one of the forefathers of funk, still setting the standard with his jazz-funk band The New JBs. Together at its core for more than 30 years, the band is a living celebration of roots funk and more, performing such hits as “Pass the Peas” made with James Brown and the JBs including Maceo Parker, as well as selections from the P-Funk years and Fred’s own and others’ soulful jazz, funk and blues compositions.

Born in Columbus, Georgia, and raised in Mobile, Ala., Fred began his career as a teenage trombonist with Ike and Tina Turner. He later was music director, arranger, trombonist and a primary composer for Brown from 1968-1975, then arranged for and played with Parliament-Funkadelic and Bootsy’s Rubber Band. With Brown, Fred became “the world’s most famous sideman, orchestrating the sinuous grooves and contributing the bold, surgically precise solos that defined the language of funk.” He helped take funk to the next level with George Clinton and Bootsy Collins.

Fred has recorded a dozen solo albums including the cult favorite House Party, and his latest, From The Blues and Back, released in 2024. He is featured in the Oscar-winning documentary When We Were Kings and countless other documentaries and books about funk, and gives master classes around the world.

His critically acclaimed memoir Hit Me, Fred: Recollections of a Side Man (Duke University Press, 2002) chronicles in hilarious stories a half century of music history through the eyes of one of the world’s most-sampled musicians. Also a veteran of the Count Basie Orchestra, Fred has worked with scores of other artists, from Ray Charles to Trombone Shorty. His other current project is the jazz organ trio Generations.