A bass line from Bluffton

Drive down Buck Island Road today, and it takes a little imagination to picture the Bluffton that was once there. So much has changed that pieces of the old landscape have nearly disappeared beneath neighborhoods, businesses and new roads. But before all of that, this was home to families whose stories stretched across generations, and one of those families was the Browns.

Years ago, a friend of mine put a name in my ear that I never completely forgot. He didn’t give me much to go on, just a few words: “Lynn Brown. The Impressions.” I looked into it at the time and found enough to know there was something there, but not enough to tell his story properly. I put it away, hoping that maybe one day another piece would turn up.

That happened recently through conversations with George Chaplin, who has become someone I genuinely enjoy talking with about old Bluffton. Lynn Brown’s name found its way back into one of those conversations, and this time I started digging a little deeper. Before long, the pieces that had been missing all those years began falling into place.

Leonard “Lynn” Brown grew up on Buck Island, one of nine children of Albert and Mary Jane “Jannie” Brown. Albert had purchased 15 acres there in 1927, and the Brown family made their life from that land. Albert farmed cotton, corn, peas, beans, sweet potatoes and watermelons, sometimes taking what he grew by sailboat to Savannah to sell. He was also a World War I veteran and a deacon at First Zion Baptist Church, while Jannie would remain on Buck Island for decades and watch Bluffton change around her.

Somewhere in that family was a boy with an ear for music. Lynn attended Michael C. Riley and graduated with the Class of 1960 before heading to South Carolina State College in Orangeburg. There, according to a history I recently found, he played drums in the marching band and bass guitar in the concert band. It was at South Carolina State that Lynn’s life appears to have taken one of those turns that nobody could have planned.

In 1962, Les Cooper and the Soul Rockers came through Orangeburg while touring colleges. When the band’s bass player became ill, Lynn was given an opportunity to sit in. Whatever Les Cooper heard that day was enough to take notice of the young man from Bluffton, and Lynn soon became the band’s bass player and songwriter. Later that year, Les Cooper and the Soul Rockers recorded “Wiggle Wobble,” a song that became a national hit.

And then Lynn did something that I love about this story. He came home.

The account says Lynn brought Les Cooper and the Soul Rockers back to Bluffton and to the school where he had graduated only a couple of years earlier. They played inside the Michael C. Riley gymnasium for a packed crowd of students, free of charge, and later played for a paying crowd at Troy’s Juke Joint. Suddenly, a memory shared with me by my friend Mr. Brother Kitty made perfect sense. He remembered Lynn Brown playing at Michael C. Riley with the Les Cooper band. All these years later, somebody in Bluffton still remembered that homecoming.

Lynn’s musical journey didn’t stop there. By May 1965, he had joined The Impressions, one of the great soul groups of that era, and in the professional music world he became known as Lenny Brown. Curtis Mayfield was at the center of the group, alongside Fred Cash and Sam Gooden, and contemporary accounts from the time confirm that Leonard Brown was traveling with them on bass.

The more I learned about Lynn, the more I understood that he wasn’t simply along for the ride. Sam Gooden later remembered him as an exceptional musician with a remarkable ear, the kind of player who could hear what a song needed and find it on his instrument. Fred Cash remembered him, too, simply and clearly, as “the bass player.”

Decades after those young men had traveled together, Lynn’s name was still part of their memories.

Then came a record that many of us still know today.

In 1967, The Impressions recorded Curtis Mayfield’s “We’re a Winner.” The song would become much more than another hit record, carrying a message of pride and perseverance during the civil rights era and eventually reaching No. 1 on the R&B chart. Playing bass on that recording was Leonard “Lenny” Brown.

I keep thinking about the distance between those two places in Lynn’s life. On one end was Buck Island, Albert and Jannie’s 15 acres and a young boy attending Michael C. Riley. On the other was a recording studio with Curtis Mayfield, helping make a record that would be heard across America.

That’s where I want to leave Lynn for now. Not with what happened next, because that can wait until Part Two, but right there in the middle of something extraordinary. A young musician from Buck Island had left Bluffton, found his opportunity, worked his way into one of the great groups of his time and was now playing on the No. 1 R&B record in America.

And somewhere underneath those voices on “We’re a Winner,” you can still hear him playing.

to be conitnued in part two…

Paul Tollefson is the Director of Tennis at the Hampton Hall Club. After moving from Hilton Head to Bluffton he became enthralled with the history of the town and the people and cultures that call it home. He has found a passion in writing and enjoys being able to share the stories and pictures of long-time locals. He is the co-creator of the Facebook page “Bluffton Then and Now.”