Taking shelter by the theater’s back door, a hungry and thirsty Mitchell was found by Frank Schiffman, the Apollo’s original owner. Terrified, Mitchell assured the man he wasn’t causing any trouble, just waiting for his aunt to come home. Instead of shooing the kid away, Schiffman asked if he’d like to make some money while he waited.
“I got so frightened, because I didn’t know what he was talking about. You’re told, ‘Don’t accept money, gifts, or toys from strangers,’ right?” Mitchell reflects from the theater’s empty stage. He is, on this Saturday in January, decked out in a three-piece gray suit. “He saw the look on my face, and he said, ‘Son, I’m not gonna bother you. I’m asking you, do you wanna make some money? There are people inside rehearsing and they’re so busy, they’re gonna need somebody to go get their food, their coffee, their shoes shined. If you run these errands, they’ll give you a little tip.’ “
Mitchell’s one-off errand turned into a weekend and occasional after-school gig — chicken dinners for the Temptations, who liked to dance while placing their orders; lunches for comedian Flip Wilson, who would slide his requests under the door of his dressing room. “I got to make money, lots of money, because they all felt sorry for this poor little dirty kid. So they would put five dollars, ten dollars in the hat,” Mitchell says. “I started meeting all these stars that really, really influenced me and told me [about] the importance of education.”
It was Apollo mainstay James Brown who really set him straight. “I was failing all my subjects because of my low self- esteem,” Mitchell says. “I was one of those kids that never raised his hand in class and asked the teacher to explain.” Education was already on Soul Brother Number One’s mind (his song “Don’t Be a Dropout” was released in 1967), and he asked the young Mitchell to bring in his report card. “He said, ‘If you don’t start raising your hand in class, I’m sorry, son — you’re not allowed to come here and run errands anymore,’ ” Mitchell recalls. “I thought the world was coming to an end.”
He panicked at the thought of losing the new life the Apollo had given him and his brothers and sisters. “As a result of James Brown threatening me to not be able to come back here, I started raising my hand in class and I got the knowledge I needed,” he says. “My grades went up immediately.”