It Was Not...All in My Mind: A Memoir

When twenty-five-year-old Maxine Brown stepped into a recording studio for the first time, she wasn't supposed to be there. But her manager had suddenly lost his biggest act, the sister and brother duo Inez Foxx and Charlie Foxx, (of "Mockingbird" fame) and quickly needed a new act so he wouldn't lose his money for the 30-minute recording session he had booked. Maxine had one song to sing, which she had written herself, and in one take--she took two, just in case--she cut the demo for "It's All in My Mind." This was September 1960. Topping the charts, the record launched a singing career that would span almost seventy years and the who, what, and where that were a huge part of the history of rhythm and blues and soul music: from her numerous bookings at the storied Apollo Theater in Harlem, including with Marvin Gaye; to being on the "Chitlin' Circuit" with Gladys Knight; to the Bag O' Nails in London, with the Beatles in the audience; to recording sessions at FAME studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, with Otis Redding, to Tokyo, Japan, with Ben E. King, singing his superhit "Stand by Me" in Japanese.
It Was Not...All in My Mind is the stirring story of one of the most gifted rhythm and blues/soul singers of the 1960s: the profound impact the upheavals of her childhood and youth would have on the rest of her life; the exhilarating highs and the devastating lows of her musical career, taking us back to where it all began: Maxine, at nine years old, sitting on the stoop in Jamaica, Queens, New York, singing three-part harmony with her sister and a friend, discovering she had a talent that matched her love for singing.