Before Keisha Lance Bottoms made history as the nation’s first Black female governor, her father, Major Lance, was lighting up stages as a 1960s soul icon. Her new memoir, “The Rough Side of the Mountain,” reveals a childhood in the shadow of stardom filled with both glamour and hardship.
Just one day after securing her historic election victory in Georgia, Keisha Lance Bottoms pulled back the curtain on a far more personal story. The memoir, “The Rough Side of the Mountain,” published by Mariner Books, details a childhood far removed from the political arena—one spent in the dazzling, and often complicated, orbit of her father, Major Lance, the defining voice of 1960s Chicago Soul. As VIBE reported, this is the story of a daughter learning to follow the legacy of a legend.
From Cabrini-Green to Chart-Topping Hits
Major Lance’s journey to fame began not on a stage, but in the halls of a housing project. “My daddy met Curtis Mayfield when they were teenagers growing up in Cabrini-Green,” Bottoms wrote, referencing the neighborhood rumored to be the housing project the 1970s hit TV show “Good Times” was based on. It was a world where, as she put it, “there were always more hard times than good.” Lance saw a career in music as his ticket out, a dream he shared with his childhood friend Curtis Mayfield, a guitarist who is considered one of the most influential musicians of soul.
Teaming up with producer Carl Davis, Lance and Mayfield launched OKeh Records, and the hits began to flow. Lance’s 1963 breakout, “The Monkey Time,” shot to No. 2 on the Billboard R&B chart and ignited a national dance craze. But it was his 1964 anthem, “Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um,” that cemented his status, soaring to No. 1 on the R&B charts and No. 5 on the Pop charts. The song’s infectious energy even won over Beatles legend John Lennon, who became an outspoken fan. For a young Keisha, this wasn’t just history; it was her life.
A Backstage Pass to a Complicated Legacy
Bottoms’ childhood was a whirlwind of glamour and chaos. She recalled impromptu trips to New York, London, or “some other amazing city” while her father worked, and her home was filled with celebrity visitors. On one occasion, while she was on the City Council, Jermaine Jackson of The Jackson 5 was “so excited when he found out who my father was that he took me to meet his brothers.” They told her what a big influence her father had been on them and said that, before they were famous, they used to clean their house in Gary, Indiana, to Daddy’s music.
“The desire for the spotlight was in my DNA, thanks to my daddy,” Bottoms admitted, but that same charisma masked a deeply fractured family. “Every time I visited Chicago, ‘I’d meet another sibling.’” After her father’s first song took off in 1963, “children started coming out of the woodwork, claiming that he was their father.” This was a pre-DNA testing era, and Bottoms confessed, “I’m not sure if even Daddy knew what was true. I guess it was enough that he knew what could be true.” The family’s complicated reality hit close to home whenever she heard the Temptations’ 1972 hit, “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone.”
The Rough Side of the Mountain
The glitz of the music industry couldn’t shield Bottoms from the turmoil at home. Her world was upended in 1978 when Major Lance was convicted on drug charges and served four years behind bars. “I wasn’t opposed to Daddy living his dream, I just wished he dreamed of something else—something that kept his love for music alive and gave our family the stability we needed,” she wrote. After his release, a 1987 heart attack halted his career, and he passed away in 1994 at the age of 55.
Through it all, Bottoms carried her father’s fearless, free-spirited energy. “If the old custom in Black families was that children were to be seen and not heard, then I didn’t get the memo,” she wrote of her upbringing. “As a child, my life was big, bold, bright, and filled with color. And Daddy was the main artist.” That balance of joy, pain, and unshakeable resilience is the heartbeat of her memoir, tracing the Southern lessons and family bonds that grounded her long before she stepped onto the national political stage. The book shows the complexity of a legacy that shaped a daughter and a soul icon equally.
