Long before securing her landmark victory as the nation’s first Black female governor in American history, Keisha Lance Bottoms was just a kid watching her father, soul icon Major Lance, light up stages across the country. Fresh off a monumental political victory in Georgia, she’s putting the podium aside to tell a far more intimate story. In her memoir, “The Rough Side of the Mountain,” Bottoms pulls back the curtain on a childhood filled with backstage glitz, raw family truths, and the quiet heartbreak of growing up in the shadow of soul stardom.
In a candid feature for VIBE—published just one day after securing her historic election victory on November 4—Bottoms recalled how her famous, soul-singing father “never met a stranger and always kept his friends.” Major Lance was the defining voice of 1960s “Chicago Soul”—a sound anchored by crisp horn sections and gospel-infused harmonies—who started out as a dancer on Chicago TV. Lance teamed up with his childhood friend Curtis Mayfield, the guitarist who is considered one of the most influential musicians of soul, and producer Carl Davis to launch OKeh Records.
“My daddy met Curtis Mayfield when they were teenagers growing up in Cabrini-Green,” Bottoms wrote. “Rumored to be the housing project the 1970s hit TV show Good Times was based on, there were always more hard times there than good. Daddy thought a career as an athlete or a musician could be his way out.” And he was right.
Lance racked up back-to-back Billboard smashes. His 1963 breakout hit, “The Monkey Time,” reached No. 2 on the Billboard R&B chart and spawned a national dance craze. “Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um” (1964) became his signature song, which soared to No. 1 on the R&B charts and No. 5 on the Pop charts—even turning Beatles legend John Lennon into an outspoken fan.
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The former Atlanta mayor recalled how her father first noticed her mother, Sylvia Robinson, at a small table in the Royal Peacock when “Daddy’s old friend Gus approached them.” Sylvia didn’t give him her phone number. Instead, her friend Linda had slipped it to him as they left, and the rest was history. Despite being on the road often, Major was “attentive to Mama. […] By the time they got married and I was born, Mama embodied a superstar’s wife,” Bottoms wrote, remembering how her childhood was filled with celebrity visitors to their home and impromptu trips to “New York, London, or some other amazing city where we might stay for weeks at a time while he worked.”
She recalled how years later, when 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 me what a big influence Daddy had been on them and said that, before they were famous, they used to clean their house in Gary, Indiana, to Daddy’s music,” Bottoms wrote, noting that her father influenced the likes of Charlie Wilson and Maurice White. According to Bottoms, her father had accomplished a dream that once seemed impossible to conquer. He did it—but the fame and fortunes came with a side of family secrets.
Bottoms remembered every time she 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 before DNA testing, and I’m not sure if even Daddy knew what was true. I guess it was enough that he knew what could be true.” She confessed: “It was hard not to think of Daddy whenever I heard the Temptations’ 1972 hit, ‘Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone.’”
While the complicated family tree was a lot to process, Bottoms couldn’t deny the performer’s spark she inherited from her father. “The desire for the spotlight was in my DNA, thanks to my daddy. He was a showman and I was proud to be like him.” Fearless. Free. And unapologetically himself, Major Lance moved through the world with a dazzling charisma that passed straight down to his daughter.
“If the old custom in Black families was that children were to be seen and not heard, then I didn’t get the memo,” Bottoms wrote of her early years. “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 serves as the heartbeat of her memoir, “The Rough Side of the Mountain.” Published by Mariner Books and released in April, the inspiring book traces the Southern lessons and family bonds that grounded Bottoms long before she stepped onto the national political stage.
“I was a child; children want a sense of structure, and it is not too much to ask for parents that offer them that,” Bottoms wrote, recalling her childhood with a famous parent. Her world was upended in 1978 when Major Lance was convicted on drug charges and served four years behind bars. After his release, a 1987 heart attack halted his career before his death in 1994. He was 55.
“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,” Bottoms wrote. “Perhaps if he had seen a way to do both, so much would have been different.”
