Keisha Lance Bottoms Reflects on Father Major Lance in New Memoir

In an excerpt from her upcoming memoir 'The Rough Side of the Mountain' published by Vibe, Georgia Governor and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms reflects on growing up as the daughter of soul singer Major Lance, detailing the extraordinary heights of his musical peak alongside the eventual unraveling of his life and career. Bottoms describes her father as an energetic performer whose diminutive physical frame contrasted with a larger-than-life stage presence, natural charisma, and dancing agility.

According to the excerpt published by Vibe, Lance rose from a childhood on a Mississippi sharecropper's farm and Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing projects to national stardom in the 1960s. During his teenage years at Wells High School, he befriended future music legend Curtis Mayfield, who helped launch his professional recording path. While his 1962 single 'Delilah' yielded little earnings after business deductions, his 1963 follow-up 'The Monkey Time'—written by Mayfield and produced by Carl Davis—became a breakthrough hit that catapulted Lance onto the national rhythm and blues touring circuit.

That success brought Lance to Atlanta's famed Royal Peacock on Auburn Avenue, an essential stop on the historic Chitlin Circuit. According to the memoir excerpt in Vibe, that venue provided the backdrop where Lance first met Bottoms' mother, a 24-year-old postal employee and mother of two who was working to finish her education. Following a persistent courtship that included international phone calls from tour stops in England, the couple married, and Lance supported his wife's return to complete her college degree at Clark, where a young Bottoms frequently accompanied her to class after kindergarten.

Bottoms recounts a childhood steeped in the vibrant orbit of Black entertainment. She recalls riding through neighborhoods in her father's champagne-gold Seville, spending summers swimming at Mayfield's home, and accompanying Lance to performances at Atlanta's Playboy Club. Her father's orbit crossed paths with luminaries including the Jackson 5, Meadowlark Lemon, and Elton John, who once publicly acknowledged Lance on television for helping launch his career. Later in life, members of the Jackson family and other artists, including Charlie Wilson and Maurice White, shared with Bottoms the deep artistic imprint her father left on their generation.

Yet the memoir excerpt also captures the darker consequences of fame. Bottoms addresses the numerous children who surfaced following Lance's initial fame, and she reflects on the emotional toll that accompanied his fading stardom in the United States. While Lance temporarily revived his touring success during the Northern Soul phenomenon in England, financial and personal pressures eventually caught up with the household. According to the excerpt published by Vibe, Lance turned to illicit drug trafficking, leading to a state trial in Georgia that resulted in a 10-year prison sentence.

Bottoms writes that the conviction forced her to grapple with the painful divide between the devoted family man who coached Little League and tended his vegetable garden and the reality of his incarceration.