James Brown

James Brown lived  dominant musical voice and an outstanding African-American personality, period. In his own time, he became “Soul Brother Number ONE,” a larger-than-life Godfather of Soul. “JAMES BROWN is a concept, a vibration, a dance,” he told us recently. “It’s not me, the man. JAMES BROWN is a freedom I created for humanity.”

Nearly stillborn, then revived by an aunt in a country shack in the piney woods outside Barnwell, South Carolina, on May 3, 1933. In 1946, all of 13 years old, Brown first tried his musical luck with his Cremona Trio, a penny-making sideline. His career halted temporarily when he was imprisoned for petty theft in 1949. Paroled in Toccoa, Georgia, in 1952, under the sponsorship of the local Byrd family, Brown started to make music his principal motive. Initially, he sang gospel with Sarah Byrd and the church club, then joined her brother Bobby Byrd’s locally established group, known as the Gospel Starlighters or the Avons, depending on what or where they performed.

“I’ve never seen a man work so hard in my whole life,” Byrd recalled. “He’d go from what we rehearsed and leap off into something else. It was hard to keep up. He was all the time driving, driving, driving.

By the fall of 1955 the Flames had worked up a furious, gospelized tune called “Please Please Please,” inspired by “Baby Please Don’t Go,” a blues standard that had been a substantial hit for The Orioles in 1952. Emboldened by the response to their shows—which featured not only the JB flip ‘n’ split but Brown crawling on his stomach from table to table—the group recorded a spare version of the song in the basement of Macon radio station WIBB.

“It was simple, just a guitar and the voices around one microphone,” said former disc jockey Hamp Swain, who was the first person to play the song on the air, at the competitor WBML. “Our audience liked it. At the time, though, we weren’t thinking this was the beginning of anything.”

Bolstered by a strong live show and massive sales throughout the South. “Please Please Please” eventually reached the national R&B Chart Top Five. James Brown and the Flames were becoming Famous.

“Please Please Please,” though it eventually sold a million copies, was actually out of step with the times. With the rise of r&b reborn as rock ’n’ roll, and the skyrocketing careers of Little Richard, Fats Domino, the Platters and a young Elvis Presley, Nathan’s dislike for the song had some commercial validity. And while in the long run James Brown would lead the revolution, “Please Please Please” seemed doomed to forever mark him and the Flames a regional flicker.

For the next two-and-a-half years, Brown watched as every follow-up single—nine in all—failed. The other Flames, already distressed by Brown’s top billing, quit and went home; Nathan wished JB would go with them. But the fiery singer soldiered on in Southern obscurity, backed by keyboardist Lucas “Fats” Gonder from Little Richard’s band and whomever they could rustle up.

In the summer of 1958, Brown originated, adapted or was given a pop-gospel ballad that became his salvation. He recorded “Try Me”—a literal plea for acceptance—in New York on September 18, with a studio band that featured future jazz great Kenny Burrell on guitar. By January 1959, his record sat on top of the national R&B chart and snuck into the Pop Top 50.

It was an unusually long session. “Prisoner Of Love” took 15 takes, all live with the band. But its final version had the desired effect. By the following spring, “Prisoner Of Love” was James Brown’s first top 20 Pop hit.

The planets were in volatile alignment in 1963. America’s civil rights movement, bubbling since the mid-1950s, burst into focus with the August 28 march on Washington, D.C., one month after Joan Baez and Bob Dylan echoed the voice of the college protestors at the Newport Folk Festival. President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in November startled even the non-political.

Across the tracks, in Oakland, California, Huey P. Newton and others were formulating the Black Panther party. In Detroit, Berry Gordy’s Motown operation was bidding to be “The Sound Of Young America.” Across the Atlantic, groups of post-World War Two baby boomers, spearheaded by The Beatles, were making headlines as creators of the U.K.’s newest sound and image.

James Brown was beginning his ascent into the international consciousness. Simultaneous with “Prisoner Of Love,” his no-bullshit Live At The Apollo quickly became the nation’s second best-selling albums. His touring business, the core of his livelihood, exploded.

But with Syd Nathan ailing, out of touch with the contemporary music scene yet stubbornly calling the shots, Brown was restless. He formed his own label, Try Me, and song publishing company, Jim Jam Music, under the King umbrella. And then he recorded only three times that year: the original version of “Devil’s Den,” which became his live show theme and the group’s initial foray into the Blue Note/ Prestige school of bluesy funk-jazz; “Oh Baby Don’t You Weep,” a gospel rewrite that became the first of his many two-part singles; and a full-length concert of older material at Baltimore’s Royal Theater. Brown saw King Records, in need of James Brown product, release a live album from the show, Pure Dynamite, but spliced in newer studio material overdubbed with fake applause.

Brown and Bart had broader horizons. They formed the independent Fair Deal Records production company in the fall of 1963, placing JB productions by Anna King and Bobby Byrd with the Smash division of Mercury Records. About the same time, Brown and the band headlined a Motown package tour.

By April 1964 Brown himself appeared on Smash, despite his existing contract with King. During the year he recorded prolifically under the Fair Deal umbrella, producing members of his revue as well as his own big-band revivals of r&b classics; orchestrated arrangements of MOR standards; a gospel-harmony throwback, “Maybe The Last Time”; and an untypical “teen-beat” performance, “Out Of The Blue.”

Referencing once again the advent of commercial jazz, JB recorded several funky instrumentals, including the blue-light special, “Grits.” More profoundly, he cut original compositions that pointed to a new direction: prototype versions of “I Got You” and “It’s A Man’s World,” and a pulsating, jerk dance declaration, “Out Of Sight.”

Brown’s rhythmic core was jump-started by a succession of fresh, inventive players. Joining in 1964 were musical director Nat Jones, and Melvin and Maceo Parker, two cocky teenagers from Kinston, North Carolina.

“James had wanted me to join the year before, but I was still in school, “ Melvin recalled. “The next time he came through town I was ready, and I had Maceo with me. Our bags were packed.

“Somehow, I had the nerve to tell James I wouldn’t go without Maceo. Maceo played tenor, but James needed a baritone – and Maceo carried one of those, too. We were in.”

The Parkers figured they’d stay for a year, then go back to school. Twelve months later, they were drafted into the Army. But they’d both be back, with considerable success.

“Out Of Sight” hit the charts just as James Brown’s recording career hit the legal fan. Its success led King to sue Smash, preventing the release Brown’s vocal recordings on Smash, which had to be content with instrumentals and JB productions of other artists. King re-released older albums with new covers.

Mercury Records looked to buy King to get James Brown, but Syd Nathan wouldn’t sell. He wanted his contracted singer back on existing terms. He didn’t, as Brown refused until he got a vastly improved deal.

In late October, 1964, JB and his crew electrified a gaggle of California teenyboppers during the filming of Steve Binder’s T.A.M.I. Show, upstaging the headlining Rolling Stones. Around the same time, Brown, with the Famous Flames, made an extraordinary cameo appearance in the Frankie Avalon movie, “Ski Party.” They lip-synced to the withdrawn Smash version of “I Got You.”

For a moment, anyway, the lack of new product was no problem. James Brown, like his boyhood idol Louis Jordan, was now in movie houses nationwide. More people than ever before could see for themselves that he looked and sounded like no one else in the immediate universe.

Brown, meanwhile, returned to King with a brand new deal—and something from the outer limits in his tape box.

By early 1965, there was a new addition to the JB songbook: “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag.” Brown based it on a show ad-lib, but in its final form the song not only signaled his new status at King, it articulated a new musical and cultural direction.

In typical JB fashion, “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” was recorded in less than an hour on the way to a gig, in February 1965. The band, which included a new member, blues guitarist Jimmy Nolen, was weary from a long bus ride; their exhaustion shows on the original source tape. But fired by pride and their optimistic leader (“This is a Hit!”), they refused to lose the groove.

It was Brown’s first new song for King in more than a year. In a brilliant post-production decision, its exclamatory intro was spliced off and the entire performance was sped up for release. “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” went through the roof. Star Time had arrived.

Brown followed “Papa’s Got A New Bag” with a freshly minted version of “I Got You,” now subtitled “(I Feel Good).” He went on a roll, appearing on TV programs that had previously shunned him. He built up his “Orchestra,” a combination of jazz and blues players that included new recruits Waymond Reed, Levi Rasbury, Alfred “Pee Wee Ellis,” Clyde Stubblefield, and John “Jabo” Starks. He was also winning awards—and striding into a suddenly open-ended future.

He debuted in prime time on The Ed Sullivan Show. Brown also hosted a mammoth civil rights rally in Mississippi, and he opened a nodding acquaintance with the Frank Sinatra/ Dean Martin/Sammy Davis Jr. ratpack.

In August 1966, Brown again did what no African-American performer could do: he awarded himself a Lear Jet, with which he flew to the White House to discuss the “Don’t Be A Dropout” campaign with Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey. These were heady times.

Brown’s biggest international hit that year was an impassioned balled, “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World.” Brown kicked off 1967 like all the preceding years: back on the road. He added a three-piece string section to the Orchestra, which was absolutely unheard of for any working artist at the time, black or white.  In mid-January he recorded several shows during a weekend engagement at the Latin Casino nightclub in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, tapes of which were doctored with echo and later released as Live At The Garden.
No one really noticed the new brew until the summer, when the mind-blowing single “Cold Sweat” blasted through the hot air.

It was just rhythm—barely any chord changes—with jazz intervals in the horn section inspired by Miles Davis’ “So What.” It contained another first—a “give the drummer some” solo by Clyde Stubblefield. And Brown shaped it in the studio in only two takes.

“’Cold Sweat’ deeply affected the musicians I knew,” said Jerry Wexler, who was then producing Aretha Franklin and other soul stars for Atlantic Records. “It just freaked them out. For a time, no one could get a handle on what to do next.”

James Brown kept going. He made his Tonight Show debut and recorded a set at the Apollo Theater in late June for future release. His next single was “Get It Together,” a monstrous two-parter in which JB gave each band member “some.”
Yet in the face of modern soul music, embodied by Aretha Franklin and the Stax Records label, strutting into the mainstream, and Stax’s Otis Redding being embraced by the acid-rock generation at the Monterey Pop Festival, Brown moved to embrace the Las Vegas market, performing such supper-club standards as “That’s Life” and “I Wanna Be Around,” even as “Cold Sweat” was turning heads.

In 1968, assassins’ bullets felled Martin Luther King, Jr. and Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy in a two-month span, adding heat and rage to an already-smoldering African-American nation. The Vietnam War ramped up as nationwide protests gained steam.

Brown stepped to the fore. The day after King’s assassination, he was televised in concert at the Boston Garden to calm the rioting. He was flown to Washington, D.C. to speak on the radio and urge brotherhood. Brown and his wife were also invited to a White House dinner with President Johnson.

During the same year Brown bought his first two radio stations, WJBE in Knoxville, Tennessee, and WRDW in Augusta, Georgia. He entertained on the African Ivory Coast and for the U.S. Troops in Vietnam; collected innumerable citations; and wound up the year touring with the Count Basie Orchestra as his support act.

James Brown was proving to be a man of considerable influence. But gestures to the U.S. government didn’t endear him to black militants. To them, Soul Brother No. 1 was siding with “The Man.” James Brown felt he was doing no such thing.  Brown instead focused his musical message. The new tunes were powerful, if lyrically ambiguous: “I Got The Feelin’” and “Licking Stick-Licking Stick,” the latter recorded just a few days after King’s death. But by the summer of riots, JB recorded his most profound anthem, “Say It Loud – I’m Black And I’m Proud.”

His No. 1 hit “Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose” offers two examples: during the intro the horns offer a weak riff to JB’s cue; he says, right on the finished record, “start it over again.” When Charles Sherrell, the bass player, walks up to the bridge of the tune a bit early, Brown doesn’t stop the song, he intercepts and corrects the error with a rhythmic cascade of “no-no-no-no-no’s.” Other times, Maceo was called upon to solo—“Maceo, I want you to blow”—when JB himself ran out of rhymes. And every drummer new or old trained their eyes on the back of the boss’ head and shoulders, ready for a body cue to pop the snare.

It was why Fred Wesley would say later, “The first rule when you went to work for James Brown: watch James Brown.”

Soul Brother No. 1 began 1969 on a furious roll. His funk and the message got heavier: “I Don’t Want Nobody To Give Me Nothing,” a personal anthem, preceded a slew of “Popcorn” records. They pumped up the stage show, while Brown continued to court the mainstream. He recorded cocktail instrumentals with Cincinnati’s Dee Felice Trio, and appeared for an entire week on The Mike Douglas Show in June, performing with Felice as well as his regular ensemble.

Yet Brown was in danger of being upstaged. He found serious competition from funk-rock bands, among them Sly & the Family Stone and the revamped Isley Brothers, as well as Motown’s Norman Whitfield productions. To top it off, a few key players in the JB Orchestra had left.

In March 1970, Brown suffered another blow: the guts of the 1960s band, including Maceo and Melvin Parker, Jimmy Nolen and Alofonzo “Country” Kellum, walked out, leaving only Byrd, who had recently returned with vocalist Vicki Anderson from an 18-month stab at independence, and Starks, an old-school loyalist.

Enter the Pacesetters, a band of eight Cincinnati teenagers who leaped suddenly from King studio fill-ins to Soul Brother No. 1’s swaggering front-liners. Prominent among them were the Collins brothers, William, a.k.a. “Bootsy” on bass, and Phelps, a.k.a. “Catfish” on rhythm guitar.

“James Brown and his band were our heroes,” said Bootsy. “We knew all the tunes, but we couldn’t imagine actually playing with them. I mean, one night with a guy like Jabo would have been it. To tell the truth, I don’t think I ever got used to the fact that I was there.”

Brown’s “New Breed”—their name before he settled on The J.B.’s—had a profound effect on his sound, stance and future. Through them Brown shifted emphasis from the horns to guitar, taking the whole of African-American music with him. The J.B.’s got JB back to basics.

Their catalog, in just eleven months together: “Sex Machine,” “Super Bad,” classic remakes of “Sex Machine” and “Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose,” “Talking Loud & Sayin’ Nothing,” “Get Up, Get Into It And Get Involved,” and “Soul Power.” Staggering. They defined a new order.

Brown kept his momentum, but he was also in a tenuous position. Another desertion would have left him with no support. In response, Brown lightened his discipline to give the J.B.’s room to grow—and he respected their budding talent.

Brown also undermined the group’s spirit. On the road he substituted local musicians for the young horn players. And once his Orchestra veterans—saxophonist St. Clair Pinckney, drummer Clyde Stubblefield and trombonist Fred Wesley—returned to the fold, the J.B.’s Mark I band looked elsewhere. Following a tension-filled gig at New York’s Copacabana, Bootsy and Catfish said “See Ya,” and eventually hitched a ride on George Clinton’s P-Funk Mothership.

James Brown grooved on with the new J.B.’s, directed by the Alabama-born, jazz-bred Wesley.

“They were totally green,” Wesley said. “[Hearlon] ‘Cheese’ Martin was so used to playing rhythm, just scratching behind James, that I had to teach him to play lead guitar. And at first Fred Thomas wasn’t much of a bass player. We rehearsed for two weeks in the basement of the Apollo Theater just to get the show together.”

Within two months they had recorded the hits “Escape-ism,” Bobby Byrd’s “I Know You Got Soul” and “Hot Pants.” Brown placed each with his new label, People. It was his last fling with King Records, now owned by Lin Broadcasting and soon to be purchased by the Tennessee Recording and Publishing Co.

It was a prolific time. From the summer of 1971 through the winter of ’72, Brown scored 10 top ten R&B/Soul chart hits in a row, against a backdrop of new music from Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, the Isley Brothers, Al Green, the Philadelphia International label, and a new generation of funk groups. Approaching 40, he transformed from an aging “Soul Brother No. 1” into a venerated “Godfather of Soul.”

Brown faltered briefly in 1973, crushed by grief. Teddy, his oldest son, died in a car accident in June. JB pressed on. He scored two films, Black Caesar and its sequel, Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off. He was to record a third soundtrack, centered around a stinging track “The Payback,” but the film’s producer rejected it, and JB retained it as the title track for his own double-LP.

At this time James Brown, bolstered by Polydor’s marketing might, became an album seller. Hot Pants, Revolution Of The Mind, There It Is, Get On The Good Foot, the two film soundtracks, and 1974’s two-record sets, The Payback and Hell, proved he was still in the vanguard.

But even James Brown had no guarantees the hits would continue. In 1975, after the single “Funky President,” from the album Reality, had run its course, Brown saw the end of a historic commercial streak. His personal problems were reflected in his recordings; Brown started following trends instead of leading them. Despite his troubles, Brown could serve up such hard-hitters as “Get Up Offa That Thing” and “Body Heat,” both international hits in 1976-77.

“Living In America” reached the U.S. Top Five, James Brown was inducted as a charter member into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall Of Fame. He had gained the establishment recognition he craved. And he was the only inductee to have a contemporaneous hit. In addition, his recordings with Afrika Bambaataa (“Unity”) and Brooklyn’s Full Force (“Static,” “I’m Real”) were homages paid by respectful disciples.

In December 1988, James Brown was handed two concurrent six-year prison sentences, on traffic violations charges and resisting arrest. As part of his sentence, the Godfather of Soul dutifully counseled local poor and preached against drugs. He was freed on February 27, 1991.

After Brown’s release from prison, he performed for a pay-per-view event, then resumed recording, first for Scotti Brothers and later for several small labels including his own Georgia-Lina Records. Brown found the recording business changed dramatically during the 50 years he had spent in studios. The irony was that while Brown’s old beats and riffs were sampled and heard more widely than ever, his own new records struggled for attention. He won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992, at the same ceremony in which he shared a Grammy for Best Album Notes, awarded to his career-defining box set, Star Time.

Though he hungered for a hit again like “Living In America,” an iconic performer like James Brown no longer needed hit records to sell tickets; throughout the 1990s and 2000s he was a bona fide headliner, often appearing in the world’s most prestigious venues.

James Brown died on Christmas morning, 2006, after a brief illness. Remarkably, at the time of his unexpected death his touring business was more profitable than at any point in his career. Throughout his lengthy career Brown laid claim to many appropriate nicknames including “Mr. Dynamite” and “The Hardest Working Man In Show Business” but just one is an apt legacy. Long live James Brown – THE GODFATHER OF SOUL.

– Adapted from the original liner notes to the box set Star Time, by
Harry Weinger and Cliff White, with additional material by Alan Leeds.