7 - 7 - James Brown (1244)

8/9/2019 7 - 7 - James Brown (1244)

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We now turn to the music of James Brown.and the strange, in terms of thediscussion that we've already beenhaving, the strange kind of situationwhere James Brown.In his music makes hardly any concessionsto what might be thought of aspreferences and white taste, neverthelesshe releases record after record in the1960's, in the 1970's, they cross over onto the pop chart and have tremendoussuccess.So how can this be?How can this be when Berry Gordy, Jr.,you know, had it all sort of worked outwhat it would take to get these recordsto crossover that James Brown, who's notdoing any of those kinds of things ishaving such success.Well, let's talk about the career ofJames Brown because he's a veryinteresting figure.Not only in the history of black pop but

certainly in the history of American popand music in the 20th century.his early career James Brown was born inuh,South Carolina but raised in SouthernGeorgia.He had regional success in the mid-1950swith his group the Fabulous Flames, whowere booked By Little Richard's manager.Little Richard, remember, came out of,came out of the, the southern Georgiaarea as well.And, in fact, when Little Richard's TuttiFrutti caught on nationally, and all of a

sudden, he was you know, a hit.Artist and all that kind of thing, themanager for Little Richard still had abunch of gigs booked, that Little Richardwas supposed to do but he didn't wantLittle Richard to do them because hewanted to send him off to do televisiondates and other kinds of things thatwere, that were out of Georgia, you know,and out of that region and you know,much, much bigger.And so, actually James Brown did thosegigs for Little Richard.

And, and I can't tell you for surewhether or not they even bothered to tellthe people who bought the tickets thatthat wasn't [LAUGH] wasn't Little Richardthey were seeing.But nevertheless James Brown got one ofhis first big breaks by sort of beingLittle Richard at gigs that had beenbooked for Richard.James Brown's first big hits Please

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Please Please.number six on the R&B charts in 1956.James Brown was signed to King Records inCincinnati, which was run by Syd Nathan.And had a very long standing relationshipwith King Records in Cincinnati and withSyd Nathan who became a kind of mentorfigure to James Brown in many ways.James Brown's music in the 1950s ismostly in the doo-wop style.If you listen to Please, Please Please, Ithink you'll say that it sounds an awfullot like some of the other doo-wop of ofthe era.maybe a little sort of rawer in a certainkind of way because already there's thatkind of passionate, enthusiastic JamesBrown vocal sound kind of this sort ofaggressive vocal of his, you know alittle bit over the top with the pleadingthe please, please, please.but we we will begin to see a change inthat style when we get into the 1960's.at, before we talk about that though,

it's important to acknowledge the, thecentral role of the stage show in theJames Brown experience.Often referred to as the hardest workingman in show business, by the early 1960s,James Brown's stage show was kind offamous on the R&B circuit, having a lotof the elements in it that we have cometo associate it with James Brown throughthe years, not only his athletic dancing.Remember we talked about the Temptations,before, and how, sort of, athletic andand advanced their dance steps were.

Well, James Brown was another guy whoreally,who did the athletic steps.In fact, when Michael Jackson was just alittle kid, whenever James Brown was onthe television, his, his mom would makehim get in front of the television andwatch James Brown, and Michael Jacksonsaid how he was sort of transported byJames Brown who was the master.And in so many ways we think aboutMichael Jackson, who developed not onlyis a child star into the late 70's andcertainly into the 80's, a lot of that is

taken from this James Brown very sort ofphysical form of dance moves that he did.And the other thing that's for JamesBrown, if you've never seen this youshould look it up, look a video on theInternet, is the routine that he has atthe close of a concert.At the close of concert he acts like he'sso exhausted by the concert that he'ssomehow delirious.

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And his you know, his roadies come on andthey put like a, a coat or a jacket or ayou know, a robe or something on him.And they start to lead him off, as if youknow, if they didn't lead him off hewouldn't know what to do or he'd falldown.And he's, he almost gets off the stagethen all of a sudden he throws the coatoff and runs back to the stage, and grabsthe microphone.He's got some more energy left in him.It does that a number of times.And people came to expect this.So it became sort of like a kind of thingwhere if he didn't do it five or sixtimes.People really didn't feel like they gottheir money's worth at the end, you know?But it became his thing of saying, I'mgiving you every ounce of what I havetonight.Because that's how important the audienceis to me.

And it became really his sort of.His trademark routine.That stage show really became a big partof what it was to experience the musicalexpression of James Brown during thoseyears.And so maybe it's not surprising, thatwhen they started thinking about waysthat they could build James Brown'scareer they decided they would do.A live album, in fact, that album wasreleased in the fall of 1963.It went to number two in the pop charts,

called Live at the Apollo, which wasessentially James Brown, doing what hewas doing at that time, live at theApollo Theater in Harlem.it really show cases his range, and, andcaptures his energy, and, you know, ismaybe one of the most important sort ofearly documents we have, of, of JamesBrown as a sort of important cross overfigure.Already we're talking about 1963.Here's a guy singing in an unabashedlysort of black style, singing for a black

audience in a, part of the city that'syou know largely black and he's got analbum that's number three, number two onthe Pop Charts in 1963.Now, probably should say that back inthose days, album sales were not whatthey were later.I mean the album was really kind of asecondary thing.It really was a business about hit

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singles at that time but, still that's,that's a, a pretty dog gone goodperformance for a 1963 with James Brown.And that we start to see in 1960 hismusic starts to become more soulinfluenced.He sort of leaves the doo wop thingbehind you know, James Brown is oftenknown as the godfather of soul.And so we start to get this tight anddriving style where the groove is drivenforward, by the bass and the instruments,the, the bass, the guitar, the drums,really sort of, getting into, kind of, agreat, kind of, groove, that has all theinstruments sort of, em, Interlaced intoalmost like every instrument is a kind ofa percussion instrument, and the wholetune kind of sort of rides on thisgroove.And on top of this groove, you have toimagine James is doing his dance steps,but he's also doing these, these lyricsthat are sort of I don't know, sort of

innocuous repetitive, sometimes a littlebit crazy or outrageous, but he'sdefinitely not trying to tell a story, ortalk about his emotional relationshipwith a woman or any of the other kinds ofthings that pop songs do.It's almost like the lyrics themselvesare kind of extraneous and the voiceitself becomes another element in thepercussion element, and the percussion,sort of fabric, of these fantasticgrooves in his music, develops duringthat time.

1964 we hear Out of Sight, one thateverybody knows, Papa's Got a Brand NewBag, a number one hit, on R&B charts,number eight on the pop charts, 1965, IGot You I Feel Good, this from 1965, It'sa Man's Man's Man's World, from 1966, andCold Sweat from 1967, all a veryidentifiable style.When you hear a James Brown record comeout in the 60s, it can only be oneperson, and that's James Brown.Music business people will tell youthat's one of the most valuable features

to have, is a real kind of sonictrademark.Once people hear just a few seconds ofthat record, they know who it is, andthat's how those James Brown recordswere.and like I said before one of the mostinteresting elements of it is that hismusic is so markedly black in a lot ofkinds of ways.

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And we could you know, you might, youmight think about what constitutesmarkedly black.What are the musical features, if Ididn't know this artist were black, howwould I know from just listening to themusic itself that he or she is?And it's an interesting kind of question,the more you think about it the harder itis to really answer, but most of us, Ithink, really get a sense that we knowwhat that is intuitively, even if it'svery difficult for us to externalize orarticulate, exactly, exactly whatconstitutes that.But, whatever it is, his music was viewedas markedly black but makes noconcessions to whites', white taste, sothen, why was it so popular with whiteaudiences.And I think it's because he had that, hehad that characteristic kind of soundthat was his own, his own kind oftrademark, with the emphasis on the

groove, and the, the rhythmic, therhythmic hipness of what was going on inthe drive of it with that kind ofaggressive vocal, and the, the lyricsthat were almost nonsensical, in somesense, just sort of kind of funny, maybe,if you thought about it, and, and notparticularly kind of serious.There was nothing really threatening inthe blackness of what James Brown wasdoing.It all just seemed to be a fantasticcelebration of the groove and the music

that was going on at the time.So, while Berry Gordy is going forelegance, James Brown is, is is goingjust for the pure feel of his music.these groups, these groups of his, wereso highly rehearsed they had a reputationfor actually fining members of the bandif they made a mistake.They would rehearse like crazy.So they got all this sort of intenserhythmic interplay, absolutely perfect.And if somebody made a mistake on thebandstand, he would point to that person,

and afterwards he would dock their payfor the gig.Because they'd made a mistake.Now.How often that happened I don't know.You, you, every body tells stories, younever know what to believe.But the feel, the idea is that that,people thought that was the case, and sothey thought that meant that that band

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was more thoroughly rehearsed than manyother groups would have been, at, at amany other groups would have been at thetime that have a reputation forexcellence.Now as we, as we close this week andstart to think about the way forward, inpart two when we talk about black pop inthe 1970's.One of the most important events in blackculture, American culture really in the60's, but certainly it has an effect onthe music business on the history ofblack pop is the assassination of Dr.Martin Luther King.That happens in April of 1968.and in many ways, it's considered a kindof turning point, not just in the blackcommunity, but really in black music.Even the guys in the Stax studio, SteveCropper, said, after that day, thingswere just a little bit different in thestudio, even though there'd never beenany kind of racial tension among the

people working at Stax, it was just,something, something was different after1968.And so you would think.This would make certain artists angry or,maybe more menacing in a certain kind ofway, the anger about Dr.King's assassination.In fact there were, there were riotsaround the country, and people, peoplewere outraged and there was a new kind ofa racial tension in the country in thewake of this this terrible event.

And this idea of black pride began torise.And you would think that maybe forsomebody like James Brown this would be atough situation for him to be in, but onthe other hand, James Brown became one ofthe great peacemakers of the end of the1960's.In fact, the day after the assassinationof Martin Luther King, he was scheduledto do a concert at the Boston Garden.Now the city, the mayor and those thoughtthat maybe it's not a good idea to get a

bunch of young people together the dayafter, you know, we got riots in othercities, maybe we shouldn't do this.So what they decided to do was theydecided to televise the concert for free.So anybody who wanted to watch the JamesBrown concert could watch it in theBoston area, they didn't have to go downto the Boston Garden.So only a few thousand people actually

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went down to the Boston Garden to see theshow, they got all the good seats rightin front.But it was broadcast on television, andthat performance is, the reputation of itis that it helped bring the Bostoncommunity together, black and whitetogether, through James Brown's efforts.And really, in many ways, sort ofquelling a riot in Boston and trying toget people to think about understanding.Now.We're going to return to a discussion ofMotown and James Brown in part two ofthis of this course when we get to themusic of black pop of the 1970's.But in our next and final week we'regoing to talk about the music inpsychedel...the music of psychedelia atthe end of the 1960's.What happens when rock music goespsychedelic?

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7 - 7 - James Brown (1244)