Didn’t there used to be a minor techno/club music dancefloor hit about 15 years ago that was very drum machine and synth heavy and then the music would go silent and a spoken authoritative male voice would say, “James Brown is dead,” and then the machines would whip into high speed fury again. I never liked the song much as I thought it was too realistic sounding, like a “we interrupt this broadcast to bring you this breaking story…” type announcement and I knew that James Brown wasn’t dead so I thought the song was misleading and the message was kind of rude and senseless, saying a beloved man was dead when in truth he wasn’t, and I couldn’t understand the intention or the irony or the possible post-modern idea behind it or if it were some form of commentary on the whole sampling controversy sparked by the advent of rap and hip-hop music. I thought it would have been far more interesting to have said something else about the hardest working man in show-business, like “James Brown is currently in prison doing time for possession of narcotics and threatening pedestrians with firearms after a dramatic high speed chase in the state of Georgia,” or “James brown’s drug of choice was PCP or angel dust,” something so powerful I thought it was only slipped to people without them knowing and often resulted in super-human strength and mammoth hallucinatory delusions, or “James Brown’s wife died mysteriously in a Mexican hospital from what the coroners cited as unexpected complications during cosmetic surgery,” because she did, and that is unbelievably tragic. Another possible statement for the song would have been, “When James Brown plays a live concert in San Francisco, the ticket prices seemed to start at $80 and go as high as $150,” because a few years back I decided to go see the godfather of soul and was genuinely shocked to learn that all tickets were so expensive, and this was well before people were shelling out as much as $300 to see Madonna perform one of her high-tech multimedia extravaganzas. So unfortunately I passed on catching James Brown perform live due to the high price and now it is Christmas day in 2006 and that spoken refrain from that weird song is resounding very heavily in my mind. “James Brown is dead.” This time he really is, and on Christmas no less, making the loss of this tremendous influential musician even more poignant and kind of shocking. I guess I thought someone as huge and legendary and pervasive in the world of music, influencing R&B, Soul, Funk, Rock and Roll, Reggae, Disco, Rap and Hip Hop since his first hit song “Please Please Please,” in 1956, would simply never die. But at age 73, the godfather of soul is gone.
I think it’s fair to say that his legend will live on more indelibly than any other 20th century musical artist. His overall influence can be heard, heard about, watched in other artists’ performances (try Prince for one, the worthiest embodiment of Browns incredible dancing) and forever sampled, lifted, appropriated, remixed, emulated and inspired by. He is undoubtedly the most sampled artist in all of hip hop. Every time you hear that high pitched scream often programmed as a beat or counterbeat, you know its James Brown and no one else, and you know how many times you’ve heard it, from De La Soul to 2Live Crew. The timing and common structures he developed and used with his stop on a dime army of prominent and respected musicians through the years have inspired musicians and served to actually create new genres like Funk in the seventies and many rock and roll artists have paid homage to his undeniable innovations from Van Morrison to Led Zeppelin. When you hear certain things you just know it’s a james brown thing. When you see a big band soul revue with horns and tight arrangements and counted solos and a very cohesive sense of timing and power and dynamics, its all because of James Brown. His evolution as an artist spanned six decades and covered a broad array of styles, each new record exercising change and growth and innovation, taking established elements and trademark beats that defined his sound and adding new layers of instrumentation or different accentuation or prominence of particular instruments in the production. His ever changing sound, wild screaming vocals, electrifying stage presence and powerhouse dancing clearly showed a man giving it his all whenever he performed live. He was clearly driven by some force bigger than all of us, something that just needed to burst forth into the world and make its mark permanently on all types of popular music.
It’s very hard to pick a favorite James Brown song or even a favored period of time in his career but I would have to say that “The Payback” from 1974 is one of my all-time favorite songs. Such a great piece of music with its swelling strings and horns intro that gives way to one of the greatest hip-pulling funky hooks ever, low and sexy and dramatic as the man belts out a cautionary warning that karma will indeed deliver an inevitable payback to people who do wrong. It’s seven minutes of pure funk brilliance with a message and the same horns and strings from the intro close the song by whirring higher and higher until they disappear. Perfect.
There’s also a live record called Funk Power from 1970: A brand New Thang that showcases a great band funking it up long and hardcore with grooves as long as 15 minutes, specifically the cut “Talking Loud but Aint Saying Nothing.” There are tons of landmark recordings by James Brown, live and studio. These are my favorites but I’m certain there are countless other classic discs or collections out there to pick up and reflect upon the great career of the one and only Godfather of Soul. Move like a sex machine if so inclined. Long live James Brown.