JAMES BROWN
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1956–2002 |
Classic R&B |
Night Train (1962) |
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Compilation
released: December 1958 |
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Tracks: 1) Please, Please, Please; 2)
Chonnie-On-Chon; 3) Hold My Baby’s Hand; 4) I Feel That Old Feeling Coming
On; 5) Just Won’t Do Right; 6) Baby Cries Over The Ocean; 7) I Don’t Know; 8)
Tell Me What I Did Wrong; 9) Try Me; 10) That Dood It; 11) Begging, Begging;
12) I Walked Alone; 13) No, No, No, No; 14) That’s When I Lost My Heart; 15)
Let’s Make It; 16) Love Or A Game. |
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Nobody could ever argue, I
suppose, with the simple truth that James Brown wasn’t exactly born for the
three-minute single format. In his live shows, three minutes was typically
what it took for him to just get himself and his audience into the groove,
which he could then sustain for an indefinite amount of time, depending on how
many cups of coffee — or something much
stronger — he’d ingested in the past 12 hours. But back in 1956, the only way
he and his Famous Flames could reach a mass audience was through records, and
the only records he could make for the Federal label were three-minute
singles. It was nice of his label, after almost three years of recording, to
grant Mr. Brown the right for a full-fledged LP, but the only thing they put
on that LP were the exact same A- and B-sides. |
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Unfortunately,
the biggest problem with Brown’s early career is that the man found his
showmanship much earlier than he found his music. Few, if any, of those early
singles are particularly interesting from a rhythmic or melodic point of view
— perhaps the most interesting
thing about them is the ease (or maybe the desperation?) with which James and his buddies hop from ship to
ship, investing here in doo-wop and torch balladry, there in old-fashioned
rhythm & blues, here again in more modern rock’n’roll, with Brown
alternately taking lessons from the Flamingos, the Dominoes, Little Richard,
Fats Domino, Ray Charles, and whoever else he may see as a spiritually (and
commercially) viable path to follow, imitate, and adapt to the peculiarities
of his own persona. The Flames — quickly upgraded to the Famous Flames once
word begins spreading just a tiny bit — loyally follow their leader wherever
he takes them; some, most notably the original leader Bobby Byrd, also
co-write the material (it is worth noting that the Flames declined to do
straightahead covers, much preferring to rip off others’ musical ideas and
pass them off as their own after introducing tiny variations). The actual
musical backbone, however, in those early years was not all that inspiring.
Although the Flames played their instruments on stage, they were far better
group singers than players, and, with the exception of guitarist Nafloyd
Scott, on record their parts are taken care of by various local musicians,
usually from the Cincinnati circuit where Federal Records were based. The
results are as decent as they come, but nothing in particular, neither the
rhythm section nor the brass nor any lead guitar or piano, ever stands out —
it is clear as daylight that the only function of this music is to provide a
reliable platform for the lead singer. And with so much diverse musical
territory to be covered, even the lead singer is not always up to par. The
fact that most of these early singles sank like stones commercially can
hardly be blamed on the tastelessness or stupidity of the public, or even on
the lack of promotion: the public clearly saw no need to be bothered with a
new artist so obviously unsure of how to put his own stamp on well-known
musical styles. Of course, this
was not the case with the very first of these singles, the one that
rightfully gives its name to the entire LP as well: ‘Please, Please, Please’,
not so much even an actual song as an extended vamp (inspired by the Orioles’
1952 take on Muddy Waters’ ‘Baby Please Don’t Go’ and a Little Richard
inscription on James’ napkin). It is musically simple as hell, and vocally
direct as purgatory — pure, distilled soulful pleading, which, in his live
shows, Brown would imbue with downright silly theatricality (most of us
probably saw at least the TAMI Show
version, with the Flames having to cool down their leader by throwing
blankets around his shoulders and walking him across the stage). But
precisely for these reasons, it worked — the same reasons, I think, why Jimmy
Reed was so popular: sometimes you just gotta say it precisely as it is,
without any extra embellishments whatsoever. Sometimes all it takes is a
"baby please, please don’t go — I love you so", though it wouldn’t
work nearly as well without the Flames drawing out that oooooh note in between the two parts, adding a touch of solemn
gospel flavor to a broken man’s plea. That said,
already the second single, ‘I Don’t Know’, which was clearly aimed at
repeating the same formula (at least, the number of times James chants
"I don’t know" is clearly comparable with the number of times he
belts out "please please please"), missed the mark completely — and
it would take the man almost two and a half years to repeat the success of
‘Please Please Please’, during which he’d almost lost his record contract
(you do have to admire the loyalty of the Federal label which let him release
nine commercial flops in a row — a
situation hardly imaginable in more modern times). Why exactly did that
happen — what was so right with the first single, and what was so wrong with
the next eight ones? I don’t know. (More correctly ‘I-ee-I-ee-I-ee-I-ee-I-ee
I don’t know’). What I do know, honestly, is that I have
never been a huge fan of the «soul» aspect of James Brown’s artistic persona.
James Brown as a hyper-energetic, one-of-a-kind showman, capable of
electrifying the crowd with his crazyass dance moves and non-stop vocal
fireworks (and, later on, working in perfect agreement with the innovative
and just as captivating musical foundation), is easy to «get». But James
Brown as a «soul brother», evoking genuine empathy and heartfelt emotion as
he wails about broken hearts, romantic feelings, and deep devotion, is a
concept that I have never managed to truly digest — there is simply too much
theater, too much show, too much heart on too much sleeve for me to be able
to take it seriously, as opposed to people like Ray Charles or Marvin Gaye,
whose soulful declarations may not always be «sincere» in the straightforward
sense of the word, but are usually believable. For James,
wherever he goes and whatever he does, it is always the show element that remains the most important; and ‘Please,
Please, Please’, in its two minutes and forty seconds, did somehow manage to
deliver a bit of a show — what with the words of the tune not even so much
sung as they were fired into the
microphone. ‘I Don’t Know’ is actually a bit more smooth and tuneful, but
allegedly disc jockeys did not even want to play it on the radio while they
still had copies of ‘Please Please Please’ lying around — it had nowhere near
the same hammer-on impact: too screechy and theatrical to pierce their
hearts, but not screechy and
theatrical enough to beat them into a pulp. Such is my
tentative explanation, coupled with the fact that I, too, do not feel
anything particularly special about ‘I Don’t Know’, or about ‘Just Won’t Do
Right’, which is just a standard doo-wop progression with draggy vocals (the
«hooky» chorus is given over to the unison of the Flames, while Brown just
tries to sound as deep and passionate on the verses as possible, and it
doesn’t really work). In fact, at this stage he does a more credible job on
songs that sound straight out of the 1940s — ‘I Feel That Old Feeling Comin’
On’ is essentially a jump-blues piece in the style of Wynonie Harris, except
that Brown’s vocals are an electrified tightrope compared to Wynonie’s rough,
rowdy, much lower delivery, and you can feel that already at that stage the
man was already trying his best to earn that "hardest working man in
show business" title. Problematically,
after the first flops of the Soul Brother approach, Brown and the Flames
began experimenting in all sorts of styles, which most people simply ignored.
On ‘Chonnie-On-Chon’, for instance, he goes for a straightforward imitation
of the all-night-party approach of Little Richard and especially Larry
Williams ("big bone Lizzy, old aunt Fanny"), which is fun, but not
particularly original — in this style, he can hardly hope to beat Larry’s
sense of humor or Little Richard’s vocal attack. Even more ridiculous is
‘That Dood It’, a barely funny half-spoken anecdote which directly rips off
Ray Charles’ ‘Greenbacks’ — ironically, the B-side of that single was a
re-write of ‘My Bonnie’ (‘Baby Cries Over The Ocean’) that came out several
months before Ray’s classic
version; fun, but the straightjacketed pop format of the tune is simply not
right for the free-form style of Mr. Dynamite. ‘That Dood It’
already comes from the 1957 sessions, by which time the original Famous
Flames, fed up with the lack of success and with Brown’s egotistic behavior,
had abandoned him altogether — something that may have been noticeable in the
context of live shows, but hardly on record, where session musicians still
rule the day and the Flames are always relegated to secondary, if not
tertiary roles. The people may have changed, but the music remained the same
mix of styles: a bit of old-fashioned doo-wop (‘Begging, Begging’, ‘That’s
When I Lost My Heart’), old-fashioned R&B (‘I Walked Alone’, ‘Love Or A
Game’), and old-fashioned jump blues (‘Let’s Make It’). Just when the
studio people, including Syd Nathan, president of King Records (of which
Federal was a subsidiary), were beginning to have enough, Brown finally
turned around and rebounded with ‘Try Me’ — the last of his singles to have
been included on the LP. Differences between it and his previous slow ballads
are subtle rather than revolutionary: ‘Try Me’ rides the same waltzing chord
pattern that the Flames had favored since the beginning. But the song makes a
harder pass at being soft — Brown’s delivery, first time in ages, is
genuinely sentimental, as if he really is serenading under his love’s balcony
(I like to imagine that he himself imagined this as a love letter to Syd
Nathan while recording); the Flames are more crooning and angelic than ever
before; and even session guitar player Kenny Burrell plays a series of soft
and sweet licks, enough to melt a lady’s heart on the spot. This was indeed
the first time that James Brown did truly tame the beast inside — there are
no signs of vocal hysterics whatsoever, just signals of I-wanna-be-your-dog
submission (humble and courteous submission, that is, not
Iggy Pop-style masochistic submission). If I didn’t know better, I might even
be fooled, and apparently, so was the public, who did undergo a change of
heart and agreed to try him, carrying the single to the top of the R&B
charts. Note that it did not actually reverse Brown’s fortunes overnight —
‘Try Me’ was followed by at least another year of trials and tribulations,
before ‘I’ll Go Crazy’ and ‘Think’ finally solidified the man’s presence on
the musical scene. It was more like a temporary carte-blanche which helped
James keep his footing and continue waddling on until he’d finally strike
gold by finding just the right kind of music to go along with his
personality. But it’s a curious phenomenon in its own right — apparently, in
late 1958 the public was ready to accept Brown if he’d converted into a
sentimental balladeer (imagine, for instance, if the Rolling Stones’ first
hit single happened to be something like ‘As Tears Go By’ — just how much
pressure would they have to withstand proving to the industry bosses that
they were so much more at home reinterpreting Chuck Berry?). In any case,
although the album in general is no great shakes, it still presents an
intriguing study of the early evolution of James Brown as a struggling,
searching artist. Do make sure to arrange the tracks in chronological order
while listening to it, so that it properly starts off with ‘Please Please
Please’ and ends with the ‘Try Me’ single — or just ignore it altogether and
go straight on to the detailed, well-documented collection of The Singles: The Federal Years 1956–1960,
because, honestly, the selection principles based on which Brown’s early A-
and B-sides were distributed across his first two LPs (this one and Try Me) elude me completely. |
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Compilation
released: July 1959 |
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Tracks: 1) There Must Be A Reason; 2) I Want You So Bad; 3) Why
Do You Do Me; 4) Got To Cry; 5) Strange Things Happen; 6) Fine Old Foxy Self;
7) Messing With The Blues; 8) Try Me; 9) It Was You; 10) I’ve Got To Change;
11) Can’t Be The Same; 12) It Hurts To Tell You; 13) I Won’t Plead No More;
14) You’re Mine, You’re Mine; 15) Gonna Try; 16) Don’t Let It Happen To Me. |
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Despite Brown’s seemingly
inexhaustible energy and King Records’ generosity – once again, the LP
contains a staggering sixteen numbers worth of material – Try Me! is, on the whole, an even
less interesting collection than Please
Please Please. For one thing, its most famous track — the title one, of
course – had already been issued on the first LP; the only reason why it was
included here is due to the fact that, in mid-1959, ‘Try Me’ was arguably the
only song besides ‘Please Please Me’ that the average customer might have
remembered of James Brown. In between October 1958, when ‘Try Me’ essentially
saved the Flames from floundering, and mid-1959, the band put out two more
singles (‘I Want You So Bad’ and ‘I’ve Got To Change’), both of which
flopped, bringing the whole situation back to square. Once again, James had
to be rather humiliatingly marketed along the lines of «the magnificent James
Brown who gave us ‘Please Please Please’ and ‘Try Me’ which, believe it or
not, are still played on the radio... here’s hoping that it won’t be one more
year before he gives us something
that will attract the public’s eye!» |
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For another, even
if the various genre experimentations of 1956–57 were indeed amateurish, with
a bit of a cleptomaniac feel to them, at least it was an intriguing
spectacle, much like watching some hyper-enthusiastic start-up company come
out with one blatant example of plagiarism after another, until finally
striking gold with an original approach. By early 1958, however, Brown had begun
narrowing the scope of his game, largely tossing out such genres as «pure»
rock’n’roll or electric blues – realizing, perhaps, that he’d never be able
to dethrone Little Richard or B. B. King, and that it would be best to
concentrate on styles in which he felt most self-assured: (a) soulful
balladry, with a steady doo-wop foundation, and (b) groove-oriented R&B,
with a focus on «winding up» and ecstatic improvisation rather than
disciplined vocal melody. This means that most of the 16 songs included here
fall into one of these two categories — making the journey predictable — yet,
unfortunately, most of them also follow pre-existing patterns, and with the
three-minute length factor still in full force, rarely give the chance to
either James or his musicians to truly show themselves off in full splendor. Take ‘I Want
You So Bad’, for instance, the immediate follow-up to ‘Try Me’. It’s a little
faster, a little brassier, a little screechier (as if it were trying to
re-introduce a bit of the ‘Please Please Please’ vibe into the overall
balladeering softness), but on the whole, it is just an attempt to have
another soulful hit in the same vein. Why didn’t it work? Perhaps it was
precisely due to the middle ground approach — he «toughens up» the atmosphere
to the extent that the song no longer has the silky, seductive, caring vocal
overtones of ‘Try Me’ (which was probably Brown’s most successful ever
infiltration of Sam Cooke’s territory), but at the same time does not toughen
it up to the ecstatic levels of his first hit single. It’s a decent tune with
a catchy vocal hook, but hardly anything more than that. Or take ‘I’ve
Got To Change’, the next single. Here, he decides to return to ‘Please Please
Please’ territory in an utterly straightforward way — might as well have
called it ‘I’ve Got To Change Back To 1956’ — so much so that even the
Flames’ backing vocals slavishly repeat the lines of his first hit tune
(ironically, this was recorded right after James had fired the entire band
and replaced them with a new lineup!). If your hungry inner demon goes wild
every time Brown rattles his decibels, ‘I’ve Got To Change’ will feel as
impressive as anything — but if, like most music critics, you prefer to
separate him from the crowd as one of the few R&B performers who always
sought new ways of expression, you shall probably have to agree that this
particular song seeks anything but
new ways of expression. In fact,
looking over the sprawling track list even a few refreshing re-listens into
the album, I find it problematic to single out any stand-out recordings.
Almost perversely in a way, I think that the most memorable track for me
remains the first one — ‘There Must Be A Reason’, the original B-side for ‘I
Want You So Bad’ (is it any coincidence that they put the B-side first while
sequencing the LP?). It’s a fast, boppy blues-pop ditty with doo-wop vocals,
not unlike one of those ‘Don’t Be Cruel’-type «cutesy» numbers that Elvis
recorded with The Jordanaires. Catchy, lively, with a sprightly sax solo in
the middle, it seems to have more natural adrenaline to it than almost
anything else on here... even despite being probably the last thing you’d
want to associate with James «True Grit» Brown. There are a couple more like
it on the album (e.g. the symmetrically placed album closer ‘Don’t Let It
Happen To Me’ — the original B-side to ‘Good Good Lovin’), but nothing quite
matches the tightness and energy of the opening number. In terms of
instrumental power, the best number is probably ‘It Was You’, recorded in
December ’58 and actually issued as a single already after the LP — driven by a simple, loud, inspiring sax riff from
J. C. Davis, which is the first thing you hear and will probably be the one
thing you’ll take away and remember from this song, rather than Brown’s
vocals (there is also an interesting «mini/malistic/-duel» between Davis’ sax
and Bobby Roach’s electric guitar licks in the solo section). It is just not
too often, on these early recordings, that the musicians ever get to outshine
the frontman; although Brown is usually reported to have been working them to
the bone, it wouldn’t really be until his funk phase that their voices would
be allowed to raise above the master’s, so every instance, no matter how
brief, of them reminding you that at least some of this music could be worth your while even without the
lead vocalist, is treasurable. Naturally, all
of this stuff is still perfectly listenable — even the rare leftovers from
all those other stylistic directions, e.g. the generic 12-bar blues ‘Strange
Things Happen’, on which James Brown and his band pose as, let’s say, Little
Richard wailing over a B. B. King-style lead guitar. If I am being distinctly
sour, it is mainly so that you realize the impressiveness of the qualitative
leap from Try Me! to Think! the very next year. There can
be, I believe, but two schools of thought about James Brown — either that
James Brown had a ton of hackish filler over the years, or that James Brown
never had any filler in the first place, since what matters is really the «James
Brown spirit» of things, and that spirit he carried in his pocket for all of
his long and productive life. And if it is possible to belong to both those
schools of thought at the same time, just give me two admission tickets for
the price of one. |
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Album
released: February 1960 |
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Tracks: 1) Think; 2) Good Good Lovin’; 3) Wonder When You’re Coming Home;
4) I’ll Go Crazy; 5) This Old Heart; 6) I Know
It’s True; 7) Bewildered; 8) I’ll Never Let You Go; 9) You’ve Got The Power;
10) If You Want Me; 11) Baby, You’re All Right; 12) So Long. |
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REVIEW
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And most
importantly (if also most subjectively), Think!
is also the first James Brown album which I am able to appreciate in toto, from top to bottom. The rocking
numbers, the poppy ditties, the ballads, the doo-wop, even the oldies — each
and every song has something to offer, something at least mildly interesting
and attention-grabbing to stand out in memory. The contrast with Please, Please, Please and Try Me!, both of them so much longer
and so studded with filler, is so sharp, in fact, that I made several
attempts to understand what it was exactly that might have caused such a
difference around late 1959 / early 1960, and still came up empty-handed.
Most likely, there was no single specific catalyzer here, but rather just a
process of gradual ripening. For four years, James Brown and the Famous
Flames were trying to find and define their own sound, that special vibe
which could put them on top of, or at least aside from, everybody else while
also holding enough commercial potential. With Think!, they finally found it. Perhaps that
one truly fateful day could be determined as June 27, 1959, when down at Beltone
Studios in New York Andy Gibson produced the first single to be included on
this LP — ‘Good Good Lovin’. The song is an odd mix of influences: Bobby
Roach’s seductive opening guitar licks sound like a nod to surf-rock, the
main melody is a sort of sped-up Chicago blues, and the groovy tempo and
lively sax break give it a bit of a Coasters feel, with a touch of the «comic
R&B» vibe. But the overall feel of the song, with Brown’s hysterical
vocal driving his players on and on, is exclusively James’ — a mix of rock
energy, pop playfulness, and soul passion completely unmatched by any other
artist at the time. It’s catchy, it’s danceable, it’s fun, and it’s got the
spirit. (For a long time, I also thought it got great lyrics – "good lovin’, good lovin’ made me feel so
bad" – before finding out that he really sings ‘glad’, not ‘bad’, which
makes things far more boring). The song, heralding a new, self-assured sound
for the Flames, should have been a big hit — but, for some mysterious reason,
ended up as yet another flop. Fortunately, it did not dissuade Brown that
they had something really good going on here, and by the time the band
reconvened in Cincinnati for their November recording sessions, he had quite
a few ideas in his head on how to properly follow up the vibe of ‘Good Good
Lovin’ and really make it happen. ‘I’ll Go Crazy’, the first single to be released from those sessions,
also opens with a seductive guitar lick (this time, more of an opening — and,
later, closing — fanfare than a surf-rock chuckle), but the mutations to the
blues idiom that they injected on ‘Good Good Lovin’ are even stronger this
time. The way the song’s memorable bluesy riff gets capped off by the pompous
guitar/brass one-chord fanfare could be something from the textbook of B. B.
King (although he would probably play it slower and with more of that Vegasy
pomp), but once the vocals enter the picture, it’s 100% James Brown rule all
along. Most importantly, listen to the wonderful shadowing of James’ vocals
by the Flames — "if you leave me...", smoothly flowing right into
"leave me-e-e-e-e...", then "I’ll go crazy", echoed by
"oh yeah!", and then "’cause I love you..." – ("love
you!") — "love you..." ("love you!"), and James’
final flourish of "I love you too mu-u-u-a-a-a-i-i-ich". That is the kind of vocal richness that ensures this song, as popular as
it eventually became, would never ever be performed better by anybody else.
(Just relistened to the Moody Blues cover from 1965 and, with all love and
respect for Denny Laine, it’s a total joke next to the original). However,
here as in many other places, I would not emphasize the «soul» aspects of the
performance — it is, in my opinion, more of a «touch of soul» which gets
converted into a gripping pop hook. Listening to the song never really makes
me believe in Mr. James Brown as somebody capable of going crazy if somebody
whom he loves too much ends up leaving him. Rather, it makes me believe in
Mr. James Brown as somebody capable of going crazy... period. But that’s alright, works for me too. "You got to live for yourself, yourself and
nobody else" is the real message of the song; I’ve never been able
to buy the message of James Brown as a heartbroken, vulnerable guy whose life
could have been made miserable by a member of the opposite sex — but the
image of James Brown as a self-obsessed, maniacal guy whose life could be
dominated by violent emotional flares is totally believable (even if that
image, too, had been quite meticulously constructed and calculated for
maximum public appeal). ‘I’ll Go Crazy’ did what ‘Good Good Lovin’ failed to do and restored
Brown to the R&B charts, going all the way up to #15, but the ultimate
comeback was achieved with ‘Think!’ — which, as a single, was released
already a couple months after it had appeared as the opening title track on
the same-titled LP. Now this is an interesting case because the song was not an original James Brown
composition: it was written by Lowman Pauling, the guitar player for The
"5" Royales, and originally released by his band in 1957 (the same
year which also produced ‘Dedicated To The One I Love’, arguably their most
famous song because of the later Mamas & Papas cover). The original is a nice
enough blues-pop ditty with inventive stop-and-start elements and some
impressive (for the time) guitar work from Lowman — but really, it mainly
makes sense to listen to it just to be able to better appreciate the tectonic
changes brought on by the James Brown treatment. In Pauling’s hands, the song
is merely a tepid, passable dance-hall number, a piece of friendly background
entertainment, whose occasional interruptions by that shrill, sharp blues
guitar come across as a novelty moment. In comparison, Brown reinvents the
song to the point of making it barely recognizable — I’m actually impressed
that he gallantly did not add his name to the credits, since from a moral, if
maybe not legal, standpoint at least, he had every damn right to do so. I mean, ‘Think!’ just kills — and I even like this studio version more
than the one on Live At The Apollo,
where it would be sped up to a ridiculous, «Ramonesque» tempo that probably
worked like a charm for the audience but does not do the song proper justice
on record. Here, the tempo is just right — still quite fast, but enough to
let you soak in and digest all the crazy stuff going on, starting with Nat
Kendrick’s complex and metronomic drumming pattern and ending with the
equally tight and metronomic brass riff, something the likes of which simply
did not exist before the song — count it as a natural precursor to all the
funk and jazz-rock patterns from the mid-Sixties and onward. Together, the
percussion and brass whip up an atmosphere of perfectly controlled hystrionic
frenzy, giving James the ideal backing for his own vocal hysteria. Taking the
punctuated breaks of "think!..,
think!.., think!" from the "5" Royales original, he
evolves them further into veritable boxing punches: "THINK! – About the good things!"
... "THINK! – About the wrong
things!" ... "THINK! –
About the right things!" — before that lady leaves him, she’ll
probably be all bruised up, if not physically, then at least emotionally.
Nothing in the entire R&B scene of 1959–60 rocked quite as hard as this
song — nobody on the scene even dared to kick that much ass, let alone having
the musical chops to back the aggressive, frenetic energy with tight-as-hell
musicianship. And while the singles, naturally, attract the lion’s share of attention,
the rest of the album hardly strikes me as just filler, either. The same
frenzy that permeates the dance numbers can also be seen in (at least some
of) the ballads: thus, ‘Wonder When You’re Coming Home’ builds up a really
dark mood with its combination of deep bass, somber, echoey backing vocals,
and Brown’s own tragic-hero delivery which, for two and a half minutes, turns
him into sort of an R&B Tristan, waiting for his Isolde on his dying bed.
The Isolde in question might be identified as Bea Ford, who briefly worked
with Brown as a supporting vocalist — before retiring after Mr. Dynamite
knocked her up — and is given a chance to shine on another colorful blues ballad,
‘You’ve Got The Power’, where her smart-and-smokey voice forms a great
counterpart to James’ own. Lyrically and musically, it seems to be a fairly
straightforward declaration of mutual love, but with all those weird
overtones and modulations, you always get the feeling that there is something
deeper and darker going on here, and that there may be quite a few
circumstances in their love life those two are keeping from each other... Even something as superficially flat-footed and simplistic as ‘I Know
It’s True’ with its lyrical minimalism (each verse consists of four
repetitions of a single line such as "do you need someone to love you?") is made exciting — this
time, by Nat Kendrick, who adds a deliciously fussy (but metronomically
precise, as always) hi-hat pattern on top of the regular beat; but also by
James, whose soaring delivery of each third line really makes the difference.
And even when Brown chooses to cover an oldie from the American Songbook
(‘Bewildered’), he adapts it to the Flames’ new style so well, you’d never
guess the song’s origins — lots of artists had their day with ‘Bewildered’
before, but nobody got the idea to sing it like an actually bewildered
person: listen to the
Ink Spots deliver those first lines like a bunch of angels, then revert
back to James Brown to have them delivered from the mouth of a madman. Without going into details on the other songs, let me just generalize: Think! is where the James Brown
machine really starts hitting on all
the cylinders all the time, rather
than some of the cylinders some of the time. The backing band
here becomes more than a backing band — you can hear and appreciate all the
individual talent and all the initiative, from Nat Kendrick’s highly
inventive and unpredictable drumming patterns to the brass section’s
combination of almost military discipline with catchy riffing. And Mr. Brown
himself realizes that his power lies not in the source material, but in the
creative touch applied during the recording session — and, of course, in
taking every song’s vocal portrait to the highest level of expression (which
is not just about screaming his
head off: when necessary, he can sink to the lowest depths of soul just as
fine as he can rise to the utmost heights of it). The result is a
thirty-minute long blast of non-stop energy which, one might argue, would
never be topped again — musically, Brown’s albums would of course get more
complex, innovative, and interesting over time, but in terms of sheer
enthusiasm, ecstasy, and professionalism, Think! really gets the goat; I like to imagine it as Brown’s
equivalent of the Beatles’ Hard Day’s
Night — lightweight, naïve, and utterly perfect as far as pure,
fresh, untapped musical genius is concerned. |
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released: 1961 |
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Tracks: 1) Just You And Me Darling; 2) I
Love You, Yes I Do; 3) I Don't Mind; 4) Come
Over Here; 5) The Bells; 6) Love Don't Love Nobody;
7) Dancin' Little Thing; 8) Lost Someone; 9)
And I Do Just What I Want; 10) So Long; 11) You Don't Have To Go; 12) Tell Me
What You're Gonna Do. |
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By mid-1960, Brown’s future as a
reliable pop hit maker seemed so assured that he got to sign a new contract
directly with King Records, of which Federal, his previous label, was but a
subsidiary — but while this may have increased the payouts and the promotional
benefits, I wouldn’t say that the transition made any direct impact on the
music. The Famous Flames continued the same way as they always did, and the
steady flow of hit singles and LPs, for the time being, continued to milk the
same musical directions that worked so well on Think!. In all actuality, I believe that the titles to those two
LPs should have been reversed in retrospective, because the word amazing fittingly applies to Think! — this was the kind of album
that nobody probably expected from Brown back in 1960 — but after Think!, James’ potential to amaze his listeners with something
truly unpredictable got held up for a bit. |
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Not that The Amazing James Brown is any kind
of major disappointment, though; continuing the analogy started in the previous
review, it’s a bit like Beatles For
Sale after A Hard Day’s Night
— temporarily riding the safe waves of an established formula that can still
yield plenty of nutritious milk. It’s just a little less inventive, a little
less diverse, and does not contain nearly as many glorious musical moments
where you want to hit pause and just think and talk about them and then think
and talk about them some more. But it is still an essential entry in James’
early discography, and I think it does have the second largest number of
songs on it (after Think!, of
course) that ended up on Live At The
Apollo, and it is not just because this was the latest studio LP at the
time of the actual Apollo performance (it wasn’t). So let us take a closer
look, as usual, along with several contemporary singles that never made it to
the LP (which, just like Think!
before it, was also put together as an album, containing a large bunch of
songs that had not previously been issued as singles, though some of them
still ended up as singles later on). The only two
tracks that were taken off of a late 1960 single — Brown’s very first record
for King, actually — were ‘The Bells’ and ‘And I Do Just What I Want’. The
former, somewhat surprisingly, was a piece of slow, moody soul-blues whose most
distinguishing feature was probably James’ crying hysterics, with the man
ad-libbing sobs, howls, and tragic screams all over the place. In all
fairness, though, for all his pioneering moves in «pop theatricality» he did
not invent this one: ‘The Bells’ is actually a cover of an old Billy Ward & The
Dominoes R&B hit from 1952, with none other than the great Clyde
McPhatter on vocals. And it is interesting to go back and forth between the
original and the cover, because no matter how many times I do, I still cannot
determine where my preference lies. Both versions try to be as somber as
possible, but Clyde and his pals do that through the power of spooky doo-wop
backing vocals and some actual bells, which play a large role throughout the
track; Brown achieves his own effect with instrumentation, namely, the
atmospheric interplay between the echoey blues guitar of Les Buie and the sax
parts by Alfred Corley and J. C. Davis — owing more to the Chicago blues
scene in this case than to the doo-wop tradition. Back in 1952,
‘The Bells’ was actually quite strikingly macabre for a doo-wop performance —
any song that opens with lines like "there
are four black horses with eyes of flaming red" would have to be
pretty macabre for that period — and it was also the gloomiest song so far in
Brown’s own catalog, with the singer basically confessing to the fact that he
is at least indirectly responsible for his loved one’s funeral and probably
awaiting for some creepy Edgar Allan Poe-style retribution to come. To drive
the point even further, Brown ad libs "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" at the end of the song (not
there in the original performance), rather bravely invoking death upon his
own head and doing it in a much more straightforward manner than, say,
somebody like Screamin’ Jay Hawkins would (the latter would probably play
things out in a more tongue-in-cheek, vaudevillian manner). I would probably
call the Clyde McPhatter performance more «angelic» in nature and Brown’s
more «demonic», but both are equally worthy. (Strangely enough, the song
never made it to Live At The Apollo
despite quickly becoming a permanent fixture in James’ live repertoire). The B-side,
‘And I Do Just What I Want’, was far more lively and dynamic in comparison;
credited to James himself, it was a not particularly original stylization of
a New Orleanian pop melody, but with a tremendously sharp bass riff and a
slightly «twisty» touch to the rhythm section that probably got you moving
from the first couple of seconds. The stop-and-start structure somewhat
predicts the future kick of ‘I Feel Good’, too. Many artists at the time
released such contrasting singles with completely different moods for the A-
and B-sides — but few could take these moods to such searing, almost absurdly
hyperbolized extremes. One thing was for sure: Mr. Brown was not going to go
down under a middle-of-the-road moniker, regardless of whether you bought his
singles or not. And he was making
his band run up a heavy sweat, too: two of the following singles were almost
completely instrumental (apart from a few vocal ad libs) — ‘Hold It’, ‘The
Scratch’, ‘Suds’, and ‘Sticky’ all amply demonstrate that The Famous Flames
tolerated no competition when it came to establish a tight, fast, danceable
groove. ‘Hold It’,
in particular, which used to be a pleasant little R&B hit for organist
Bill Doggett, is sped up, enlivened by Nat Kendrick’s loud, crackling, and
complex percussion shots, and turned into a bit of a battleground between
James and his brass players. All the other three instrumentals are fun as
well, with ‘The Scratch’ featuring guitarist Les Buie in a bit of a sinister,
proto-Batman-theme mood; ‘Suds’ being a cool bluesy variation on the old ‘One
Mint Julep’ theme; and ‘Sticky’ presenting an experimental mix of time
signatures for which, I believe, the term «intelligent dance music» should
have originally been reserved. Indeed, one of
the reasons why I always urge people not to neglect all those early British
Invasion covers of (usually black) American artists — by the Stones, the
Animals, the Yardbirds etc. — is that they typically provide a fresh
perspective by tightening up whatever might have been too loose and lax about
the originals, be it intentional artistry or simply technical deficiency.
There can be a stronger kind of adrenaline produced from listening to the
early Stones covering Chuck Berry than listening to Chuck Berry himself
(although the «fun» vibe thrown out by Chuck cannot be beat by the
exaggerated seriousness of the Stones). But there are artists who are totally
and completely immune to that, and James Brown is at the top of that list: nobody improves on James Brown when
James Brown really goes to work. Case in point —
‘I Don’t Mind’, arguably the most famous song off this LP, and not least
because the single made such a big impression on British youngsters that it
was covered both by The Moody Blues and
The Who over the course of 1965. But other than, perhaps, Mike Pinder’s
valiant (but not tremendously interesting) attempt to transpose the melody to
piano, there is absolutely nothing about these cover versions that would make
them recommendable — and yes, we are
talking about The Who, a band famous for breeding terrifying musical golems
out of humbler beginnings by the likes of Mose Allison, Eddie Cochran, or Johnny
Kidd. But they themselves seemed to be so terrified of James Brown that they
did not even try to convert ‘I Don’t Mind’ to classic early Who style — and
considering that Roger Daltrey in 1965 was a street hooligan type of singer
rather than a true «soul man», and also considering that the band’s group
harmonies were downright terrible compared to the Flames, this was a rather
obvious embarrassment for the young mod pack, forgivable only as an amusing
side effect of youthful maximalism. Not that ‘I Don’t
Mind’ is a particular personal favorite of mine. Several things about this
explosive blues-soul ballad have always felt clunky to me — such as, for
instance, the absurdly rapid "Idon’mind!"
backing responses after James’ perfectly drawn-out "I don’t miiiiind..." opening; or the way that the verse
really misses a suitable resolution — each of the "you’re gonna miss me" conclusions is kind of left hanging in
the air, making you wish for a proper landing that never ever comes, so the
overall feeling is that of a half-great song with the writer running out of
inspiration halfway through. I believe this is very much the reason why
producer Gene Redd considered the song «musically wrong», but, of course, Brown
always had to have his way — which is admirable, but I side with Redd on this
one. Sometimes unusual chord progressions are unusual for a reason, you know. On the other hand, it’s a sure way to
deflect any accusations of being uninventive — something that did plague so
many of Brown’s genre-hopping ventures in the early days of his career. I have to
confess, though, that I find him to be more temptingly inventive on the B-side
of the single: ‘Love Don’t Love Nobody’ used to be an entertaining, but
strictly generic jump-blues
hit for James’ namesake Roy Brown back in 1950 — but ten years later, here
it is flashing a completely new coat of paint: sped up, peppered with minor
chords, frenzied up with delirious brass duels, and, most importantly, replacing
Roy’s typically late-1940s podium-style jump-blues bellowing with James’ Dionysian
histrionics. Roy Brown informs you that "love don’t love nobody" with the force of a seasoned
preacher; James is telling you the same thing from the point of view of a
mental patient, which, one must admit, is a perfectly valid point of view for
a song with lyrics like "love don’t
love poor me at all, love is the cause of my downfall". Of the other
songs included on the album, the one most people are going to be familiar
with is probably ‘Lost Someone’ — mainly because it would be included, in an
insanely extended version, on Live At The
Apollo two years later. The song itself is not particularly catchy or
original (Brown himself said it was based on the chord pattern of Conway Twitty’s
‘It’s Only Make Believe’, though you’d probably never think of associating
the two all by yourself since the moods are so very different), but James’
vocal dynamics, as he effortlessly goes from melancholic crooning to
desperate screaming and back, is cool as heck, although this is precisely why
the long-winded vocal version works better than the forcedly short original
on the LP. Of note, perhaps, is the C-sharp minor transition to the bridge,
which completely changes the feel of the song from «soothingly emotional» to «ominously
dangerous» — more or less the same progression would later be nicked by the Stones
for ‘Heart Of Stone’, whose own mood swings mirror the ones of ‘Lost Someone’
pretty well. (The big difference being that James wails about his poor broken
heart, while Jagger boasts about nobody being capable of breaking his — the
man may have faithfully copied all of Brown’s dance moves, but he sure as
hell never copied his vulnerability.) Most of the
other short numbers are catchy little dance-oriented tunes that either
shuffle along in a 4/4 bluesy manner (‘Come Over Here’, ‘Just You And Me Darling’,
‘You Don’t Have To Go’ — not the most exciting rhythmic patterns for Brown), or
sound a little too New Orleanian for the likes of the Godfather of Funk (‘Dancin’
Little Thing’). One thing that did stick in my mind was the fabulous
descending brass riff on ‘Tell Me What You’re Gonna Do’ — which just kept
burning a hole in my brain until I realized that nine years later, it would
actually form the backbone for the Kinks’ punkish-anthemic ‘Brainwashed’ on
the Arthur album. Unless both
artists got it from a third source or something, it’s quite fabulous evidence
of the subconscious influence of James Brown on Ray Davies — certainly not
the most natural or obvious type of artistic connection you could make, but
there it is. You just can’t get away from the powerful voodoo of the hardest
workin’ man in show-business, even when you’re writing about the decline and
fall of the British Empire. In any case,
from this point and onward all of Brown’s studio albums, with maybe just an
occasional exception or two, have something exciting to offer, regardless of
whether they are largely following an already established formula (like this
one) or represent important musical breakthroughs. Technically, you could
still call James a «singles-based artist», but it has to be remembered that
at this point, quite a few of the singles in question would be released after the LP, not before; and despite occasional filler (like, why did they have to
include ‘So Long’ when it had already been released on Think?), every single recording is imbued with so much energy
that even if you do not remember the song once it’s done, you’ll still
headbang to it like crazy while it’s on. A pretty damn solid discographic run
begins here, even if it can never hope to reach the legendary status of LP
strings by the Beatles or the Stones — for reasons we’ll be coming back to
every once in a while. |
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