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< James Brown: At Studio 54 (Remastered) >
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| Supplier : Brotherhood Of Satan Release Date : 03/04/2006 |
| Ripper : Brotherhood Of Satan Record Label : Snapper |
| Genre : Soul Quality : VBR/APS/44,1kHz |
| Tracks : 13 Tracks Channels : Joint Stereo |
| Year : 2005 Size : 93,7 MB |
| Language : English Rating : 70% of 100% |
_| Grabber : EAC v0.95 Prebeta 5 Encoder : LAME v3.90.3 |_
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< Release Description >
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"Soul Brother Number One," "the Godfather of Soul," "the Hardest
Working Man in Show Business," "Mr. Dynamite" -- those are mighty
titles, but no one can question that James Brown has earned them more
than any other performer. Other singers were more popular, others were
equally skilled, but few other African-American musicians have been so
influential on the course of popular music. And no other musician, pop
or otherwise, put on a more exciting, exhilarating stage show; Brown's
performances were marvels of athletic stamina and split-second timing.
Through the gospel-impassioned fury of his vocals and the complex
polyrhythms of his beats, Brown was a crucial midwife in not just one,
but two revolutions in American black music. He was one of the figures
most responsible for turning R&B into soul; he was, most would agree,
the figure most responsible for turning soul music into the funk of
the late '60s and early '70s. Since the mid-'70s, he's done little
more than tread water artistically; his financial and drug problems
eventually got him a controversial prison sentence. Yet in a sense his
music is now more influential than ever, as his voice and rhythms were
sampled on innumerable rap and hip-hop recordings, and critics have
belatedly hailed his innovations as among the most important in all of
rock or soul.
Brown's rags-to-riches-to-rags story has heroic and tragic dimensions
of mythic resonance. Born into poverty in the South, he ran afoul of
the law by the late '40s on an armed robbery conviction. With the help
of singer Bobby Byrd's family, Brown gained parole, and started a
gospel group with Byrd, changing their focus to R&B as the rock
revolution gained steam. The Flames, as the Georgian group were known
in the mid-'50s, were signed by Federal/King, and had a huge R&B hit
right off the bat with the wrenching, churchy ballad "Please, Please,
Please." By now the Flames had become James Brown & the Famous Flames,
the charisma, energy, and talent of Brown making him the natural star
attraction.
All of Brown's singles over the next two years flopped, as he sought
to establish his own style, recording material that was obviously
derivative of heroes like Roy Brown, Hank Ballard, Little Richard, and
Ray Charles. In retrospect, it can be seen that Brown was in the same
position as dozens of other R&B one-shots; talented singers in need of
better songs, or not fully on the road to a truly original sound. What
made Brown succeed where hundreds of others failed was his superhuman
determination, working the chitlin circuit to death, sharpening his
band, and keeping an eye on new trends. He was on the verge of being
dropped from King in late 1958 when his perseverance finally paid off,
as "Try Me" became a number-one R&B (and small pop) hit, and several
follow-ups established him as a regular visitor to the R&B charts.
Brown's style of R&B got harder as the '60s began, as he added more
complex, Latin- and jazz-influenced rhythms on hits like "Good Good
Lovin'," "I'll Go Crazy," "Think," and "Night Train," alternating
these with torturous ballads that featured some of the most frayed
screaming to be heard outside of the church. Black audiences already
knew that Brown had the most exciting live act around, but he truly
started to become a phenomenon with the release of Live at the Apollo
in 1963. Capturing a James Brown concert in all its whirling-dervish
energy and calculated spontaneity, it reached number two in the album
charts, an unprecedented feat for a hardcore R&B LP.
Live at the Apollo was recorded and released against the wishes of the
King label. It was these kinds of artistic standoffs that led Brown to
seek better opportunities elsewhere. In 1964, he ignored his King
contract to record "Out of Sight" for Smash, igniting a lengthy legal
battle that prevented him from issuing vocal recordings for about a
year. When he finally resumed recording for King in 1965, he had a new
contract that granted him far more artistic control over his releases.
Brown's new era had truly begun, however, with "Out of Sight," which
topped the R&B charts and made the pop Top 40. For some time, Brown
had been moving toward more elemental lyrics which threw in as many
chants and screams as words, and more intricate beats and horn charts
that took some of their cues from the ensemble work of jazz outfits.
"Out of Sight" wasn't called funk when it came out, but it had most of
the essential ingredients. These were amplified and perfected on
1965's "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," a monster that finally broke
Brown to the white audience, reaching the Top Ten. The even more
adventurous follow-up, "I Got You (I Feel Good)," did even better,
making number three.
These hits kicked off Brown's period of greatest commercial success
and public visibility. From 1965 to the end of the decade, he was
rarely off the R&B charts, often on the pop listings, and all over the
concert circuit and national television, even meeting with Vice
President Hubert Humphrey and other important politicians as a
representative of the black community. His music became even bolder
and funkier, as melody was dispensed with almost altogether in favor
of chunky rhythms and magnetic interplay between his vocals, horns,
drums, and scratching electric guitar (heard to best advantage on hits
like "Cold Sweat," "I Got the Feelin'," and "There Was a Time"). The
lyrics were now not so much words as chanted, stream-of-consciousness
slogans, often aligning themselves with black pride as well as good
old-fashioned (or new-fashioned) sex. Much of the credit for the sound
he devised belonged to (and has now been belatedly attributed) his
top-notch supporting musicians, such as saxophonists Maceo Parker, St.
Clair Pinckney, and Pee Wee Ellis; guitarist Jimmy Nolen; backup
singer and longtime loyal associate Bobby Byrd; and drummer Clyde
Stubblefield.
Brown was both a brilliant bandleader and a stern taskmaster, leading
his band to walk out on him in late 1969. Amazingly, he turned the
crisis to his advantage by recruiting a young Cincinnati outfit called
the Pacemakers, featuring guitarist Catfish Collins and bassist Bootsy
Collins. Although they only stayed with him for about a year, they
were crucial to Brown's evolution into even harder funk, emphasizing
the rhythm and the bottom even more. The Collins brothers, for their
part, put their apprenticeship to good use, helping define '70s funk
as members of the Parliament/Funkadelic axis.
In the early '70s, many of the most important members of Brown's late
-'60s band returned to the fold, to be billed as the J.B's (they also
made records on their own). Brown continued to score heavily on the
R&B charts throughout the first half of the 1970s, the music becoming
even more and more elemental and beat-driven. At the same time, he was
retreating from the white audience he had cultivated during the mid
- to late '60s; records like "Make It Funky," "Hot Pants," "Get on the
Good Foot," and "The Payback" were huge soul sellers, but only modest
pop ones. Critics charged, with some justification, that the Godfather
was starting to repeat and recycle himself too many times. It must be
remembered, though, that these songs were made for the singles-radio
-jukebox market and not meant to be played one after the other on CD
compilations (as they are today).
By the mid-'70s, Brown was beginning to burn out artistically. He
seemed shorn of new ideas, was being out-gunned on the charts by
disco, and was running into problems with the IRS and his financial
empire. There were sporadic hits, and he could always count on
enthusiastic live audiences, but by the 1980s, he didn't have a label.
With the explosion of rap, however, which frequently sampled vintage
JB records, Brown was now hipper than ever. He collaborated with
Afrika Bambaataa on the critical smash single "Unity," and re-entered
the Top Ten in 1986 with "Living in America." Rock critics, who had
always ranked Brown considerably below Otis Redding and Aretha
Franklin in the soul canon, began to reevaluate his output,
particularly his funk years, sometimes anointing him not just as Soul
Brother Number One, but as the most important black musician of the
rock era.
In 1988, Brown's personal life came crashing down in a well-publicized
incident in which he was accused by his wife of assault and battery.
After a year skirting hazy legal and personal troubles, he led the
police on an interstate car chase after allegedly threatening people
with a handgun. The episode ended in a six-year prison sentence that
many felt excessive; he was paroled after serving two years.
It's probably safe to assume that Brown will not make any more
important recordings, although he continues to perform and release new
material like 1998's I'm Back. Yet his music is probably more popular
in the American mainstream today than it has been since the 1970s, and
not just among young rappers and samplers. For a long time his
cumbersome, byzantine discography was mostly out of print, with pieces
available only on skimpy greatest-hits collections. A series of
exceptionally well-packaged reissues on PolyGram has changed the
situation; the Star Time box set is the best overview, with other
superb compilations devoted to specific phases of his lengthy career,
from '50s R&B to '70s funk.
http://www.godfatherofsoul.com
Tracks:
01. Gonna Have A Funky Good Time (Doing It To Death) (2:53)
02. Get Up Offa That Thing (6:06)
03. Body Heat (5:13)
04. Sex Machine (6:37)
05. Try Me (4:27)
06. Papa's Got A Brand New Bag (2:31)
07. Get On The Good Foot (4:09)
08. It's A Man's, Man's, Man's World - Lost Somewhere -
It's A Man's, Man's, Man's World (14:58)
09. I Got The Feeling (2:42)
10. Cold Sweat (3:15)
11. Please, Please, Please (2:51)
12. Jam (4:58)
13. The Payback - It's Too Funky In Here (4:15)
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