Tribute to the Godfather: Get on Down With Sunday Gospel Time!

Kay Robinson - The Lord Will Make a Way Somehow (Pts. 1 & 2)

In addition to the voluminous discography James Brown generated for himself, his production company would be responsible for a large number of 45s and albums on James Brown Revue members and others for a wide range of labels. (See this great Japanese site for a discography of JB and his productions.) The "A James Brown Production" logo graced recordings ranging from soul and funk to jazz (most notably the Bethlehem recordings of The Dee Felice Trio, which a funky jazz version of "There Was a Time") to comedy (Clay Tyson and Sad Sam) to country (the 1970 Starday LP Here I Am by Ronnie Thompson, then mayor of Macon) to gospel, as shown in today's selection.



Cincinnati gospel singer Kay Robinson had five James Brown-produced 45s and one LP (the highly-collectible We Need Time) released on King and Federal. She recorded the funky two-part "The Lord Will Make a Way Somehow" with the Bootsy-era J.B.'s in 1970. Although the aforementioned discography site shows the record being released as a two-part King 45, I've seen listings elsewhere that suggest that only Part 1 of the tune actually received commercial release, with both parts only appearing as one side of a King promotional 45. Fortunately, when Polydor released the James Brown's Original Funky Divas comp they included the whole thing, and it's a sure cooker. Robinson starts with a piano-backed monologue about the turbulent times ("we've lost so many good men - Dr. King, the Kennedys," she notes) but then the band kicks in and she rips into the song (with backup support from JB, Bobby Byrd, and Fayne Pridgeon), not letting up until the intro is reprised some five minutes later.

Tribute to the Godfather: The Last Time

James Brown - Maybe the Last Time

James Brown's public memorial is underway in Augusta, Georgia as I write this. I wish I could be there to pay my respects, but I have a child in tow today, flying solo, so the trip to Augusta was really out of the question. I'm sure many people join me in being there "in spirit."

Today's selection seems appropriate for today's events. In 1964 JB, who was having a tough time with King Records prexy Syd Nathan (having clashed over the Live at the Apollo LP and some other projects), violated his contract and started putting out material on Mercury's Smash label. Nathan flexed his muscle and coerced Brown to toe the line with King, but Smash was allowed to release instrumental material by James and the band for a little while (I think the last Smash recordings came out in '66 or '67). The lone JB vocal 45 on Smash was "Out of Sight" b/w "Maybe the Last Time." "Out of Sight" was the first hint of the new sound JB was about to drop with "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," and is a fine piece of R&B. "Maybe the Last Time," however, is a fantastic record that deserved more than to be a B-side. The tune was based on the gospel tune made popular by the Staple Singers (the Rolling Stones would also turn to the tune around that time). James and the Famous Flames give the song a very strong reading, and James conjures up his gospel idol, the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi's Archie Brownlee, in his performance.

The tribute to JB will continue into next week, but today I pause to remember the legend as I sit here, so close but yet so far away from Augusta.

Great JB Article

Here's a great piece from The New Yorker about JB from a few years back. It's an interesting portrait of such a complex man.

Tribute to the Godfather: What It Is!

James Brown:

Mind Power
Mind Power (alternate)



James Brown, like most of the funky soul brothers of the early '70s, was called upon to contribute to blaxploitation movie soundtracks as the genre flowered. JB was a natural for this, as he was still putting out hits at an amazing rate, but he showed very little interest in being an auteur a la Isaac Hayes or Curtis Mayfield. His opinion was that he could just string together music he had already done to go alongside the movie's scenes; fortunately Fred Wesley and others impressed upon JB to do a little more work than that, but in the end the soundtracks are hit-and-miss affairs. Although the Black Caesar and Slaughter's Big Rip-Off soundtracks are nowhere in the same league as Isaac Hayes' Shaft or Curtis Mayfield's Superfly, however, they each had their moments: "Down In Out In New York City," "Blind Man Can See It," "The Boss" and "Mama Feelgood" from Black Caesar (the latter sung by Lyn Collins) and "People Get Up and Drive Your Funky Soul" and "Sexy, Sexy, Sexy" from Slaughter's Big Rip-Off come to mind right away. And then there's the soundtrack that didn't happen.

JB's second-strongest album of his entire discography, The Payback (the legendary Live at the Apollo is, of course, the greatest JB album EVER), was actually planned to be the soundtrack to Hell Up In Harlem, but studio execs, unbelievably, didn't think the music was funky enough to use in the movie! Fortunately, JB didn't shelve the rejected material. Polydor released The Payback in 1974 and the dark, brooding title track shot straight to #1 on the R&B charts and has endured to the present day as a funk anthem and as an immensely-popular source of hip-hop samples. (By the way, the neither the film nor its soundtrack - whose composer I can't recall - fared very well.) The Payback is full of good material, and the improv jam "Mind Power" closed out the album. Over a great groove, James gives a little autobiography and then uses some incoherent talk about ESP, positive thinking and mind power (not unlike his monologue on "Escape-Ism") to create the riff of "what it is, what it is" that drives the tune along. James' vocals are pretty meaningless overall, as this is just a solid slab of funk that doesn't let up for its whole twelve minutes. I first heard this great recording on the now-defunct KoolOut online radio show and find it to be a favorite to the very day.

The 1990s release of the Make It Funky: The Big Payback, 1971-1975 comp from Polydor unearthed a nice treat from the Payback sessions. When James and the band recorded "Mind Power" the tape reel ran out, but engineer Bob Both didn't tell JB. Instead, he stuck another reel on and continued to record. Assumedly, then, the ending of "Mind Power" on the Payback LP was a post-production move, as the captured material that made its way onto the Make It Funky comp finds JB and the band jamming along and having some fun. James admires the "stick player"'s groove ("that's how we started ... man I used to blow a can ... I sure wish I had a comb and some paper, I could play some music now!") and gets Fred Wesley to imitate a Dixieland trombone player, Guy Lombardo and Herb Alpert (!) It's a nice tune all by itself and is a great way to get the great "Mind Power" groove in a smaller dose.

Tribute to the Godfather: How About a Little Hand For The Boys In The Band

James Brown - Nose Job
The James Brown Soul Train - Honky Tonk (Pt. 1)

Before I discuss today's picks, I encourage you to rush on over to WFMU's Beware of the Blog, which is currently featuring James Brown material from myriads of blogs (including my own) and scads of great mp3s and video clips.

As great as JB's talent was, recognition must be given to the outstanding bands he fronted in the '60s and '70s. The James Brown Band (later known as the J.B.'s) was Brown's recording and touring band, and at various points the lineup included drummers John "Jabo" Starks and Clyde Stubblefield, trombonist Fred Wesley, saxophonists Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis, Maceo Parker, and St. Clair Pinkney, guitarists Phelps "Catfish" Collins and Hearlon "Cheese" Martin, bassist William "Bootsy" Collins and other very talented musicians, who brought the funk (and, in the case of Wesley and Ellis, serious jazz chops) to the table. With such great musicians to work with, Brown could easily craft his magic. Although Brown had pretty notorious fallings-out with various personnel over the years due to his demanding nature, strict discipline and immense ego (especially the 1970 mutiny in which almost all of Brown's band quit and James drafted Bootsy and Catfish Collins and their Cincinnati-based band en masse hours before a concert to create the "Sex Machine"-era J.B.'s), the band provided the groove that made Brown "the first name in the soul game," as Don Cornelius would say. Fortunately, JB recorded his band on lots of awesome 45s and albums for Smash, King, People and Polydor, under his own name and under monikers such as The J.B.'s, Maceo & The Macks, The Last Word, The Believers and The James Brown Soul Train. Quite a few of their records charted, most notably Fred Wesley & The J.B.'s 1974 #1 R&B hit "Doing It To Death," and all of them are worth checking out, as they run the gamut from blues to jazz to Northern Soul to funk to disco.

Today I've selected two great instrumentals which display the '60s and '70s JB instrumental sound. "Nose Job" was actually the backing track to James Brown Revue member Lee Austin's version of the soul classic "Steal Away." This brassy thing has a slight funk groove going on quietly in the background, but the overall feel is very jazzy, reflective of Pee Wee Ellis' tastes during his stint as JB's bandleader. James Brown's 1972 revisiting of the R&B classic "Honky Tonk" billed to the James Brown Soul Train was actually one of several remakes of the classic Brown produced, including a funky remake done by Bill Doggett, who had hit with the song in 1956 - see this earlier post about the song, which was coupled with the funky 45 classic "Honky Tonk Popcorn". It's a fun number whose bluesy shuffle groove is clearly the template for "Doing It To Death."

Tribute to the Godfather: N-A-T-U-R-uh-E

James Brown - Nature



The rise of disco in the mid-'70s did in many of the soul legends of the '60s, whose more rough-hewn styles and Southern-inflected vocals didn't mesh well with the "four-on-the-floor" groove and chic aesthetic (no pun intended) that the disco dancers preferred. These fading stars didn't go out without a fight, but for most it really didn't work out. Joe Tex fared best, scoring a major hit with "Ain't Gonna Bump No More (With No Big Fat Woman)," and Joe Simon snared a few hits, with "Get Down, Get Down (Get on the Floor)" leading the way. James Brown would not adapt to the new style as well as they did, as his "new, new super heavy funk" was too singular for the disco groove or the newer funk sound coming out of the P-Funk camp (whose personnel now included former-JB's Bootsy Collins, Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker). From 1975's Sex Machine Today and The Original Disco Man to Jam/1980's (from which today's selection comes), Brown's albums started focusing on putting a disco slant to the groove. Although he did manage to get hits out of "Bodyheat" and "It's Too Funky In Here," the late-'70s JB singles started regularly missing the pop and R&B charts (Brown wouldn't regain any chart momentum until "Living in America" in 1986). Unfortunately, this era is politely ignored in the overview of JB's legacy, but in doing so, some pretty good recordings are overlooked.

Today's selection was released as a two-part Polydor single, which failed to chart. It is, however, one of my favorite recordings from the "disco" period. "Nature" is a nice disco-funk strut with a wickedly infectious guitar lick, over which James talks about "if I didn't have nature - I wonder where would I be" (it's not clear to me, though, if he's talking about the Good Earth or about something else) and getting the band to give up the funk. Before the dancing starts, however, James does a little preaching about nature in the song's long, churchy intro (dig the line "When I rub up 'gainst my baby, yeah, ah, it makes me feel hot! Makes me feel hot! Ah, my body gets warm!") - the intro is really over-the-top, but I love it. On the 45 edit, the tune is started about halfway through, with a short chanted intro ("ohhhhh back to nature now!") spliced onto the top (I suppose disco patrons wouldn't want to stand around to hear the long intro); Part 2 of the tune is the churchy intro and a bit of the beginning of the tune. I think the whole of "Nature" is much better than the sum of its parts, however, and from the opening guitar licks to the vamping ending (dig where the guitarist actually trips up on his little lick after one of the vamps), it's proof that JB still had something to offer, even if the market didn't accept it.

Get On Down With The Son Of The Stepfather Of Soul!

Here's Nicolus, our seven-year-old, now empowered by one of his Christmas gifts, a karaoke machine:




I think it's safe to say that the boy's got soul!

Tribute to The Godfather: My First JB Record

James Brown - Hot Pants (She Got To Use What She Got To Get What She Wants)



I recommend that everyone check out the Funky 16 Corners obituary of James Brown, as it provides a great overview of JB's life and work, closing with a sentiment that I share: unfortunately, in the mainstream JB is viewed as more of a punchline, the man with the crazy mugshot, than the innovator and trailblazer of American music. Fortunately his work will forever stand on its own, both in recordings and video, and so his greatness cannot be denied. I think that my part in the JB memorials that will be all over music blogdom will be to just cover a few things that I have always enjoyed by JB and his production stable. The three "Rhubarb Cake" shows I posted yesterday, plus everything that everyone else will write, will offer so much more than the lowly Stepfather, so I'm not going to try anything that massive. I probably will, however, do a tribute set later in the week.

The three-part People 45 of "Hot Pants" was the first James Brown record I ever heard. As I noted in my Ahmet Ertegun post the other week (too many legends are passing away, I say!) my introduction to soul came from my mom's records, and the James Brown 45 stood out from all the rest I was listening to in those days: the groove was so bare; James' vocals were chanted and not sung; the horns darted in and out save for the vamp toward the end of Part 1. It was raw funk, my first exposure to the genre. What a way to be introduced to the sound!

"Hot Pants" was James' second release on his new King-distributed People label (the first being "Escape-Ism"), and it was a #1 Billboard R&B chart hit in 1971. The hit came at an odd time, however, as James was about to leave King Records (whose entire operations, by this point, were basically kept afloat by JB's hits) for Polydor, taking the People imprint and his masters with him.



Polydor rushed out the Hot Pants LP to ride out the People 45's momentum, and James re-recorded the song to be the centerpiece of the album. The album was not one of the stronger entries in JB's discography (although the improv jam "Blues & Pants" is a personal favorite, that will appear in a future JB tribute post), and I personally find the People version of "Hot Pants" to be the superior recording. Here, James talks about "the girl over there with the hot pants on" while a sinister guitar line strolls along and the very simple bassline provides the tune's heartbeat.

RIP James Brown

I just went online to check my e-mail and have learned that James Brown passed away this morning at the age of 73. My surprise, coupled with the holiday's activities, means I won't be able to write anything today or work on any podcasts, etc., but all of that will follow. The Godfather of Soul is dead; I'm sure that my blog - and all of my fellow bloggers' sites - will provide ample tribute over the next few weeks. In the meantime, here are links to not one, not two, but three awesome archived WFMU "Rhubarb Cake" shows featuring Brown and his productions on himself and others. We're talking a major dose (TWELVE HOURS) of JB (RealAudio required). The links are as follows:

Rhubarb Cake broadcast, 12/25/01 (SIX HOURS of JB and his funky people, ironically broadcast five years ago today)
Rhubarb Cake broadcast, 12/24/02 (features THREE HOURS of JB productions)
Rhubarb Cake broadcast, 1/4/01 (features THREE HOURS of recordings from JB's People label)

Rest in peace, JB.

OK, One More Xmas Post

The Meditation Singers - Blue Christmas

I had said that yesterday's post would be my last regular post before the holidays, but this 45 came in the mail today and, being that had it arrived earlier it would've been part of the podcast, I'll go ahead and post it today.

The Meditation Singers are no stranger to this blog or the podcast, so I'll simply say that "Blue Christmas," recorded at a time when so many young men were away in Vietnam, is still appropriate today, when so many young men and women are now in Iraq and Afghanistan. I will join many who will be thinking of our armed forces this Christmas. To my brother-in-law, Second Lieutenant Charles Dozier (who's in Baghdad right now), and all of the others, Merry Christmas. We love you and miss you.

Here's #13!

Episode #13 of "Get on Down With the Stepfather of Soul!" is now online in both stereo and mono! Due to time constraints I didn't get to record any voiceovers, so the music is here just to enjoy! Here's the playlist:

1. Ronnie Mitchell - Soul Meeting
2. Larry Birdsong - Every Night In The Week
3. The Fame Gang - It's Your Thing
4. Johnny & John - Christmas In Vietnam
5. Maurice & Mac - So Much Love
6. Little Milton - Coca-Cola Ad
7. Wales Wallace - We're Not Happy
8. Shirley Wahls - That's How Long (I'm Gonna Love You)
9. James Brown - Santa Claus Go Straight To The Ghetto
10. Art Jerry Miller - Put Me In The Mood
11. Don Fletcher - Two Wrongs Don't Make A Right
12. The Jewels - Opportunity
13. The Mad Lads - No Strings Attached
14. Gladys Knight & The Pips - Coca-Cola Ad
15. Little Sonny - Sonny's Bag
16. The Mighty Hannibal - Jerkin' The Dog
17. The Bobbettes - I've Gotta Face The World
18. The Commotions - Handy Man
19. Dee Dee Sharp - Bye Bye Baby
20. Don Covay & The Goodtimers - Gonna Send You Back To Your Mama
21. Arthur Conley - You Don't Have To See Me
22. Otis Redding - Amen
23. The Lafayette Leake Trio - After Hours (closing theme)

The Stepfather's Favorite Christmas Blues

Lowell Fulsom - The Original Lonesome Christmas (Pt. 1)



For today's selection I have to turn to my (unfortunately, scratchy) 45 of Lowell Fulsom's "Lonesome Christmas," my favorite Christmas-themed blues song. Fulsom (alternately spelled "Fulson" on many releases) is best known among soul fans for his funky blues 45s of the '60s and '70s for Kent ("Tramp," "Make a Little Love") and Jewel ("Sleeper"), but his long career started with Fulsom being a major proponent of the Texas and West Coast blues sound, with a ten-year stint on Checker providing great records such as "Reconsider Baby" and "Blue Shadows." Prior to his Checker tenure, however, Fulsom was working out West with lots of great recordings for Swingtime (during which period a young Ray Charles worked in his band) and Hollywood. "Lonesome Christmas," penned by L.A. pianist and Fulsom associate Lloyd Glenn, was a Hollywood release (reissued several times when Hollywood was acquired by Starday-King and, later, when Gusto acquired Starday-King) and it features Fulsom's ingratiating voice over a gentle groove that tick-tocks along. Although the lyrics reflect Fulsom's regret that he can't be with his loved one for the holidays, the tune is very cheerful and playful.

Today's post will be the last regular post I do before the holidays. If all goes as planned I will have the next episode of the podcast online either tonight or tomorrow, where I'll feature a couple of more Christmas songs but also the usual mix of groovers and movers! Happy Holidays!