James Brown 1933 - 2006
Back when I was a wee punker, it was pretty much a rule that you had to have a James Brown Greatest Hits or Best Of... in your record collection. Punks considered him THEE Black Man (THEE Black Woman singer? Billie Holiday because of the sadness in her voice and the junkie mystique). Of course, I followed custom and got a greatest hits collection, as well as Live at the Apollo and Sex Machine. Those were the first albums by a Black person that I actually went out and bought. Sounds stupid but I grew up in an all White suburb and, even though this is the "Left Coast" and my parents had raised me and my brother to be accepting of all races, the vibe in my neighborhood was very racist.
Sure, I listened to Jimi Hendrix and Thin Lizzy, but those artists weren't thought of as Black or playing "Black music." They played rock & roll, which, in our twisted minds, was White. Today I shake my head at the mindboggling absurdity of such thoughts. Back then, rock & roll = White music was conventional wisdom. And how were we to know any better? The music that was presented to us as rock & roll was Ted Nugent, Styx, Led Zeppelin, and Lynnard Skynnard. Rock & roll "was started" by Bill Haley with Rock Around the Clock and the King of Rock & Roll was Elvis. We learned about rock & roll from Happy Days and Sha-Na-Na, two television programs in which rock & roll was a centerpiece, yet where Blacks were nowhere to be seen. Earlier still, American Bandstand was all about Whiteness, so much so that Blacks had their own show, Soul Train. Take all those inputs and stir them up with the racist undertones of the anti-disco movement of the late 70s and you had a 14 year old Scott Soriano thinking about music in racial terms: White music = rock & roll = good and Black music = nigger music = bad. Yup, that is about as deep as my racial analysis of music went.
I've written here before about how much punk rock was my personal music savior. Like many other "weird" kids trapped in the suburbs, punk made me cherish my individualism while at the same time giving me a sense of belonging. It gave me pride that many of my innerthoughts were not those held by those around me or, better still, that the act of thinking about something, anything with a bit of depth wasn't freakish. And it gave me people to be around who were also excited about thinking. With the freedom to explore my own thoughts came the shattering of received wisdom - such as rock & roll is White and that you are a nigger lover if you own a record made by a Black person (other than Jimi Hendrix and Phil Lynott). Restrictions gone, freedom acted upon, and, ironically, the punk "rule" to own some records by the Black originators and pioneers of rock & roll, I went out and bought Can Your Heart Stand It, a best of collection that I had seen in the record collections of older punks (always leaning next to the stereo, beat to shit from constant party play).
It would be lie to claim that teenage me knew of James Brown's huge importance culturally or of the genius that he brought to music. However, I did know that James Brown was an icon and that I loved what I heard on record. Can Your Heart Stand it lead me to acquire Live at the Apollo and Sex Machine. Over the years, I picked up all of his pre-1980s albums and most of his 45s. I read about James Brown, the fascinating life, and how he invented funk. I came to realize that he was the first person in the history music to take the African notion of everything is a percussion instrument and adopt it to popular music, the result of that experiment is what we now call funk. The more I listened to his music and how each instrument has its own beat, one that did not sap the importance or intensity of the other instruments/beats but instead creates a much stronger, much more intoxicating rhythm, the more I realized that James Brown was more than the Hardest Working Man in Show Business, more than the Godfather of Soul: He was a musical genius.
Since JB died, one of the clips that has been aired a lot is the one of LL Cool J saying that the Three B's of music are Bach, Beethoven, and Brown. LL isn't stretching things. The invention of funk revolutionized music. It gave musicians more freedom to experiment not only with rhythm but with the application of their instrument. Guitars could be as important as drums in establishing a beat. Horns could hold down a rhythm. Keyboards could be used once again as percussion instruments not just as melodic ones. Sure, Western musicians and composers had stretched the use of instruments before, having guitars, horns, etc. accent and created the beat; but never with the intensity, purpose, or success that James Brown did. And the way that James Brown pushed the boundaries of polyrhythm did more than add flavor to music, it crushed walls and created a new foundation for people to build on. Bach, Beethoven, and Brown, sure; but there is one thing James Brown has over Johann and Ludwig and that is you can't but help but move your ass when James Brown is on the turntable.
For a few years in the early '00s, I played junior dejay to Larry "The Flower Vato" Rodriguez at his weekly Dance Party. I had dejayed on the radio, played music between bands at shows, and spun records at a few parties but, until then, I had never club dejayed. You might know everything in the world about music, you might have the best record collection around, and you might think you can make a crowd dance their asses off, but you really do not know the limitations of your knowledge and all the vinyl that you own until you stand behind two turntables and watch a dance floor empty. For a music freak, clearing a dance floor is as crushing a defeat as there is. When it happens you have only two recourses: Turn the tables over to Larry or very quickly find James Brown's Release the Pressure and spin it. James Brown is the dejay's lifesaver. His records are what Larry and I call "cheaters" - that is, when you have James Brown records you don't need to do any work to make people dance. You can slap James Brown after James Brown (or Maceo & the Mack, Fred Wesley, JBs, Lynn Collins, Marva Whitney, Dee Felice Trio, Last Word, or any of the many James Brown productions) on the turntable and people will dance. It doesn't matter if the crowd is young, old, Black, White, Latino, hip, square, etc.: Everyone dances to James Brown.
One night, a couple years ago, Larry and I did an all JB Dance Party. We held it on the week of the day that Papa's Got a Brand New Bag was released and called it "The 40th Birthday of Funk." A notice about it appeared in the local weekly. Though the Dance Party's starting time was advertised as 9 pm, most nights we start spinning (to the bar staff and a few barflies) at about 9:30 or 10. The crowd arrives at 11 pm and peaks at 1 am. Not that night. We got there at 8:30 to set things up and there were people waiting outside for us to start. At 9:30, the place was packed. The dance floor was stuffed. The crowd was as diverse as you can imagine. Black couples in their 50s and 60s, dressed to the T, were mingling with White hipsters in their early 20s. Lowriders partied with state workers. Two Black ladies in their 50s came to the dejay booth in tears, to tell Larry and I that they hadn't had this much fun since they were in their 20s. They spent all night on the dance floor and were among the last to leave. For six solid hours the dance floor was full. It was the easiest night of dejaying I ever did. The "work" was having the idea of doing an all JB night, putting up some flyers, and dropping needle on JB records. It was James Brown who did the heavy lifting.
My brain loves James Brown's music. I can think about how it is structured and the impact it has had both musically and culturally (another essay could be written on James Brown and Black pride). My body love James Brown's music. It makes me move and gets me excited. James Brown's music is nourishing as well as exciting. It is as important of a legacy as any man has created. James Brown's music is the kind of thing that makes America great. It is the flipside of our wars, ignorance, arrogance, and greed. It is our country's Good Foot. Thank you, James Brown for a lifetime of genius.
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