It’s always a bit of a jolt when an entertainer who has been a part of your life for decades suddenly passes away, but to wake up on Christmas Day to news that James Brown has passed away suddenly from severe pneumonia, was a big shock. I have listened to James Brown’s music since the 1960s and I still cringe when I think that my grandmother actually threw my original James Brown 45s out. The only original out of that collection that my brother was able to salvage was by Mr. Brown’s sideman and co-vocalist, Bobby Byrd.
Yeah, white kids liked James Brown in the early 60s. My brother and I used to play our records and our father would tell us which songs he liked. I remember he liked “My Girl” by the Temps and Otis Redding’s “Dock of the Bay”. None of the parents liked James Brown at first, though eventually “I Got You (I Feel Good)” grew on them.
My brother was a big practical joker, so a couple of times, he put the record player’s volume up to the max volume and put our favorite James Brown’s record “I Got The Feeling” on there and said, “Listen to this one, Dad.” James Brown’s trademark “Eeeeowwwwwww!” jumped out at our father and scared him out of his wits. He only got away with that one twice. While the one record they play the most nowadays is “I Got You (I Feel Good)”, I remember “I Got The Feeling” most from the 60s because of that incident, but also because other parents in the building used to yell at us for playing that record. The chorus “Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby” apparently irritated them to the point of distraction, and of course, they didn’t realize that telling my brother to stop playing it was only going to make him play it more.
I got to see James Brown in person once in the early 70s at a dance club called The Cheetah in New York City and still say nobody could dance like him. He was “Mr. Dynamite” onstage. He performed most of my favorites up to that time, “Please, Please, Please,” “Cold Sweat”, “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” and “I Feel Good”, but didn’t do “I Got the Feeling” which was a little bit of a disappointment to me, baby, baby, baby.
I eventually rebuilt my record collection and replaced my originals with reissues (damn!), and went on to get married and have kids. My kids would drag me to the movies in the 80s, and I didn’t want to go and see yet another Rocky sequel when Rocky IV came out, but I loved it when James Brown came out singing “Livin’ in America.
James Brown continued to work throughout most of the rest of his life, despite his legal troubles and a 3 year stint in jail. Just last month, on November 14, 2006, James Brown was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame, and performed at the ceremony.
So why do I feel that a man like James Brown, who not only broke records and race barriers in the music world, but also broke serious laws that landed him in jail, is being inducted into the heavenly gates this Christmas Day? Well, God’s got to look at James Brown’s whole life: the pressures he had to cope with, not only growing up poor but as an innovative artist who, in the midst of a wave of wild popularity, used his celebrity to make songs like “Say It Loud I’m Black and I’m Proud” and “I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door I’ll Get It Myself). God’s got to look at his heart and his personal philosophy that when he got onstage he was working for the people. James Brown believed that even if someone only paid a quarter to see his show, they deserved the best performance that he could deliver.
James Brown’s passing this Christmas Day is a harsh blow to the music world, and what’s particularly sad is that earlier this year, we already lost 2 other soul greats, Lou Rawls and Wilson Pickett, both of whom were mentioned in Arthur Conley’s tribute to soul singers, “Sweet Soul Music.” Otis Redding, who died in a plane crash in 1967, and Arthur Conley, who passed away from intestinal cancer in 2003, re-wrote Sam Cooke’s “Yeah Man” to make “Sweet Soul Music. The only living singer named in the song now is ‘Soul Man’ Sam Moore of Sam & Dave. James Brown is lauded in the song as the “King of them all”, and he most certainly was.
