Over a 39 year period, James Brown amassed
an amazing total of 98 entries on Billboard's top 40 R&B singles
Charts, a record unsurpassed by any other artist. Seventeen on them
reached number one, a feat topped only by Stevie Wonder and Louis Jordan,
and equaled only by Aretha Franklin.
Brown's rise from juvenile delinquent to Soul Brother Number One is among
the great modern day American success stories. The only child of a poor
backwoods family, he was sent to Augusta, Georgia at age five to live at
an aunt's brothel. He earned his keep by running errands for soldiers at
nearby Camp Gordon, entertaining them with his buckdancing and enticing
them into his aunt's establishment. Singing gospel music and playing
piano, drums, and guitar served as an emotional outlet for the young
Brown.
In 1952, Brown settled in Georgia and joined the Gospel Starlighters, a
quartet led by Bobby Byrd. Theirs was a raw southern gospel style inspired
by Julius Cheeks and the Sensational Nightingales and Reverend Reuben
Willingham and the Swanee Quintet. Eventually, however, the Starlighters
evolved into a rhythm and blues outfit. They were originally known as the
Avons, them as the Flames.
In November 1955, while based in Macon, Georgia, the Flames cut a
demonstration record at radio station WIBB of an original tune titled
"Please, Please, Please". While passing through Atlanta, record
producer Ralph Bass heard the demo and was so impressed with Brown's
impassioned lead and the group's hard harmonies that he immediately drove
to Macon and signed them to King Records, a Cincinnati company for which
two of the Flames' favorite groups, the Midnighters and the 5 Royales,
were recording. A session was held in Ohio the following week. Released on
King's Federal label two months later, in March of 1956, "Please,
Please, Please" reached Number Five on the Billboard's R&B chart.
Brown's boyhood dream of escaping poverty was not immediately realized,
however. Although he and the Flames continued to make records for Federal,
it would be nearly three years before they again hit the national charts.
"Try Me", produced by Andy Gibson, hit big during the winter of
1958-59, giving the group its first Number One R&B record and enabling
Brown to hire a steady backup band. Through grueling rehearsals and
barnstorming onenighters, Brown developed the band into the hottest
R&B unit in the land. His musicians' precision timing was geared to
accent every blood curling scream, every flying split, every knee drop,
every one-legged skate, and every shimmy of Brown's stunning array of
acrobatics, which be now had become the visual trademark of the group's
stage act.
While he continued scoring hit singles during the early 1960's, now issued
on the King Label, Brown came up with the idea that if the hysteria he was
generating in person could be captured on an album, people who hadn't seen
him yet could at least hear and feel the excitement of him screaming and
hollering until his back got soaking wet. King Records was convinced that
such an album wouldn't sell, so Brown put up his own money to record a
performance at the Apollo Theater in October 1962. Released nearly a year
later, Live At The Apollo went to Number Two on Billboard's album chart,
an unprecedented feat for a live R&B album. Radio stations played it
with a frequency formerly reserved for singles, and attendance at Brown's
concerts mushroomed.
Brown scored his first Top 10 pop single in 1965 with "Papa's Got A
Brand New Bag", and the hits kept coming for the next decade, one
after another at an unheard-of rate. He gradually phased out the Flames,
and the gospel and blues structure of his early records gave way to
open-ended vamps that emphasized his rhythmically riveting sandpaper
vocals and the complex funk syncopations of his band. His innovations
during this period had a profound influence on popular music styles around
the world, including fund, rock, Afro-pop, disco and eventually rap.
James Brown's status as "The Godfather Of Soul" remains
undiminished. Indeed, he has picked up a new generation of fans who have
become familiar with his funk grooves through their frequent use as
samples on rap records. A charter member of the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame, Brown added to his collections of accolades when he received a
special lifetime achievement Grammy Award in 1992.
|
