Hello ladies and gents this is the Viking telling you that today we are talking about
James Brown
It has been 50 years since Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine was recorded. Here’s everything you’ve ever wanted to know about the legendary soul singer
You could bet your bottom dollar that for decades there hasn’t been one moment when someone, somewhere in the world wasn’t tapping a toe to a James Brown groove, be it an original recording or one of the many tunes that sampled his work.
Indeed, his “Funky Drummer” – the most sampled cut of all time – was released 50 years ago, on 27 March 1970, while the monumental “Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine” was recorded on 25 April 1970 at Starday King Studio, Cincinnati. The tune that changed the face of music forever, “Sex Machine”, so familiar to teenagers, octogenarians and everyone in between, has to be the most played dance record in history, one that all and sundry has danced to. “I want to get into it, y’know / Like a like a Sex Machine, man / Moving, doing it, you know. Can I count it off? / 1/2/3/4.”
Subsequently, James Brown and his baby – funk (derived from the Flemish fonck, “agitation or disturbance”) – has, whether its hip hop, jazz funk, drum and bass or grime, influenced dance floors for at least 50 years and counting, and, love him or hate him, it is still totally impossible to consider a world without Mr James Brown.
1. Having been sampled more than 5,200 times, James Brown is the most sampled artist of all time, while “Funky Drummer” and its beat (created by Clyde Stubblefield) has been purloined some 1,584 times by, among many others, Sweet T and Jazzy Joyce, Public Enemy, Run DMC, Ice Tee, De La Soul, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Dr Dre and even George Michael, Madonna and Britney Spears.
2. He was born James Joseph Brown in either 1933 or 1928 in the pine forest of Barnwell, South Carolina, in a lean, wooden shack devoid of windows, water, toilet, electricity, gas or running water. An only child, he had no shoes, wore rags and had no neighbours for ten miles around. His mother left when he was four after his alcoholic, physically abusive father tried to kill her. From an early age Brown spent most of his time alone, his father away working the turpentine camps while pater’s common law wives didn’t stay for long to look after young James. “Being alone at night in that cabin in the woods with nobody else there worked a change in me that has stayed with me from then on,” he wrote in his autobiography. “It gave me my own mind.”
3. Aged eight he moved into his aunt Honey’s (real name Handsome Washington) brothel in Augusta, Georgia, where he perfected his “buck dance” – a solo gambol native to North Carolina not unlike tap – to entertain the troops and guide them in to the knocking shop. Here, in order to further regale the serviceman and earn a few coins, he learned the piano, guitar and harmonica, while his call-and-answer shtick was picked up from barnstorming preachers in the local churches that Brown was oft to frequent.
4. Young James was arrested aged 15, for robbery, tried as an adult and received an eight- to 16-year sentence in the Georgia Juvenile Training Institute in Toccoa, Georgia, where he started a gospel group. Bobby Byrd and his family’s gospel choir visited the facility to entertain the young offenders, met James and, having assured the authorities that they would give the young delinquent a home, he was released into their care. He’d served three long years. He then joined Byrd’s band, The Gospel Starlighters, and in 1954 a wild young piano player named Little Richard allowed them to play support for him in Toccoa and thus forever influenced the young tearaway.
5. In 1965, after he’d secured million-selling hits with “Night Train” and his phenomenal Live At The Apollo long player, the ever assured, ever audacious Brown ditched conventional verse and chorus structure and eliminated chord progressions. It was now purely about the groove and every instrument was treated like a drum and every riff syncopated. “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” (recorded in less than an hour, in February 1965) changed the face of music forever. “They said it was the beginning of funk,” he uttered. “I thought it was where my music was going. The title told it all, I have a new bag.”
And as always have a chilled day from the Viking
Comments
Post a Comment