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James Brown |
American pie and a slice of soul from Godfather
JAMES BROWN: THE GODFATHER OF SOUL
By James Brown with Bruce Tucker
Aurum
SO, where do you place James Brown in the merit of musical order we all have in the back of our heads?
Bigger than Hendrix, not as important The Beatles. Bigger than Springsteen, a peg down from Dylan. A master showman, the self-crowned Godfather of Soul made some of the best soul and funk records ever pressed to wax, even if some of the words were a little
incoherent.
Anybody who can tell me the full words to Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag without conferring with Professor Google gets an honorary degree in mumble-deciphering. Brown’s music was, however, wonderfully
innovative and he resisted bleeping disco machines at the end of the 1970s,
showing that we could all keep dancing to soul’s simple old recipe without the need for Yes Sir, I Can Boogie.
As talented as Michael Jackson, he also used his prominence more effectively, campaigning for improved conditions for African-
Americans and promoting black musicians, pushing them where prejudice had previously prohibited
anybody who was not white.
But evaluating the James Brown show has an uglier side. His cameo in The Blues Brothers was a chuckle, but less funny was tat like Living In America and the live shows in his later years when he could do little more than grunt out with an odd mop of hair which seemed to get more unruly every time you saw him. Even less funny was the repeat arrests for domestic abuse and the
bruises found on his four wives. In his later years, there was a horrible police mugshot which did the rounds after he was arrested on a drugs charge.
If you want to remember him for the musical hits – rather than the ones his
former partners took in the face – his autobiography is a good place to start.
Out of print in the UK for 20 years, it has been released again by Camden Town publishers Aurum nearly three years after Brown’s death, aged 73, on Christmas
Day 2006.
There are frank admissions about the brushes with the law, but this is a nicely cleaned-up version of Brown’s adventures through nightly gigs across the world and meetings with world leaders.
Written with the help of fan and friend Bruce Tucker, every sentence sounds like it came from Brown’s mouth.
And if you take it all with a pinch of salt, there are some homespun nuggets.
Take this one: “Elvis was American as apple pie.
“Years ago I couldn’t be American as apple pie. It took me four generations to be apple pie. On the other hand, if you look on the soul chart today, sometimes six of the top ten records are by white artists. Nobody has a monopoly on apple pie.” Right on.
RICHARD OSLEY
James Brown: The Godfather of Soul
By James Brown with Bruce Tucker. Aurum, £8.99 |
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