Continued from Father of the Funk, Part I.
It would be convenient to say James Brown never looked back after "New Bag," but to his credit as an all-around artist, James Brown always looked back. Brown wanted hits, but, coming into his 30s, he also wanted longevity, which was already eluding some of his predecessors. Or perhaps, for the first time, he was realizing that he could be both behind the times (his expanding "orchestra" was quickly becoming untrendy in the wake of the British Invasion) and ahead of them. So in 1966, he released the midtempo "Ain't That A Groove" (charting at #6 R&B, #42 pop), "Money Won't Change You" (parts 1 and 2) (#11; #53) and "James Brown's Boo-Ga-Loo" but he also released the orchestral "It's A Man's Man's Man's World," which did even better (#1; #8).
In a foreshadowing of the hip hop which would be built on his grooves, Brown in 2005 recalled, "I didn't need 'melody' to make music. That was, to me, old-fashioned and out of step. I now realized that I could compose and sing a song that used one chord or at the most two."
Brown also recorded his first message song, "Don't Be A Dropout," which charted at a respectable #4 R&B, #50 pop. The A side is most significant for it's lyrics, but it's the B-side which is monumental musically. "Tell Me That You Love Me," edited from a live performance in Florida (according to reissue producer and archivist Harry Weinger), shows how blistering Brown's band were becoming onstage. The hyper-speed vamp, full of insistent horns and distorted shrieks, was so ahead of its time that the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion worked it into their end-of-the-millennium soul-punk live act nearly thirty years later without making anyone blink. What brought about this quantum leap? It could be the introduction of more new band members: jazz trumpet player Waymond Reed, guitarist Alphonso "Country" Kellum, drummers John "Jabo" Starks (from Bobby "Blue" Bland's group) and Clyde Stubblefield, and last but certainly not least, saxophonist Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis, who came by Reed's recommendation.
Clearly Brown had the ear of his fellow musicians as well as the fans. Take Rex Garvin's "Sock It To 'Em J.B.," a #110 pop ska-funk tune which, lyrically, may pay tribute to box-office behemoth James Bond, but musically is clearly in debt to James Brown (it's groove is pure Brown boogaloo, a la "Money Won't Change You").
Despite their pop priorities, Motown also continued frying up the funk into 1966, as the former "Little" Stevie Wonder finally had a hit (after several dry years) with "Uptight," and producer-performer Shorty Long pushed the Funk Brothers to new levels on "Function In the Junction." "Shorty Long used to come in and say 'Today we ain't playin' nothin' but funk," recalled Motown bandleader Earl Van Dyke in The Motown Story. "'If you don't feel funky, take a drink of this.' And then he'd reach in his coat and pull out a bottle."
In June, Atlantic brought to Stax the Florida duo of Sam and Dave, who made Stax's first R&B #1 with "Hold On, I'm Coming." As the year continued, the Stax-Atlantic team hit again with Wilson Pickett's cover of Chris Kenner's "Land of 1000 Dances," and fellow former Falcons singer Eddie Floyd's "Knock On Wood" (Around the same time, another ex-Falcon, Sir Mack Rice released a funky Andre Williams-produced "Mustang Sally," which Pickett would again cover more successfully months later, inspiring Rice to soon join the Stax fold himself).
Down in Louisiana, auto body worker and former boxer Lee Dorsey (who'd had the one-off hit "Ya-Ya" back in '61) reteamed with producer/writer Allen Toussaint for a string of hits including "Ride Your Pony," "Get Out Of My Life, Woman," "Working In A Coal Mine" and "Holy Cow," which pointedly restated the New Orleans sense of rhythm within Southern Soul pop. "'Get Out Of My Life, Woman' is the first record that I really related to as being stanky funky," George Clinton told interviewer Gerry Fialka.
But James Brown was on to something even heavier. His funk continued on it's upward course in '67 with "Bring It Up" (#7; #29) and "Let Yourself Go" (#5; #46), but when "Pee Wee" Ellis took over as Brown's musical director in the Spring, the music rose to another new level. "There was nothing in the back of my mind about changing nothing," Pee Wee Ellis insisted to this interviewer. "It was an evolution. I didn't even know about James Brown until I heard Maceo play a solo." Nevertheless, Brown said of Ellis, "He was really in sync with what I was trying to do."
The first record with Ellis as co-writer and musical director was "Cold Sweat" (parts 1 and 2), with lyrics taken from a 1964 b-side called "I Don't Care," and a musical resemblance (according to Number One Rhythm & Blues) to Miles Davis' "So What" (from his 1959 Kind Of Blue LP). Said Brown, "It had the scratch guitar, the fast-hitting sound from the bass, and the funky, funky rhythms played by Clyde Stubblefield." "Cold Sweat" also marked the return of Maceo Parker (without brother Melvin, for the moment) after doing his time in the U.S. Army.
"James called me in his dressing room after a gig, said we were going to record soon," Ellis recalled (in the liner notes to the Foundations Of Funk CD). "He grunted the rhythm, a bass line, to me. I wrote the rhythm down on a piece of paper. There were no notes, I had to translate it." But Ellis dispelled the notion that Brown owed everything to his musicians. "James gave us a lot to go by. You got a musical palette from hearing him, from seeing his body movement and facial expressions, seeing him dance and from being up there with the band, seeing the audience. So you get a picture of that, and you write it." Pee Wee also notes that Brown changed Jimmy Nolen's guitar part in the studio to "go against the grain," giving it more edge.
"I wrote 'Cold Sweat,'" Brown told Tom Terrell frankly, "because Wilson Pickett and Dyke and the Blazers from Arizona, they tried to get into my thing."
Brown is referring to the monumental Dyke and the Blazers single "Funky Broadway." Led by Arlester "Dyke" Christian, the previously little-known band came seemingly out of nowhere (i.e. Arizona) on the tiny Artco label, licensed to DJ Art Laboe's Original Sound Records, previously (and still) known mostly for putting out "oldies but goodies" compilations. In fact, Christian and company—including drummer James Gadson—were from Buffalo, New York but had gotten stranded on a tour backing the O'Jays in the Southwest. The single stayed in the R&B top 50 from February to June, eventually reaching #17.
But it was Wilson Pickett's cover version, on the far more prominent Atlantic label which made it to number one at the end of September—knocking off "Cold Sweat!" It is impossible to overstate "Funky Broadway"'s importance at this point. Proof lies in the number of other cover versions—even one by Jackie Wilson and Count Basie—and imitations that appeared. These included Arthur Conley's "Funky Street," Harvey Scales and the Seven Seas' "Broadway Freeze," James Brown sideman Bobby Byrd's own "Funky Soul," and Johnny Robinson's "Funky Feet" (produced by future Al Green mentor Willie Mitchell), all of which are fine records in their own right. Comedian Bill Cosby (backed by Charles Wright's 103rd Street Rhythm Band) recorded the trenchant satire "Funky North Philly." Then there's likely sequel "Boogaloo Down Broadway" by Philadelphia's The Fantastic Johnny C (#5 R&B/#7 pop), whose ferociously tight groove inspired a name-check from Van Morrison on "Wild Night." (The Phil-L.A. Of Soul label would produce more future funk faves, like '68's #2 R&B/#2 pop "The Horse" by Cliff Nobles & Co.—featuring future MFSB players).
Driven by the competition, by the end of the year, JB's band had also recorded and released the frantically-paced "Get It Together" (parts 1 and 2) (#11; #40), and the two-sided powerhouse single "I Can't Stand Myself (When You Touch Me)" (#4; #28), recorded with the all-white, but no less funky, Dapps, backed with "There Was A Time" (#3; #36). Ouch.
The latter, as Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker pointed out to this writer, is a prime example of Brown's technique of taking the coda, or "vamp" of one song, and translating that into another, a secret to his productivity. In this case, "There Was A Time" came from "Let Yourself Go." "He took that and made a whole other tune with it, so it wasn't Pee Wee's tune," says Wesley. "He was great at doing that." Likewise, "Get It Together" bears uncanny resemblance to the riff of "Bringing Up The Guitar"/"Gettin' A Little Hipper," a notable single credited to Pee Wee Ellis and The Dapps.
By 1968, a new generation of budding funkateers emerged, clearly inspired by Brown and company, including Sly & the Family Stone, the Parliaments/Funkadelic, Kool & The Gang, and a revised Temptations, whose Norman Whitfield productions brought them to "Cloud Nine" and beyond. Each of them, and many others, in their own ways would take The Funk to places that Brown hadn't even imagined. Yet none would've had a foundation without JB, who just that year (with Brown's most formidable collaborator, Wesley, now involved) waxed "I Got The Feelin'" "The Popcorn," "Licking Stick" "Say It Loud I'm Black and I'm Proud" and "Give It Up or Turnit A Loose." He would also entertain troops in Vietnam, help quell post-MLK assassination riots in Boston, and gain the prestigious cover of Life magazine.
"The 'One' was not just a new kind of beat," said Brown in his 2005 memoir, "it was a statement of race, of force, of stature, of stride. It was the aural equivalent of standing tall and saying Here I am, of marching with strength rather than tiptoeing with timidity."
Which makes it all the more appropriate that James Brown be remembered as Soul Brother Number One.
Subscribe to Feed
