James Brown -
50th Anniversary Collection
(2CD Box-Set)
No Skips, No Freeze ups!!!
No Scratches, No Scuff Marks!!!
CD's and all artwork included.
CD's in Excellent Like New condition.
Jewel Case has normal wear.
Outstanding 50-track 2003 release, '50th Anniversary Collection'
In 1965 "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" became a smash and other hard
working soul musicians like Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye and Otis
Redding would also become big stars in the 60's soul Explosion. Brown's
take on soul was diffrent though, it was rougher, dirtier and more
energic with shouts and screams. He used competent bands that backed him
up with big beats, horns and drums. Brown and his band literally
invented "Funk" and until this day James Brown is the most sampled
artist of all time.
Throughout the 60's Brown would be on the charts constantly and touring
even more. Hits include "Sex Machine", "I Got a Feeling" "I Got You (I
Feel Good), an the occasional ballad like "It's a Man's World". Although
funky uptempo's would always be his trademark his lyrics also dealt
with black pride and civil rights like "Say It Loud I'm Black And I'm
Proud" which dealt with a subject that hardly had been mentioned at the
time and would become very important. In the 70's with he continues
doing the same thing as before, but with more beat oriented music, like
"Hot Pants" "The Payback" and "Make it Funky" to make a few examples.
Because of the disco music in the mid 70's Brown lost steam and his
music were no longer in the spotlight, but it wouldn't be long before
the rise of Hip Hop in the early 80's would bring back his music to the
spotlight with countless of samples ans beats from his music. Brown
scored one of his last hits with the "Rocky" soundtrack "Living In
America" in 1985. He stil continued touring pretty much, but his latter
life has been full of embarrasing scandals, problems with the law and
health problems. Sadly, "Mr Dynamite" couldn't take it any longer and
left us at age 73. But instead of thinking of his recent troublesome
years let's think of what he archived and meant for music. The
development of Soul, Funk and later Hip Hop. The commercializing of
"Black Music" and his lyrics about Black pride and civil rights and his
dance moves that was the bluprint for Michael Jackson and later Usher.
James Brown's career was a fairytale, he archived it all and a lot of
artists today owes him something. A pioneer and one of the greatest
musicians of all time. Farewell Soul Brother Number One.
Track
listing
DISC 1:
1. Please, Please,
Please
2. Try Me
3. Good Good Lovin'
4. I'll Go Crazy
5. Think
6. Bewildered
7. Lost Someone
8. Night Train
9. Prisoner
of Love
10. Out of Sight
11. Papa's Got a
Brand New Bag, Pt.1
12. I Got You (I Feel Good)
13. It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World
14. Bring
It Up
15. Let Yourself Go
16. Cold Sweat,
Pt.1
17. Get It Together, Pt.1
18. There Was
a Time
19. I Can't Stand Myself (When You Touch Me), Pt. 1
20. I Got the Feelin'
21. Licking
Stick-Licking Stick, Pt.1
22. Say It Loud--I'm Black and
I'm Proud, Pt.1
23. Give It up or Turnit a Loose
24. I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open up the Door
I'll Get It Myself), Pt.1
25. Popcorn, The
26. Mother
Popcorn, Pt.1
27. Ain't It Funky Now, Pt.1
DISC 2:
1. It's a New Day, Pt.1
2. Sex
Machine (Get up I Feel Like Being A), Pt. 1
3. Superbad,
Pt.1
4. Get up, Get Into It and Get Involved, Pt.1
5. Soul Power, Pt.1
6. Hot Pants (She Got to
Use What She Got to Get What She Wants), Pt.1
7. Make It
Funky, Pt.1
8. I'm a Greedy Man, Pt.1
9. Talkin'
Loud and Sayin' Nothing, Pt.1
10. There It Is, Pt.1
11. Get on the Good Foot, Pt.1
12. I Got Ants
in My Pants, Pt.1
13. Down and Out in New York City
14. Sexy, Sexy, Sexy
15. Doing It to Death,
Pt.1
16. Payback, The, Pt.1
17. My Thang
18. Papa Don't Take No Mess, Pt. 1
19. Funky
President (People It's Bad)
20. Get up Offa That Thing
21. Bodyheat Pt. 1
22. It's Too Funky in Here
23. Static, Pts. 1 & 2
Product Details
- Audio CD (September 16, 2003)
- Original Release Date: September 16, 2003
- Number of Discs: 2
- Label: Utv Records
James Brown Biography
"Soul Brother Number One," "the Godfather of Soul," "the Hardest
Working Man in Show Business," "Mr. Dynamite" -- those are mighty
titles, but no one can question that James Brown earned them more than
any other performer. Other singers were more popular, others were
equally skilled, but few other African-American musicians were so
influential over the course of popular music. And no other musician, pop
or otherwise, put on a more exciting, exhilarating stage show: Brown's
performances were marvels of athletic stamina and split-second timing.
Through
the gospel-impassioned fury of his vocals and the complex polyrhythms
of his beats, Brown was a crucial midwife in not just one, but two
revolutions in black American music. He was one of the figures most
responsible for turning R&B into soul and he was, most would agree, the
figure most responsible for turning soul music into the funk of the
late '60s and early '70s. After the mid-'70s, he did little more than
tread water artistically; his financial and drug problems eventually got
him a controversial prison sentence. Yet in a sense, his music is now
more influential than ever, as his voice and rhythms have been sampled
on innumerable hip-hop recordings, and critics have belatedly hailed his
innovations as among the most important in all of rock or soul.
Brown's
rags-to-riches-to-rags story has heroic and tragic dimensions of mythic
resonance. Born into poverty in the South, he ran afoul of the law by
the late '40s on an armed robbery conviction. With the help of singer
Bobby Byrd's family, Brown gained parole and started a gospel group with
Byrd, changing their focus to R&B as the rock revolution gained
steam. The Flames, as the Georgian group was known in the mid-'50s,
signed to Federal/King and had a huge R&B hit right off the bat with
the wrenching, churchy ballad "Please, Please, Please." By that point,
the Flames had become James Brown & the Famous Flames; the charisma,
energy, and talent of Brown made him the natural star attraction.
All
of Brown's singles over the next two years flopped, as he sought to
establish his own style, recording material that was obviously
derivative of heroes like Roy Brown, Hank Ballard, Little Richard, and
Ray Charles. In retrospect, it can be seen that Brown was in the same
position as dozens of other R&B one-shot: talented singers in need
of better songs, or not fully on the road to a truly original sound.
What made Brown succeed where hundreds of others failed was his
superhuman determination, working the chitlin circuit to death,
sharpening his band, and keeping an eye on new trends. He was on the
verge of being dropped from King in late 1958 when his perseverance
finally paid off, as "Try Me" became a number one R&B (and small
pop) hit, and several follow-ups established him as a regular visitor to
the R&B charts.
Brown's style of R&B got harder as the
'60s began; he added more complex, Latin- and jazz-influenced rhythms on
hits like "Good Good Lovin'," "I'll Go Crazy," "Think," and "Night
Train," alternating these with torturous ballads that featured some of
the most frayed screaming to be heard outside of the church. Black
audiences already knew that Brown had the most exciting live act around,
but he truly started to become a phenomenon with the release of Live at
the Apollo in 1963. Capturing a James Brown concert in all its
whirling-dervish energy and calculated spontaneity, the album reached
number two on the album charts, an unprecedented feat for a hardcore
R&B LP.
Live at the Apollo was recorded and released against
the wishes of the King label. It was this kind of artistic standoff that
led Brown to seek better opportunities elsewhere. In 1964, he ignored
his King contract to record "Out of Sight" for Smash, igniting a lengthy
legal battle that prevented him from issuing vocal recordings for about
a year. When he finally resumed recording for King in 1965, he had a
new contract that granted him far more artistic control over his
releases.
Brown's new era had truly begun, however, with "Out of
Sight," which topped the R&B charts and made the pop Top 40. For
some time, Brown had been moving toward more elemental lyrics that threw
in as many chants and screams as they did words, and more intricate
beats and horn charts that took some of their cues from the ensemble
work of jazz outfits. "Out of Sight" wasn't called funk when it came
out, but it had most of the essential ingredients. These were amplified
and perfected on 1965's "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," a monster that
finally broke Brown to the white audience, reaching the Top Ten. The
even more adventurous follow-up, "I Got You (I Feel Good)," did even
better, making number three.
These hits kicked off Brown's period
of greatest commercial success and public visibility. From 1965 to the
end of the decade, he was rarely off the R&B charts, often on the
pop listings, and all over the concert circuit and national television,
even meeting with Vice President Hubert Humphrey and other important
politicians as a representative of the black community. His music became
even bolder and funkier, as melody was dispensed with almost altogether
in favor of chunky rhythms and magnetic interplay between his vocals,
horns, drums, and scratching electric guitar (heard to best advantage on
hits like "Cold Sweat," "I Got the Feelin'," and "There Was a Time").
The lyrics were not so much words as chanted, stream-of-consciousness
slogans, often aligning themselves with black pride as well as good
old-fashioned (or new-fashioned) sex. Much of the credit for the sound
he devised belonged to (and has now been belatedly attributed to) his
top-notch supporting musicians such as saxophonists Maceo Parker, St.
Clair Pinckney, and Pee Wee Ellis; guitarist Jimmy Nolen; backup singer
and longtime loyal associate Bobby Byrd; and drummer Clyde Stubblefield.
Brown
was both a brilliant bandleader and a stern taskmaster, the latter
leading his band to walk out on him in late 1969. Amazingly, he turned
the crisis to his advantage by recruiting a young Cincinnati outfit
called the Pacemakers featuring guitarist Catfish Collins and bassist
Bootsy Collins. Although they only stayed with him for about a year,
they were crucial to Brown's evolution into even harder funk,
emphasizing the rhythm and the bottom even more. The Collins brothers,
for their part, put their apprenticeship to good use, helping define
'70s funk as members of the Parliament-Funkadelic axis.
In the
early '70s, many of the most important members of Brown's late-'60s band
returned to the fold, to be billed as the J.B.'s (they also made
records on their own). Brown continued to score heavily on the R&B
charts throughout the first half of the '70s, the music becoming more
and more elemental and beat-driven. At the same time, he was retreating
from the white audience he had cultivated during the mid- to late '60s;
records like "Make It Funky," "Hot Pants," "Get on the Good Foot," and
"The Payback" were huge soul sellers, but only modest pop ones. Critics
charged, with some justification, that the Godfather was starting to
repeat and recycle himself too many times. It must be remembered,
though, that these songs were made for the singles radio jukebox market
and not meant to be played one after the other on CD compilations (as
they are today).
By the mid-'70s, Brown was beginning to burn out
artistically. He seemed shorn of new ideas, was being out-gunned on the
charts by disco, and was running into problems with the IRS and his
financial empire. There were sporadic hits, and he could always count on
enthusiastic live audiences, but by the '80s, he didn't have a label.
With the explosion of rap, however, which frequently sampled vintage
J.B.'s records, Brown became hipper than ever. He collaborated with
Afrika Bambaataa on the critical smash single "Unity" and reentered the
Top Ten in 1986 with "Living in America." Rock critics, who had always
ranked Brown considerably below Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin in the
soul canon, began to reevaluate his output, particularly the material
from his funk years, sometimes anointing him not just "Soul Brother
Number One," but the most important black musician of the rock
era.
In 1988, Brown's personal life came crashing down in a
well-publicized incident in which he was accused by his wife of assault
and battery. After a year skirting hazy legal and personal troubles, he
led the police on an interstate car chase after allegedly threatening
people with a handgun. The episode ended in a six-year prison sentence
that many felt was excessive; he was paroled after serving two years.
Throughout
the '90s Brown continued to perform and release new material like Love
Over-Due (1991), Universal James (1992), and I'm Back (1998). While none
of these recordings could be considered as important as his earlier
work and did little to increase his popularity, his classic catalog
became more popular in the American mainstream during this time than it
had been since the '70s, and not just among young rappers and samplers.
One of the main reasons for this was a proper presentation of his
recorded legacy. For a long time, his cumbersome, byzantine discography
was mostly out of print, with pieces available only on skimpy
greatest-hits collections. A series of exceptionally well-packaged
reissues on PolyGram changed that situation; the Star Time box set is
the best overview, with other superb compilations devoted to specific
phases of his lengthy career, from '50s R&B to '70s funk.
In
2004, Brown was diagnosed with prostate cancer but successfully fought
the disease. By 2006, it was in remission and Brown, then 73, began a
global tour dubbed the Seven Decades of Funk World Tour. Late in the
year while at a routine dentist appointment, the singer was diagnosed
with pneumonia. He was admitted to the hospital for treatment but died
of heart failure a few days later, in the early morning hours of
Christmas Day. A public viewing was held at Apollo Theater in Harlem,
followed by a private ceremony in his hometown of Augusta, GA.
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