By Mark Lassiter

TheDefendersOnline is paying tribute to Black Music with special perspectives by three top writers on Black Rock, Hip-Hop Planet, and a coming-of-age retrospective of The Godfather of Soul, James Brown.

Libation: Dedicated to the brothas and sistas that ain’t here…

Part One

In 1965, Saint Albans, Queens was a rare jewel amid the many neighborhoods of New York City. This African-American, middle-class community was home to Louis Armstrong (Corona), Brook Benton, Count Basie and Lloyd Price. Count Basie owned a pristine white Thunderbird with oval rear windows that he parked in the driveway. Ella Fitzgerald lived at 179-07 Murdock Avenue, not far from where we played ball. The legendary John Coltrane once lived on Mexico Street. Lena Horne lived at 112-45 178th Street. Tenor saxophone legend Illinois Jaquet lived at 112-44 179th Street. My family owned a house at 111-51 on 179th.

On those rare days when James Brown slowed down long enough to take a shower at home, he would invite neighborhood kids inside his corner house off Linden Boulevard.

Liberty Park, also in Saint Albans, contained the cinder track that launched a few outstanding college sprinters; the basketball courts that were home to playground legends, like the long jump record-holder, Olympian Bobby Beamon, and the baseball field where I played my first Pony League game. Throughout the year, Liberty Park buzzed with activity at all hours of the day and night as pickup games lasted for as long as we were able to see. There were no lights. We played and practiced until we got it right or were displaced by a winning team.

Liberty Park was also the first place I remember hearing a James Brown tune on a battery-powered radio. The feature song of that Spring morning was Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag. I remember the sound coming from a hand-held portable unit. The small monotone speaker was nothing like the iPod of today, but the rhythm of Mister Dynamite was enough to carry the message and make you move without recognizing that you were in perfect harmony with the beat.

How could one person squeeze so much feeling from a small band, and punctuate it with vocals that alternated between preaching the gospel and chanting about self discovery?

“… he’s doin’ the jerk, he’s doin’ the fly…
don’t play him cheap ’cause you know he ain’t shy…”

Say what? What was in the ‘old’ bag that made the ‘new’ bag so special? And why did the song keep repeating itself over and over again? Little did I suspect that the James Brown soundtrack to that summer was only the beginning of a love affair with the music that fueled my generation.

Fast forward to 1968.

At approximately 2:17 a.m., in the back seat of a car, leaving a party in Manhattan with some friends, driving across the Harlem River Bridge. Between the rhythmic grating of the metal bridge on the tires, and the suspect sound system, the muffled lyrics resembled, “…Say it loud, I’m Black and I’m brown.” Not quite clear or making sense, but when were James’ coded lyrics ever truly understood, until one contemplated the possibilities?

The epiphany that clicked in once I recognized what James was saying allowed me to share in a proclamation that changed the vocabulary for colored folks and Negroes everywhere. In a single bold chorus, we were free to finally speak without apology.

During my freshman year at Howard University, the halls of Drew echoed with Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud! from the time we woke until the last light went out. We embraced his message, danced to it and greeted one another on campus with a confident smile and a customized soul handshake. We received permission, through the radio, to be ourselves. The more we used black, the more comfortable it felt. Our afros grew longer. Our hilltop campus was never the same after student takeover of The Administration Building the year before. It was never the same after James Brown said it loud.

Billboard Magazine rated Hey Jude by The Beatles as the number one song of 1968. The same Rolling Stones who were led by James Brown imitator Mick Jagger, appeared with the number 27 song, Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Hugh Masekela’s seminal jazz fusion breakthrough Grazing In the Grass, was rated number 67. The Delfonics’ slow dance classic La, La Means I Love You was placed a distant number 83. How could this be? Was Billboard not aware of how many house parties, and slow dance karaoke moments, were inspired by The Delfonics?

Say It Loud (Part One) was number 98 on the Billboard Top 100 for 1968. The fact that no James Brown recording ever never received number one on the charts is a cultural crime of the highest order.

James. Please, please, please… play part two.

Part Two

The brief call and saxophone response on Out Of Sight was ahead of its time. Most people remember the popularized I Feel Good for its easy hook, but one must research years of musical history to match James’ tasteful blend of honesty and sensuality as he layers compliments on his woman:

“you gotta shapely figure momma,
to keep me uptight,
you know just what you’re doin’ baby…
…you know you’re out of sight”

1968 was the year of the Tet offensive in Vietnam, and Woodstock in upstate

New York. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated in numbing succession. One year later, a man walked on the Moon. James Brown was starting his most productive period. His hits flowed, one behind the other, until we were dizzy with expectation. I Got the Feelin’, also recorded in 1968, may have been the most innovative James Brown piece of all-time.

Band leader Fred Wesley first recognized that the unusual timing of the arrangement ignored the conventional laws of musical pace and therefore, would not work as a composition. But, just as James constructed the complex rhythm by feel, it also works as he injects world-class begging into a funk-jazz love song.

I Got the Feelin’ opens with a sudden minimalist downbeat carried by the syncopated horns of Pee Wee Ellis and Maceo Parker, the drums of Clyde Stubblefield, then steadily gains momentum with the addition of the electric bass of Bertrand Odom. As a footnote, his legendary horn section was not anchored by Maceo, but by the more disciplined Saint Clair Pinckney. James gradually releases reins of his band in his opening phrase, “ahh, ha, ha… haaaa” then spurs them on by improvising around a love poem that gradually intensifies as the piece gracefully eases around the first turn:

“You don’t know what you do to me…
People’s hearts heavy down in misery”

Say what James?

As the piece approaches the first straightaway, James leans out of the first turn and commands the group’s attention, “All right!” The tune suddenly breaks on his signal as the entire band bookmarks the spot four times in unison with an extended pause to allow everyone to collect their voices.

Like a world-class chef adding the perfect seasoning, Brown directs the band’s three punctuation marks, ordering them to hold an extra long count and finally balances the algebraic equation by responding after the perfect crescendo, three times in rapid succession—“baby, baby, baby…baby, baby, baby…baby, baby…” after which the band returns from this unusual chorus, stabilizes and winds back to its title, beginning seamlessly after not just one, or two, but three different chorus movements.

Unfortunately, just as the piece reaches fever pitch at only two minutes and thirty-eight seconds, the song fades abruptly, as if the studio engineer didn’t bring enough recording tape for that evening. Hopefully, there is a group of world-renowned archaeologists, supplied with grants from National Geographic, who can organize a major expedition in search of the missing parts two and three of I Got the Feelin’.

Part Three

The same Godfather of Soul reinvented the laws of African polyphonics and painted the English language into abstract magic that forced folks to dance against their wills, no matter the level of exhaustion.

During Howard Homecoming, 1971, James Brown made history at the Omega Psi Phi party on Saturday night after a packed week of activities. Those who attended the set will pass the story along to their children and their children will pass it to generations unborn.

During the second break of the live band, the disc jockey spinning filler music had the audacity to put on James Brown’s Sex Machine. Suddenly, what had previously been a reasonably entertaining party took a sudden turn as law and order went out the window. The dance floor suddenly filled with an energy that, if harnessed, could change the world. Formerly cautious dance moves became raw expressions of rhythm and endurance. The entire place was moving as one. Sweat poured from bodies moving to keep pace with James’s command to,”Get Up… Get On Up!” Is it that far removed from “Up Ye Mighty Race”?

What better inspiration does a nation need other than “Get Up!”?

As Sex Machine glides into its second movement, driven by the high-pitched call-and- response of guitarist Jimmy Nolen, the Howard Homecoming party house band returned from its break and attempted to return to its regularly scheduled live set. As they tried to segue into a contrasting tune, the crowd simply shouted for “More James!” The disc jockey had no choice but to allow the reign of Papa JB to run his course.

If I ruled the world, Sex Machine would be played before every baseball game as the National Anthem. As Kelefa Sanneh mentioned in her brilliant December 27th New York Times piece, Godfather of Soul and CEO of His Band: “ With an introduction like…

“I wanna get up and do my thing. (Yeah!) Movin’… doin’ it, you know, like a (Yeah!)
Like a … (What?) Like a … (What?)” like a sex machine…. Can I get into it?…”,

who would care when or if the game started?

In 1999, The Morris Brown College football team took the concept of making a grand entrance to the field, from the locker room, a new level. Seeking to avenge a defeat by Clark Atlanta University the year before, instead of sprinting on the field, the entire Mo’ Brown football strolled defiantly into their new home stadium, arm-in-arm, with James Brown’s Big Payback blaring over the public address system. I’m not suggesting the music alone was the reason why Mo’ Brown fought harder and defeated CAU 44-7 that evening, but be honest, if you needed motivation for revenge, which would you prefer, a contrived coach’s pep talk or the raw essence of The Big Payback?

Wasn’t it Bob Marley who taught us that, “once the music hits, you feel no pain.”

Part Four

Let’s get one thing straight. James Brown is THE King. Not the troubled James Brown who struggled to hold his business affairs together after being cited as, potentially, the most powerful black man in America by Look Magazine. Not the same man who finally snapped after struggling to hold it together despite being investigated by the federal government for unpaid back taxes. Not the James Brown who was an entrepreneurial pioneer a decade before the first issue of Black Enterprise magazine. If only his son had not been killed in a car wreck, or he had gotten a quarter for every sample that’s been ripped from his practice and playlist, perhaps the domestic boxer James Brown would not have driven himself, and those around him, with the relentless passion and will of Joe Frazier. Perhaps his domestic life would have been more tranquil and maybe he would still be with us.

James extended the time allowed on a 45rpm recording by squeezing more rhythm per capita between those tiny vinyl grooves than were legislated by radio stations intent on making their advertising quotas. Some of his tunes had extended versions. Make It Funky actually has four parts and is a staggering 11 minutes long. Amazing stuff when you consider the standard soul piece was hit-and-quit in under three minutes.

One summer evening in 1991, I pulled into a gas station at the corner of Ponce De Leon and Piedmont Avenue, in Atlanta. A man, about 5′10”, in a midnight blue three-piece suit, with a pair of blue plastic wrap around sunglasses and a blue silk scarf was paying his bill with cash. What does one say to James Brown?

“James, I was just at your concert to pay my respects, I didn’t know you were going

to hurt the people”

“Did I hurt ‘em brotha’?”

“You hurt me, James!”

“Well, I’m on my way to The Superdome to play at a football game, go on over to the van and my wife (Adrienne at the time) got somethin’ for you…”

I still have the xerox’ed $100 bill with James’ portrait, and autograph, inserted in the oval reserved for a dead president. I had just met and talked with… J a m e s B r o w n.

Mr. Brown was generous, sometimes to a fault, desperately trying to compensate for the family he never had as a child. Two days before he passed, he was handing out free holiday turkeys in Atlanta. He left us with a treasure chest of music that is, to this day, a wellspring for invention and creativity. James stayed true to his royal yet humble beginnings, always pushing his art, and those around him, to the limit. He was the Hardest-working man in any business. He always answered the call with an honest response.

His lifelong friend, Bobby Byrd, once posed the ultimate question to James to initiate another hit we danced and smiled to. Byrd inquired, as he might as well have been asking all of us simultaneously, “Whachoo gonna play now?”

The appropriate response, words to live by, is contained the immortal words of Mister Dynamite himself: “…I don’t know… but whasineva I play, (it) GOT’S to be funky!”

Mark Lassiter is saving the James Brown Star Time box set for his daughter, when she graduates from college in 2019