If you have never heard this early material I think you will be fascinated like I was. James is obviously casting about in many directions looking for his 'sound'. His earliest version of Please, Please, Please shows that he idolized Little Richard at the time but the next track he is in a more Amos Milburn or Charles Brown mood. On track 3 he sounds a bit like Billy Wright as well. I'd definitely put him in that line from Wright thru Esquerita and Little Richard but he is adding pieces from all over. The fourth track is very much in the Roy Brown/Wynonie Harris mode and he handles that really well too. Later on there are even a few Doo Wop songs. In fact the one thing that really stands out on this material is what a fine singer Brown was, so much of his later material required so little actual singing that it is easy to forget what a dynamic voice he had. There are two discs to this first part and to each of the sets to follow as well.
"James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of funk music and is a major figure of 20th century popular music and dance.
In a career that spanned six decades, Brown profoundly influenced the development of many different musical genres. Brown moved on a continuum of blues and gospel-based forms and styles to a profoundly "Africanized" approach to music making. Brown performed in concerts, first making his rounds across the Chitlin' Circuit, and then across the country and later around the world, along with appearing in shows on television and in movies. Although he contributed much to the music world through his hitmaking, Brown holds the record as the artist who charted the most singles on the Billboard Hot 100 without ever hitting number one on that chart.
For many years, Brown's touring show was one of the most extravagant productions in American popular music. At the time of Brown's death, his band included three guitarists, two bass guitar players, two drummers, three horns and a percussionist. The bands that he maintained during the late 1960s and 1970s were of comparable size, and the bands also included a three-piece amplified string section that played during ballads. Brown employed between 40 and 50 people for the James Brown Revue, and members of the revue traveled with him in a bus to cities and towns all over the country, performing upwards of 330 shows a year with almost all of the shows as one-nighters. In 1986, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 2000 into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Brown died on Christmas Day 2006 from heart failure after becoming ill two days earlier and being hospitalized for hours. James Brown is buried in Beech Island, South Carolina.
James Brown was born in Barnwell, South Carolina on May 3, 1933 to Susie (née Behlings) Brown (August 8, 1916 - February 26, 2004) and Joseph ("Joe") Gardner (March 29, 1911 - July 10, 1993) (who changed his surname to Brown after Mattie Brown who raised him). Although Brown was to be named after his father Joseph, his first and middle names were mistakenly reversed on his birth certificate. He therefore became James Joseph Brown, Jr. As a young child, Brown was called Junior. When he later lived with his aunt and cousin, he was called Little Junior since his cousin's nickname was also Junior. Later as an adult, Brown legally changed his name to remove the "Jr." designation. He was of African American and Native American (Apache) descent through his father, and had Asian ancestry through his mother, who was also half African American.
As a young child, Brown and his family lived in extreme poverty in nearby Elko, South Carolina, which at the time was an impoverished town in Barnwell County. When Brown was two years old, his parents separated after his mother left his father for another man. After his mother abandoned the family, Brown continued to live with his father and his father's live-in girlfriends until he was six years old. His father then sent him to live with an aunt, who ran a house of prostitution. Even though Brown lived with relatives, he spent long stretches of time on his own, hanging out on the streets and hustling to get by. Brown managed to stay in school until he dropped out in the seventh grade. During his childhood, Brown earned money shining shoes, sweeping out stores, selling and trading in old stamps, washing cars and dishes and singing in talent contests. Brown also performed buck dances for change to entertain troops from Camp Gordon at the start of World War II as their convoys traveled over a canal bridge near his aunt's home. Between earning money from these adventures, Brown taught himself to play a harmonica given to him by his father. He learned to play some guitar from Tampa Red, in addition to learning to play piano and drums from others he met during this time. Brown was inspired to become an entertainer after watching Louis Jordan, a popular jazz and R&B performer during the 1940s, and Jordan's Tympany Five performing "Caldonia" in a short film.
Brown began his performing career at the age of 12, forming his first vocal group, the Cremona Trio
in 1945, where they won local talent shows at Augusta concert halls such as the Lenox and Harlem theaters. As a result of this success, the group would later gig at several high schools and local army bases. At the age of sixteen, he was convicted of armed robbery and sent to a juvenile detention center upstate in Toccoa in 1949. While in prison, he formed a gospel quartet with fellow cell mates Johnny Terry, "Hucklebuck" Davis and a person named "Shag", and made homemade instruments - a comb and paper, a washtub bass, a drum kit made from lard tubs and for Brown, what he called "a sort of mandolin [made] out of a wooden box." Due to the latter instrument, Brown was given his first nickname, "Music Box". In 1952, while still in reform school, Brown met future R&B legend Bobby Byrd, who was there playing baseball against the reform school team. Byrd saw Brown perform there and admired his singing and performing talent. As a result of this friendship, Byrd's family helped Brown secure an early release on June 14, 1952 after serving three years of his sentence. The authorities agreed to release Brown on the condition that he would get a job and not return to Augusta or Richmond County and also under the condition he find a decent job and sing for the Lord as he had promised in his parole letter. After stints as a boxer and baseball pitcher in semi-professional baseball (a career move ended by a leg injury), Brown turned his energy toward music.
By 1954, Brown had tried to get a deal with his gospel group, the Ever Ready Gospel Singers after recording a version of "His Eye Is on the Sparrow", but returned to Toccoa when they failed to get a deal. Returning, his friend Bobby Byrd asked Brown to join his R&B group, the Avons, who had went under the previous name, the Gospel Starlighters to avoid controversy with church leaders. Brown replaced another vocalist, Troy Collins, who died in a car crash. The group, which included alongside Byrd and Brown; Sylvester Keels, Doyle Oglesby, Fred Pulliam and Johnny Terry, modeled themselves after the R&B groups of the day including The Orioles, The Five Keys and Billy Ward and His Dominoes. Gigging through Georgia and South Carolina, they again changed their name to the Toccoa Band to avoid confusion with two other groups who shared the Avons moniker. Under this name, Brown recruited guitarist Nafloyd Scott and, under their manager Barry Tremier, added assorted percussion.
While performing in Macon, Georgia having now changed their name to the Flames, a club promoter, Clint Brantley (then agent of one of Brown's idols, Little Richard, suggested the band add "Famous" in front of their name to draw more people to his club. The group began composing their own songs during this time and performing them too including a Brown composition called "Goin' Back to Rome" and a ballad Brown co-wrote with Terry titled "Please, Please, Please". After Little Richard left Macon for Los Angeles after the release of "Tutti Frutti", Brantley included the band at every venue Richard had performed, leading to the growth of the group's success. Before Christmas 1955, Brantley had the group record a demo of "
Please, Please, Please" for a local Macon radio station. Different accounts on how "Please, Please, Please" came together vary, one story from Etta James stated that during her first meeting with Brown in Macon, Brown "used to carry around an old tattered napkin with him, because Little Richard had written the words, 'please, please, please' on it and James was determined to make a song out of it...". Another story came the group had gotten inspiration for writing the song after hearing The Orioles' rock'n'roll version of Big Joe Williams' hit, "Baby Please Don't Go", taking its melody from the song.
Federal Records president Ralph Bass signed the Famous Flames to his label in February 1956 and had them record the song in Cincinnati's King Studios. Released the following March, the song became the Famous Flames' first R&B hit, selling over a million copies. Despite the song's success, other songs such as "I Don't Know", "No No No", "Just Won't Do Right" and "Chonnie-On-Chon" failed to chart. By March of 1957 after the release of "Please, Please, Please", most members of the Famous Flames walked out on Brown after the group's new manager, Universal Attractions Agency Chief Ben Bart insisted on the group's billing officially be "James Brown and The Famous Flames". After Little Richard left show business for the ministry, Brown was asked to fill in leftover dates, which led to an increase in his concert success in which afterwards, he recruited members of the vocal group the Dominions to be his replacement
Famous Flames. The first single under this new lineup, "That Dood It", failed to chart. In late 1958, Brown financed the demo of the ballad, "Try Me". Released that October, it returned the Famous Flames to the charts, reaching #1 on the R&B chart, the first time it reached that position, in February of 1959, becoming the first of 17 chart-topping hits on the R&B chart, credited to Brown over the next decade and a half, with six of them crediting the Famous Flames.
Bolstered by this success, Brown recruited a new band, consisted of saxophonist J. C. Davis, guitarist Bobby Roach, bassist Bernard Odum, trumpeter Roscoe Patrick, saxophonist Albert Corley, drummer Nat Kendrick and his old band mate Bobby Byrd, who had rejoined Brown's band on organ. This resulted in the next Brown hit, "I Want You So Bad", which peaked at the Billboard R&B top twenty. The newly hailed "James Brown Band" debuted at the Apollo Theater on April 24, 1959, opening for Little Willie John. Following his dismissal of the 1957-58 Famous Flames lineup, he hired "Baby" Lloyd Stallworth, Bobby Bennett as replacements with Byrd and Johnny Terry returning as members. The confusion of the band was that for years, the Famous Flames were often mistaken for Brown's backing band; fellow Famous Flame Byrd was also a member of the backing band at one point. Initially a vocal and instrumental group, the group focused primarily as a vocal act after signing with Federal. In early 1960, Brown's band recorded the top ten R&B hit, "(Do the) Mashed Potatoes" on Dade Records, owned by Henry Stone, under the pseudonym "Nat Kendrick & The Swans" because Brown's label refused to release it. As a result of this, Syd Nathan decided to shift Brown's contract from Federal to Federal's parent label, King Records.
