As on fire as Brown was through the previous two sets and the epic Apollo Concert of 1963 (I guess I should have posted that before this) he certainly takes a nose dive and comes up staggering on the majority of this stuff.
Brown had attempted to split from King and form his own Production company with Bobby Byrd. They signed with Mercury subsidiary Smash but King was not having it and went to court and won an injunction that prevented Brown from singing on record, he could only play organ. Three Smash vocal tracks came out prior to the injunction, one of which is actually pretty good, "Out Of Sight". Unfortunately also during this period King took advantage of the situation to empty their vaults of rejected songs, LP takes, and some MORON decide to take some perfectly good tracks and dub in crowd noise and screams in one of the most annoying production foibles ever.
To some extent you have to listen to disc one just to hear the train wreck, likely listening with horrified fascination, but at the end of the day if you ever want to hear any of it again, besides maybe tracks 13 and 16, I'd be surprised. Disc 2 does not begin any better and for 8 tracks it is more drek. I am reminded somehow of Roberto Duran in the first Sugar Ray Leonard fight. A guy who had previously seemed so terrifyingly invincible was suddenly lost and flailing about awkwardly, helpless, ineffective.
This image, however, is apparently to some extent artificially created by the record companies and the legal hassles. Behind this chaos JB and the band are still rocking monster shows and working out their new thang. That new thing finally comes to light when James and King make up and sign a new contract. On track nine of disc two the world is set right with "I Got You". After the mess that precedes it this track burns like a red hot coal, a blinding neon light that says HE'S BACK! Two tracks later you know it for sure because "PAPA'S GOT A BRAND NEW BAG"!
It is like someone has opened up the window, lean back and breath deep - a couple of pleasant tracks of organ playing James doing instrumentals of Try Me and Papa and then just in case you thought that first version of "I Got You" was lacking something, JB ups the ante big time on his second, utterly explosive version of the song. "I Can't Help It" continues the return to form but the final two tracks, while good, are marred by more potted in crowd noise.
One thing has become clear to me about the JB singles; I had intended to stop after this set but I can't leave The Godfather hanging like that, it just wouldn't be right, so Volume Four where he explodes upon the American conscious and becomes part of the sound of an era will be coming.
