Mr. James Brown, the Godfather of Soul

(Video of "It's a Man's World" clip on the flipflop)

 
When I was just a sprout at Willard Junior High School on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, I often found myself cooling my heels in the dean's office, usually for trying, selflessly, to enliven an otherwise dreadfully boring class with a humorous quip or two, perhaps a series of them.

More often than not, it would be me and a couple of black guys who were also, in the language of today, most likely trying to keep it real, as only thirteen-year-olds can, within the oppressive confines of the conditioning system known as the Berkeley public school system.

And there we would sit together in the outer office, cooling our heels, waiting for the dean of boys, who knew us all on a first-name basis, to call us into his private domain.

Invariably, we would get in an argument about who was better, James Brown or The Beatles. 

I remember one time in particular. It was me and four guys.

They challenged me:

--Who's got more number one hits?

Me [mind you, I had no facts to back my claims up.]:

--The Beatles

Them:

--Who's made more money?

Me:

--The Beatles 

Them:

--Who's sold more albums?

Me:

--The Beatles

:::::::::::: [long pause wherein they all sort of gazed at the floor] :::::::::::

And then one guy looked me right in the eye and said:

"Well, who's got more SOUL??"  

His homeboys nodding in agreement.

A question that this little white boy couldn't quite wrap his west-coast, still beach-boy-infected  mind around.

Part of the problem, of course, was that, for several years, I truly did not think that ANY music other than the Beatles mattered. I often wondered why other people bothered to write songs and release singles. 

Some time later, The Beatles released the ballad "Yesterday" as a single. At school, we had a radio in our woodshop class. "Yesterday" came on the radio and I asked this black kid working near me what he thought. (I imagine, looking back now, that he did not hear the assumed challenge in my question.) He stopped and listened intently for about 30 seconds, smiled and said:

--That's really nice.

And opened up my heart with that simple remark.

A couple years later, Brown released "It's a Man's World," one of the greatest singles of all time. I would listen to it over and over. Below is a video of my tribute to the song and the man, doing my James Brown imitation at a club in Frisco. It's amazing what a wig and a little make up can do, isn't it?

In all seriousness, I actually made the mistake of performing the song in the middle of a set one night. All performers must go down in flames a couple of times during their careers. This was one of them. I learned a lot that night. 

But it frankly took me thirty years to realize how important James Brown was to twentieth century music.

 James Brown, Scott Joplin, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Robert Johnson ... the list goes on and on. It was black composers who effected global transformations over the course of the twentieth century, starting with Joplin's fusion of Western marching band music and African rhythms ...

 James Brown + the Beach Boys + a couple Moog synthesizers = Kraftwerk, the German synth band, Rolf, Florian, Karl, Wolfgang, who are the godfathers of all modern electronic and dance music ... so ... thank you again, James ...

I had the pleasure of seeing James Brown in concert a few years back, in San Francisco. Half-way through the set, he thanked us for the petition that had gotten him out of prison. Sweetly, simply, with real humility, he stopped the show and said:

--I was having a bad time and some bad things happened and i went to prison. And it was a petition that got me out. I know people from all over the country signed it, but i know it started here in the Bay Area, so I thank you.

Needless to say, he got a huge ovation. But that wasn't why he said it: he was just saying thank you. What incredible heart and soul and intelligence the man had.

Rest In Peace Mr. James Brown, you will be missed. 

It was a crime that James Brown was in prison as long as he was. I mean, why is Michael Jackson walking free to this day? (The answer to that may lie with the homosexual Republican crime syndicate and its unholy alliance with the pedophile underground, but that is a piece for another day.)

On another note, while looking for some pictures for this piece I found ANOTHER James Brown, who apparently makes his living as a David Bowie Impersonator.

How the fuck do you go through life with the name James Brown and make your living  doing David Bowie Tributes?

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