Remembering the Godfather of Soul
For those that missed it, we lost the funkiest man on the planet early Christmas morning. The Godfather of Soul, James Brown, passed away at age 73 of pneumonia complications. Though James has had some difficult years over the past decade, to me he’ll always be remembered as one of the three B’s in music – Bach, Beethoven, and Brown (what else?).
I was lucky enough to see James in about 1997. Though he plainly wasn’t in the best shape of his life – he still kept up his reputation as the hardest working man in show business. He laid down about two hours of really really funky stuff while still doing his signature splits, back bends, and other crazy contortions.
I hope history doesn’t remember him for either his troubles with the law, his substance abuse issues, or his best known and ‘poppiest’ songs (i.e. I Feel Good, Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag, Living In America). His lesser known stuff has been re-sampled, emulated, and imitated by virtually everyone – and getting to know the source of the sound is enlightening.
Do yourself a favor – and check out things like Cold Sweat, Funky Drummer, Mother Popcorn, It’s a Man’s Man’s World, Sex Machine, Part I, or some of his other early 70′s funkiness.
It will liberate your booty..