the death of soul

Eddie Murphy introduced me to James Brown.

Through his Saturday Night Live impersonations (Anyone remember "James Brown's Celebrity Hot Tub Party"?) and his dead-on bit in the infamous HBO stand-up special Delirious, Eddie Murphy turned me on to the Godfather of Soul, if only as a punch line to a joke that I was too young to understand.

Then, as I always do, I traced the lineage backwards and decided to find out who James Brown actually was, rather than rely on Eddie Murphy's routines. I wanted to understand the joke, instead of pretending I knew what Murphy was jiving at.

By the time Rocky III came out, I thought I knew who James Brown was: he was the guy from The Blues Brothers, the guy from Dan Aykroyd's so-awful-it-was-good Doctor Detroit, as well as the guy singing "Living In America" wearing Old Glory on his tailored suit...

By the time rappers started sampling James Brown, I thought I knew who he was once again: The Godfather of Soul, Black Caesar, The World's Greatest Entertainer, Mr. Dynamite, The Amazing Mr. Please Please Himself, The Hardest Working Man in Show Business, Soul Brother #1...

By the time I actually listened to a James Brown record all the way through, without resorting to a greatest hits compilation, I thought I finally knew who James Brown was: a fucking musical genius with more soul in his left nut than every rapper out there that I was trying to emulate.

But even then, I was not even close to scratching the surface.

The album in question was actually half of an album: Sides One and Two of Revolution Of The Mind, a double-live album that made a lasting imprint on my then-budding musical jones.

To paraphrase the great Flavor Flav, that album stomped a mudhole in my ass.

Yes, Mr. Brown was funky, but he also sang ballads like a man possessed. The version of "Bewildered" off that album is one of my all-time favorite live soul jams, right up there next to Marvin Gaye's legendary live rendition of "Distant Lover".

By the time I was knee deep in Parliament-Funkadelic, I already knew that Maceo, Fred Wesley, Catfish & Bootsy were graduates of James Brown's soul boot camp. George Clinton depth-charged the funk, but it was James Brown who strapped the funk to the body of the mainstream and held his thumb on the detonator.

As a bass player, I owe my love of the instrument to the man who made it cool to be "holding down the bottom end". In rock circles, the bass guitar is the equivalent of sitting "bitch" in a pick-up truck, right between the driver and the passenger; in the world of funk as dictated by James Brown, the bass was the main ingredient, the impetus upon which the beat could find its way back to The One and get everybody on the good foot again...

By the time people were screaming "Free James Brown", I already was wise to the fact that no jail could hold him, no law could tame him, and no mortal could comprehend his phenomenonal presence.

And even then, I was still miles off.

In 1968, James Brown stopped a riot in Boston (and possibly nationwide) when he televised one of his concerts in the wake of MLK's assassination, like Jesus commanding the stormy seas to stop.

The day I learned that bit of trivia, I finally stopped trying to figure out James Brown. The truth is, I will never know what made him tick, as if any of us ever could.


*/*


As with all of my eulogies of heroic icons, I am in tears as I type this.

It was bad enough losing Richard Pryor, because that felt like I'd lost my own sense of humor. But now that I've lost James Brown, I feel like I've lost my soul.

All of my heroes are dying.

If he meant this much to me, imagine how much he meant to African-Americans coming of age in the 1960s, when civil rights was brand new and yet the hoses were still being turned on and the dogs were still being unleashed on those brave enough to demand respect.

He gave them pride, self-esteem, power... but most of all, he gave them soul.

Today, the notion of soul is intrinsically linked with black Americans. White America wanted to take that soul away, by inventing words like 'nigger'...

James Brown gave black people (and the disenfranchised everywhere) their soul back.

And he smiled as he did it, and said, "Heh!" and did the splits and twirled and had Bobby Byrd put a cape on his back as he feigned exhaustion, only to come back (like Jesus, once again) and rock the mic like nobody else.

I love his music. I'm listening to it right now, in fact. "Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud!"

I think of that scene in The Commmitments, where the band's manager convinces his charges that, since the Irish are the blacks of England, they should adopt James Brown's musical slogan as their own.


*/*


I heard the news on Christmas morning. What a fucking holiday surprise, eh?

Then I rationalized it this way: God finally received a worthy gift on his son's birthday

He got James Brown for Christmas.

We were lucky enough to have him for over seven decades.

They used to call out to "Free James Brown", but I contend that now he is finally free, after all of these years.

Jump back, wanna kiss myself.

'Cause he was Super Bad.

What's in ever he played, it's got to be funky.

PEACE to you and yours, James Brown.