James Brown

After hearing of the death of James Brown (I heard it from my mother while I was at my sister's house celebrating Christmas) I realized that a giant of the music business had fallen. But, I regret to say, I had no James Brown music in my collection. That has since been rectified by the purchase of his greatest hits collection. The four-box set, Startime, is supposed to be the definitive collection, but I figure I've got the essentials with this one-disc album.

Brown, the Godfather of Soul, was an innovator of enormous impact. I'm no expert on soul, R&B, or funk, but in doing some reading he is proclaimed as a key figure in the development of all of these styles of music, and may be perhaps the inventor of funk. My musical tastes run to the more white-bread, but I do occasionally acknowledge that music not of my ethnicity gets under my skin--a major part of my singing-in-the-shower repertoire is Brown's Get Up Offa That Thing, a deliriously infectious number.

Listening to this album is an instant mood improver. It begins with his unmistakable yowl on I Got You (I Feel Good), and then goes to perhaps my second-favorite Brown song, Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine. Of course his mega-hit Papa's Got a Brand New Bag is there, as well as Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud).

Not all of his hits were rhythm-heavy, funky numbers. It's Man's Man's Man's World, a torch song complete with a string section, is a lovely song, if not a bit dated in it's efforts to acknowledge the importance of women. I'm not sure Gloria Steinem would approve.

James Brown is clearly one of a handful of the most important figures in pop history in the second half of the twentieth century, and I'm sorry it took his death for me to buy one of his records.