BEFORE: The end of this chain is in sight as I wrap up Phase II of the Summer Music Concert Series, after tonight I'll be (roughly) 2/3 of the way through the entire chain, with 18 films to go. I'm making an arbitrary cut-off point after this one because there's such a big jump in the style of music between today's film and tomorrow's. Phase II covered a lot of soul/R&B music, from Whitney Houston to George Michael to Michael Jackson, even the Joe Cocker and Clive Davis docs had a foothold in that world. But of course, I had some straight rock in there with the Eagles and Springsteen, some country-fied stuff from Glen Campbell and the Eagles, and then some wild urban new-wave stuff from Talking Heads and Lady Gaga. So things certainly became more fractured in the second third of the proceedings. Phase III looks like it could be a return to Classic Rock, and will cover whatever's left over, from the Beach Boys to David Bowie, the Who, Frank Zappa and Alice Cooper, then all the metal bands.
Michael Jackson is in this film somewhere, according to the IMDB, so he carries over from "This Is It".
THE PLOT: A look at the career of musician James Brown, beginning with his first hit song, "Please, Please, Please," in 1956.
AFTER: I admit I didn't know much about James Brown going in to this one, of course I was familiar with his hits "I Feel Good" and "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", which are American soul staples, part of the fabric of our music consciousness, and then there was "Living in America", that song he did for one of the "Rocky" movies, which was probably the biggest hit he had after I became aware of Top 40 music. Beyond that, I was pretty much flying blind.
So I didn't know that his first records came out in the 1950's, that he was really a contemporary of Elvis, Chuck Berry and Little Richard. He even impersonated Little Richard for a week's worth of shows, after the more famous singer had moved on to another club, and the management wanted to satisfy the people who'd come to hear him sing. James Brown just learned to sing in his style and went out to perform, and just didn't correct anyone who assumed that he WAS Little Richard.
His early life, growing up poor in the South, seems to mimic that of Berry and Presley, they also all shared a fascination with gospel music and did their time performing around in small Southern venues before getting around to cutting some vinyl records. Like Berry, Brown also spent some time in jail, then he worked as a boxer and a school janitor, but kept singing in gospel groups. Brown met Bobby Byrd and joined his group that performed as both the Gospel Starlighters and the Avons, but eventually became the Famous Flames when James Brown exerted more influence and sort of took over as the front-man. Their first hit record was "Please, Please, Please", but then they didn't have another hit for several years. And due to label issues, their next single, "Do the Mashed Potatoes", had to be credited to another name, Nat Kendrick & The Swans.
But they couldn't keep the "hardest working man in show business" down for long, and by the early 1960's they had released "Night Train", and James Brown not only had his own record label, but was playing to sold-out crowds at the Apollo Theater. A few more singles led to an appearance in the concert film "The T.A.M.I. Show" (which stood for "Teenage Awards Music International") that for some reason, had a line-up that mixed together acts like Jan & Dean, The Beach Boys and the Rolling Stones with Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson & The Miracles, The Supremes and James Brown. (Chuck Berry and Gerry & The Pacemakers both performed "Maybellene", back-to-back. I'd love to learn the illogical reasoning behind THAT.)
There's a lot here from the musicians that made up the Famous Flames, including saxophonist and bandleader "Pee Wee" Ellis, drummers John Starks and Melvin Parker, and other saxophonist Maceo Parker, who all claim that Brown was both a businessman and a tyrant, suggesting that he made tons of money from the performances, then claimed poverty when it was time to pay the band. Then after those hits I mentioned earlier, "I Feel Good" and "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", Papa James Brown got a brand new band, when nearly every musician in his employ walked out due to lack of pay (or was sacked, there seems to be some dispute about this) and he hired Bootsy Collins, his brother Phelps Collins, and a few holdovers, in order to form the JB's and develop a new sound, the one heard on "Get Up (Sex Machine)".
I did not know that James Brown was so involved in the civil rights movement, playing at many benefit rallies for rights organizations in the 1960's. He even performed a free concert in Boston shortly after MLK was assassinated, and though there were fears of riots, the Mayor (Kevin White) arranged for the concert to be broadcast on the local PBS station, WGBH, to encourage more people to stay home and watch the show. President Johnson then urged Brown to visit other cities that had been ravaged by riots, in order to preach a philosophy of non-violence.
The film doesn't go past the release of "Sex Machine" in 1975, and to be fair, it is titled "The Rise of James Brown" and not "The Decline, Comeback and Eventual Death of James Brown", but just like the Spike Lee documentary about Michael Jackson, it ends up feeling incomplete, like it's only telling half of his story. So there's nothing here about appearing in "Rocky IV" or "The Blues Brothers", having disputes with the IRS or serving time for assault and weapons charges. Nothing here about domestic violence allegations, either. Instead we get a full explanation of the meaning of the "cape routine", when Brown would pretend to be too tired to continue to perform, and his assistant would escort him off the stage, only to have him spring back with some newfound vitality to continue the show.
This technique cuts both ways, because although it eliminates some of the messier incidents from his later life, it also fails to touch on any awards, honors or tributes received during that same time period. And anyone unfamiliar with the latter half of his career is unfortunately out of luck. A couple of clips near the end of the film of Michael Jackson, Prince and Kanye West, along with playing a couple hip-hop songs that sampled his beats, hardly seems enough to show James Brown's influence on more modern music.
Also starring Bootsy Collins (last heard in "Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child"), Mick Jagger (last seen in "20 Feet from Stardom"), Ahmir-Khalib "Questlove" Thompson (last seen in "Michael Jackon's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Chuck D (last seen in "George Michael: Freedom"), Bobby Byrd, Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis, Martha High, Alan Leeds, Christian McBride, Maceo Parker, Melvin Parker, Danny Ray, Al Sharpton, John Starks, Clyde Stubblefield, Greg Tate, Michael Veal, Fred Wesley, and archive footage of James Brown (also last seen in "Michael Jackson's Journey from Motown to Off the Wall"), Little Richard (ditto), Sammy Davis Jr. (ditto), Justin Timberlake (ditto), Duke Ellington, Louis Jordan, Ed Sullivan (last seen in "The Doors: When You're Strange"), Lyndon Johnson (ditto), Martin Luther King Jr. (last seen in "History of the Eagles"), Richard Nixon (ditto), Keith Richards (ditto), Charlie Watts (also last seen in "20 Feet from Stardom"), Bill Wyman (last seen in "27: Gone Too Soon"), Brian Jones (last seen in "Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives"), Dinah Shore (ditto), Kanye West (ditto), Jay-Z (ditto), Prince (also last seen in "George Michael: Freedom"), Flavor Flav (ditto), Brian Wilson (last seen in "How the Beatles Changed the World"), Al Jardine, Mike Love, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Bruno Mars, Janelle Monae, Darryl McDaniels, Jason Mizell, Joseph Simmons, Ben Bart, Phelps "Catfish" Collins, Don Cornelius, Mike Douglas, Gerald Ford, Hubert Humphrey, Pat Nixon, David Susskind, Malcolm X, James Meredith, Cleveland Sellers, Dick Gregory, Stokely Carmichael, Kevin White, Louis Lyons.
RATING: 5 out of 10 hand signals
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