James Brown

Playing live remains my job, and the Apollo is still the office I answer to

(James Brown, 2005)

Having survived the lawless climate of the notorious Chitlin' Circuit, in October 1962 James Brown was booked along with his Famous Flames for seven consecutive dates at the temple of Black American entertainment, Harlem's Apollo Theater. It was an important step, both in light of the rest of the bill, packed with illustrious names from the blues and rhythm'n'blues scene such as Solomon Burke and Freddie King, and because of the very personal chance to play his cards in front of an audience worthy of the occasion, in a setting where, at last, the main concern was no longer simply making it to the end of the night alive.

The Chitlin' Circuit (a network of venues across the Southern United States that hosted performances by Black artists, where a typical dish - chitlins, made from pig intestines - was served) had been a rather brutal experience. Brown had drawn a valuable lesson from it for himself and his band: if they wanted to survive in those infamous, discriminatory conditions, they always had to stay impeccably in their place - eating in "colored" restaurants, using "colored" restrooms, sleeping in "colored" hotels, and changing clothes in the back seat of the car (Black performers weren't allowed to use dressing rooms). The code of conduct allowed no exceptions, unless you wanted to risk a bullet to the head over one word too many. But for a boy from the South, raised amid cotton fields, shoe-shining, and rounding up soldiers for the prostitutes of Aunt Honey's "terry" - short for "territory of niggers" (plus a brief criminal stint that ended with three years in reform school for armed robbery, and an equally brief sporting career as a boxer and baseball player) - all this was simply the most worn-out routine, something later transformed into an indomitable stage presence, so powerful it earned him one of the most famous nicknames of his career, The Hardest Working Man in Show Business.

The man who had struck Brown with the music bug at age ten was Bishop Manuel "Daddy" Grace, a traveling preacher enormously popular among Black communities in the 1940s and '50s. Young James never forgot his theatrical flair - curls, glittering nails, cape and flamboyant outfits - and his ability to hold the faithful in his grip with gospel rituals halfway between speech and song, whose musical crescendos culminated in a liberating scream, an earthly expression of a pain more spiritual than physical. Armed with these coordinates, Brown had crossed the entire map of America's rhythm and blues charts, arriving straight at number one with "Try Me" in 1958, and challenging the status of the definitive Black performer held by his majesty Little Richard, at the time one of the very few Black artists to have set foot on the white charts. His shows had become legendary thanks to simple elements: the solemnity of gospel framed by brash rhythms, the pride of the Black man who comes out of hardship alive, and an utter inability to spare a single drop of sweat on stage.

Brown wasn't trying to recreate the polished sheen of Motown artists, and, above all, he wasn't trying to be accepted by the market; he aimed instead for a visceral connection with the audience. He knew that those who came to see him often wanted to forget a bad day or a bad week, and for them he put on a show that psychologically cleansed them of all their burdens. He was a restorer of faith.

The James Brown Revue that landed at the Apollo included, besides the vocal trio of the Famous Flames (Bobby Byrd, Bobby Bennett, Lloyd Stallworth), a whole roster of musicians already enough on their own to create the sense of a special event - the only fitting accompaniment for a man who had meanwhile earned another famous nickname, Mr. Dynamite, and who now took to the most important stage of all with the awareness of someone who had made it, yet still had much to prove. For him, that theater represented a kind of judge: "Before you get there, you're on probation. After you've performed, if you did well, you're released for good behavior."

Precisely because of such a prestigious location, Brown had dusted off one of his pet obsessions: bringing the electricity of his live shows to those who had never witnessed one in person, fully aware that he would need to record and release an entire evening on record, much as Ray Charles had done in Atlanta a few years earlier with the album "In Person".

Having received a flat "no" from his label boss Syd Nathan, who considered it pointless to release a live album with no new songs on it, James eventually decided to finance the whole operation himself, putting up everything he had (5,700 dollars), and on the evening of October 24th he took the stage to deliver the performance of his life.

"'Live' At The Apollo" still reads today like the chronicle of a popular liturgical rite.

The scant two minutes running from Fats Gonder's introduction to the opening of "I'll Go Crazy" make it immediately clear that much of the set will hinge on the dialogue between Brown and the crowd, with the audience convincing itself it's the main object of his attention, while Brown actually addresses, in turn, a woman, God, the world, or, in the subtext of a title like "Try Me", the white establishment. Up through "I Don't Mind", the tracks are strung together by brisk instrumental bridges, radiating in equal measure the impetuous freshness of a teenager's first crush, the doggedness of a performer determined to seize every ounce of attention, and the urgency of a preacher struggling to contain his fervor before the congregation. Then come the ten minutes of "Lost Someone", and the melodrama ignites: the dialogue turns into supplication, Brown's vocal delivery veers between anguished screams and prayer, while the audience seems to answer the cries for help that trace the ups and downs of a lost love.

What Brown stages is a spectacular via crucis, a performance that (along with the cape routine and the fake exits) would make his shows legendary for years to come, symbolizing both the extreme consequences of heartbreak and its opposite: finding, time after time, the strength not to give up on one's goals. It's a rather effective analogy for the story of an entire community: never stop fighting, no matter the hardship.

Having reached the peak of his celebration, Mr. Dynamite unexpectedly chooses to condense his catalogue of hits (among them "Please Please Please", "You've Got The Power", "Why Do You Do Me", "Bewildered") into a structured medley, with verses from one song flowing swiftly into the chorus of another and vice versa, its therapeutic message being a return to feeling good after the catharsis of "Lost Someone". The show then closes with an exhortation to climb aboard the "Night Train" (a Jimmy Forrest standard that Brown had just released as a single), perfect for running through the list of cities where the man had become a star, and for bringing everyone back home.

Technically, and by the choice of its own creator, the original version of the recording that hit record stores in May 1963 had no separation between tracks at all - a factor that seemed counterproductive at first glance, but actually proved decisive in encouraging some radio stations to play the record in its entirety (it would take the fortunate recovery of the original master, long believed lost, to release a new edition with a proper tracklist and bonus material, in 2004). Either way, Brown had read the situation correctly: not only would the album go on to sell a record-breaking one million copies (for a live rhythm and blues record), staying on the charts for nearly seventy weeks, but it would also prove to be the turning point of his career, cementing his role as an absolutely central figure in Black American music.

James had not yet put his name to classics like "I Got You (I Feel Good)", "It's A Man's Man's Man's World", "Say It Loud, I'm Black And I'm Proud" or "Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine", but that show in the heart of Harlem already contained every element of his extraordinary professional growth: the perseverance in achieving his goals, his grasp of the music business, his instinct for what audiences wanted and, above all, his ability to control stage timing and make a show rehearsed down to the smallest detail feel utterly spontaneous.

"'Live' At The Apollo" is one of the records that most emphatically marks the passage from the rhythm and blues era to the soul era (which Brown would go on to pioneer into the epic of funk, not before earning the new title of Godfather Of Soul), and it also captures a moment of major historical upheaval, from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the assassination of Kennedy, alongside the assertion of hugely important intercultural and artistic values (Dylan had just released "The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan" and the Beatles were preparing to conquer the planet).

A pivotal work both for the scope of its author's message of redemption and for the intensity of an extraordinary performance, still often described today as "the greatest live album of all time".

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31/01/2021