James Brown – I got you
I saw Brown in actual live performance only once, at a club in San Francisco in the late ’80s. It was a pretty good show, and he was dancing really well for a man in his 50s, but the main thing I remember was thinking, “Ooh man, what an amazing band!”
I heard that band again a few years later, or at least the primal components of it, when Maceo Parker, James Brown’s great saxman, brought his combo to Yoshi’s in Oakland in the early ’90s. By now, Maceo knew as much as there was to know about how to build a James Brown groove, and he even added back some of the Funkadelic follow-ups. Sixty seconds after the band hit the stand, the dance floor was jumping hard. Maceo let the groove get stronger, added some riffs and some chanted, rhyming couplets, and when it was funky enough for him, he jumped down off the stand, put his horn to his lips, and danced right into the middle of the dance floor.
He played the rest of the set from there, dancing and blowing in the middle of a circle of black women, Dionysian to the max, and soon there was no band and no audience anymore, just the music and the dance, and the groove. At some point I figured out that none of this could have been happening (or if it were happening, I would certainly not have been there in the number) if not for James Brown.
The last time I had such a Brown-inspired epiphany was a year ago. My pal Vinnie Esparza, a hot DJ in the Bay Area, was working a gig at Milk on Haight Street, and in the middle of a mostly hip-hop set, he dropped a bomb: Bobby Byrd, who was sort of James Brown’s relief singer, singing “I Know You Got Soul” backed by Brown’s band. I had never heard the song before, and it was like a message direct from James to Bobby to me: “I know you got soul,” he told me. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be in here.” Even out there shaking my butt on the dance floor, I felt a shiver go through me. Soul Brother #1 doesn’t touch you on the shoulder every day.
On Christmas Day 2006, James Brown passed away at age 73. He died of pneumonia at a hospital near his home in Georgia, but somebody (possibly Al Sharpton, James’ old pal and road manager) decided the body should be brought to New York City, to the Apollo Theater, where it could be placed on the stage where he had performed so many times, and be viewed by his adoring fans.
The viewing was at 1 p.m. on December 28. I heard about it on the TV news, and I happened, quite fortuitously, to be in the New York area. I had considered beating my way from Jersey City up to Harlem, but ultimately decided against it. Nonetheless, I did have one chore to do in Manhattan (a run up to the specialty food store Zabar’s), so I put on my warmest gear (a Parisian scarf, an Irish cap, my late brother Jeremiah’s warm down jacket), plotted a route to Zabar’s on the 3 subway, and walked down to the PATH train.
When I reached the terminal at the World Trade Center I was supposed to get on the 3, but for some reason my feet seemed to have taken over my decision-making function and carried me directly to the uptown A train. “You must take the A train,” sang Betty Roche on my internal sound system, “if you want to get to Harlem in a hurry.” I was slightly surprised to find myself heading for Harlem in a hurry, but there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it.
As the train pulled into the 59th Street station, most of its passengers disembarked, leaving me and three middle-aged black women sitting together. As the train passed 72nd Street, we eyed each other inquisitively. As the train passed 81st Street, we found ourselves smiling at one another. “The Apollo, right?” one of the women asked, and all four of us cracked up laughing. We chatted as the train headed north, and walked out of the 125th Street station together.
It was only 11:30 a.m., but to our surprise we discovered police barricades all over the place in front of the Apollo, and a line of mourners extending all the way along 125th from the front of the theater, turning up Frederick Douglass Boulevard, winding up to 126th, and turning east. We found ourselves a spot at the back of the line, where we were quickly locked in by scads of new arrivals behind us. Still, it didn’t seem too bad: We were basically only two blocks away from the box office, and even if they made us wait ’til 1, we’d probably be inside by 1:30 at the latest.
A cold wind was blowing up 126th Street, but even so the scene was pretty nice. Everyone was warm and friendly, sharing memories of seeing Brother James, opinions of concerts, evaluations of his cultural and political importance, dissing his wife, and eventually getting around to exchanging the regular day-to-day and moment-to-moment jive about kids, families, hometowns and personal histories that makes spending time in black circles so satisfying. (The first thing a white person asks you is, “What do you do?” The first thing a black person asks you is, “Where are you from?”)
We were soon beset by vendors hawking various Brown paraphernalia: T-shirts, posters, photos, CDs, and so on. Eventually Bobby’s Happy House, a record store across Frederick Douglass that’s been there since the late ’50s, pumped some of Brown’s music from its sidewalk speakers, and a crowd of dancers gathered quickly and started to jump. The funky soundtrack was the last missing element, and now, in spite of the cold wind, it was feeling more and more like a block party. Or maybe a jazz funeral.