The Hardest Working Man in Show Business

Back in the mid-Eighties, before "Living in America" put him back in the spotlight, James Brown played some surprisingly small-scale shows, including fairly regular appearances at the old Lone Star Café on 5th Avenue in Greenwich Village. I can't imagine that the club held even 500 people, and the stage really wasn't big enough for JB's huge band (close to a dozen people, including a four-piece horn section). And yet, there he was. I was lucky enough to catch a few of those shows.

The first show is the one I'll remember best and most often, because it was one of those rare events that open your eyes and make you see things in a whole new way. An epiphany? Perhaps not that profound, but in the same zip code, I think.

It was a very cold night, but my friends and I arrived many hours early to queue up for the first-come, first-served seating and floor space. The wait was nasty but, we were certain, worth every frosty, windy, grimy (we're talking NYC in the Eighties, after all, not the modern spick-and-span Giulianized version) minute spent in line. This was James Brown, after all! We were about to see a legend; we were going to be transformed. We arrived early enough to get a spot right in front of the stage, perhaps 10 feet from Maceo Parker's mike and no more than 15 feet from where James Brown himself would, eventually, would be standing.

'Eventually' took a lot longer than we had hoped. It was still an hour to show time when we were let in, and of course the band didn't hit the stage on time. When it did, there was more waiting still. First the band played a couple of instrumentals. Then saxophone stud Maceo Parker was introduced, and he played a long solo over yet another instrumental. The band had been on stage close to 20 minutes by the time Danny Ray, the man who had been introducing James Brown for five! ten! fifteen! twenty! twenty five! years, came out to inform us of the obvious: that the Hardest Working Man in Show Biz, the Godfather of Soul, Mr. Please Please Please, the man behind [endless litany of hits reeled off here] was about to make his way to the stage.

And then he did. He was a jaw-dropping sight, but not in a good way. His hair was unnatural both in color and coiffure; it was a weird attempt at feigned youth that made him look instead like an old lady who's just left a very lengthy beauty parlor session, and the effect was that of a helmet of too-fine hair. Beneath the helmet was a jowly face much too old for the outfit and hairstyle he was sporting. I couldn't help recalling the movie version of Death in Venice at that moment, and it made me feel a little ill. The cherry on the sundae was the obviousness of the girdle he was wearing, which created the illusion of slender hips and a flat belly by pushing all the fat up above his belt, giving him a 'stuffed turkey breast' look. This was a man who was not meant to be seen at such close range, I suspect. Up close, he was the Brother From Another Planet. My heart was sinking.

The band hit a slow, mellow groove, nothing too challenging for the old guy, and went into "Have a Funky Good Time," seemingly reaffirming my worst fears: this guy does not have it any more. James was marching in place, none too vigorously, and singing in a fairly limited rasp--the top end of his once-incredible vocal range was long gone by this era. The band sounded great, though, so there was that. And just about the time I was starting to enjoy the groove, a wonderful transformation began to take place. Brown started to sweat a bit, move with a little more animation, sing a little better--suddenly, he didn't look quite so old.

The metamorphosis kicked into high gear when Brown dropped his right hand, stopping the band on the proverbial dime. "What time it is?" he screamed, and someone from the band shouted "1976!" The horns hit a rapid-fire riff, and James Brown was into "Get Up Offa That Thing," and he was sweating more, and moving, and starting to sound damn good. I still wasn't ready to get religion on the show, though, not yet. Not until Brown slapped the mike stand with the butt of his hand, sending it tilting toward the audience; leaned on one knee and caught it just before it bonked a spectator in the head; tossed it back 180 degrees in the other direction; spun away from the mike, dropped to one knee, and caught it just before it hit the bass drum; set the mike aright; and did a full split. In a girdle! I was sold.

The rest of the show was simply tremendous. It included some truly ridiculous kitsch, inicluding: the band's frequent reprise of the "Entertainment Tonight" theme in between songs; a version of "This is A Man's World" in which Brown stopped the band over and over while he paid tribute to randomly grouped dead folks ("This one's for Bob Marley, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Colonel Sanders!"), then took a long, awful keyboard solo, selecting one note (randomly?) and holding it while grinning at the band as if seeking their approval; and a truly dreadful, Vegas-y version of "Please, Please, Please" to close the set. None of it mattered. Through the extraordinarily good ("Cold Sweat," "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," "Hot Pants," etc. etc.) and the embarrassingly show biz-y, Brown was immensely entertaining, a man of varied, remarkable, mysterious and occasionally befuddling gifts, and truly the Hardest Working Man in Show Business. By the time Danny Ray had draped Brown's shoulders in his regal cape and Brown had tossed it off several times, I knew I had experienced something very special, the likes of which wasn't likely to happen again. I was right, by the way; the other Brown shows I saw at the Lone Star, while fun and very entertaining, weren't nearly as exhilarating.

There really is no way to overestimate the importance of James Brown's music, I don't think. The guy influenced just about everyone with his showmanship and his many, many musical innovations. I'm glad I got a chance to experience some of that magic, and hope y'all have similar memories of this great man.

Sam Cooke

Every time I think I've got a beat on Sam Cooke, that I know just where he sits in my personal pantheon, the guy reemerges in my consciousness and forces me to once again reevaluate, and once again upgrade, my opinion.

A little background: like most folks, I first came to know Sam Cooke through his big hits, a deep catalogue of mid-tempo love songs that generally fall into the I-IV-I-V or I-vi-IV-V chord patterns. Wading through such pleasant but lightweight fare as "Chain Gang," "Only Sixteen," "Wonderful World," and "Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha," I was naturally floored by the quality of the guy's voice and singing but was equally underwhelmed by the material. I was ready to group him with Nat King Cole: massive talent with a pop career dragged down by middle-of-the-road songs and arrangements.

Then I heard Night Beat, a small-combo album on which Cooke sings a bunch of blues and torch ballads. I was floored; here, finally, was an album of material that reached the level of his talent. If you do not own a copy of this album, stop reading right now and get yourself a copy immediately. Seriously, I'll wait. [patient tapping of shoe]

Night Beat sent me searching for more such music; surely a vein producing such pure gold had to be just the beginning of a rich motherlode. But alas, it was not to be; there's just no other Sam Cooke album like it, at least not in print. At this point I figured I had Sam Cooke pegged as "that guy who made one great album and could have made a lot more if he had only been less attached to his hit-making formula." Which, in fact, extended the Nat King Cole anthology, as Cole's early trio recordings are every bit as breathtaking as Night Beat.

And then, just a few weeks ago, I saw this clip of Cooke singing "Basin Street Blues" on the Mike Douglas Show, and remembered once again what an astonishingly good singer he was. The experience compelled me to pick up keep movin' on (on which the song appears), a collection of the final 23 recordings of Cooke's career, and now, once again, I am reevaluating Sam Cooke. There's a lot of amazing material here--a nifty, up-tempo 4/4 reworking of "Tennessee Waltz," a great little "Shake"-like obscurity called "Yeah Man" (which Arthur Conley later revised and rerecorded as "Sweet Soul Music"--thanks to Mikey for this correction--ed.), "Good News," "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day," "Good Times," "Meet Me at Mary's Place," and of course the jaw-dropping "A Change is Gonna Come," Cooke's self-penned reaction to "Blowin' in the Wind" and the winner of that contest in a first-round knockout. The singing here is freer and more emotive than anything I've heard from Cooke except for perhaps his early gospel recordings with the Soul Stirrers. While you're buying Night Beat, grab a copy of this one too; hell, it's only $9.99, how can you possibly go wrong? You can't.

Perusing Sam Cooke's catalogue at the All Music Guide, I see a ton of Sam Cooke material that's out of print. I hope they bring it all out. I don't know how much higher my opinion of the guy can get, but I'm anxious to find out.

The Main Ingredient

A while back I wrote about the scourge that is melisma. I've had occasion to think about this terrible, terrible blight again lately, as I recently got one of those iPod Shuffles and loaded it up with 260 of my favorite songs. The mix includes a lot of old soul and R&B--Aretha singing "I'll Say a Little Prayer," a bunch of O.V. Wright, a few songs from Ray Charles' Modern Sounds in Country and Western, that sort of stuff. I am most definitely (or mos' def as the young 'uns say) old school.

One of those songs is The Main Ingredient's "Just Don't Want to be Lonely," and last time it came up on the Shuffle it was the source of a minor epiphany. The singer doesn't do a lot of fancy stuff with the song; he basically just sings it, adding a few flourishes where they fit. And yet it's a totally captivating performance. The beauty of it isn't the vocal pyrotechnics, but the simple fact that this guy has a great voice. He doesn't need to show it off; he knows he has a great voice and is perfectly happy to let it serve the song, rather than the other way around. It's a lovely, subdued, and completely stunning performance.

Now, The Main Ingredient are not legends of R&B. Their lead singer--Cuba Gooding Sr. was his name, and yes, he is the father of the Academy Award winning actor--wouldn't make anyone's All-Time Best 50 (or even 100, probably) R&B Singers list. "Just Don't Want to be Lonely" is a record that its producers almost certainly figured no one would ever want to hear again 10 minutes after it left the charts. And yet, in its own small and silly way, "Just Don't Want to be Lonely" is sublime, a record of more value than the entire recorded output of Celine Dion or Mariah Carey. I'd rather hear it for the millionth time than listen to any of their stuff once.

This epiphany comes with an ancillary downer, unfortunately. Those of us who aspire to sing but don't have great voices like Cuba Gooding Sr.'s? We are consigned to the status of 'stylist.' And while we may be capable of many wonderful musical achievements, performing a vocal like the one on "Just Don't Want to be Lonely" simply isn't one of them. We are Baudelaire's albatross, minus the impressive air show.

PS The Main Ingredient's "Everybody Plays the Fool" is pretty spectacular, too. Don't bother with their greatest hits collection, though; there's a very steep drop in quality beyond the two hit singles. Do as I did and get Rhino's can you dig it? The 70's Soul Experience box set instead.

Back in Business

Last week blogger.com notified me that I could convert my Stone Age blog to a spiffy new Blogger-in-Beta blog. 'Well, Merry Christmas to me,' I thought as I clicked the requisite buttons to warp-speed my blog into modernity. Then I waited. And waited. And waited some more. 8 days, to be exact.

Finally I contacted the help desk at blogger/google and received some very fine assistance from God only knows whom. Whoever it was managed to restore my blog by sending it back to the Stone Age, where it will stay until blogger can iron the kinks out of its new version. Having experienced beta products before I cannot now imagine what could have possibly compelled me to make the switch in the first place, but I'll remember this lesson going forward. I hope.

So what has happened in the dark void that was my blog-free Beatles-approved-length week? Well, I hit a deer in our formerly brand-new car. The deer got very much the worse end of the transaction, but still, it wasn't pretty. She left a deer-head shaped indentation in our front right bumper, and the force of impact--we were going about 55, she about 5--dislodged the front right fender, jarring it back so that the passenger door no longer opens.

The good news, if anything related to this event can be considered good news, is that no human was injured, and that insurance companies apparently do not regard a collision with a deer as a collision. That's good because the collision deductible on our insurance is $500. This collision-like accident was deemed "other than collision," with a deductible of only $100. We did not trade insurance information with the deer--who, by the way, was clearly at fault--so I guess we'll have to cover the $100 out of our own pockets. Merry Christmas to me, indeed.