I've always have been a Super Bad! James Brown fan into his music, but since his passing, I have been even more intruged by the mans work. I been looking at his early work and noticed he would use other names to put his material. The earliest being in 1959 under the names James Davis and later on that year under the name Nat Kendricks (his drummer) and the Swans.


Does anyone else know any other names he put his music out on.

I'm not sure James had that many psuedonyms. He termed himself a whole lot of fun titles down the years, as part of his publicity machine tho -

Eg.- The Godfather of Soul
• Soul Brother No. 1
• The Minister of New New Super Heavy Funk
• The Boss
• The Hardest Working Man In Show Business
Mr Dynamite

The nearest I know off-hand to a JB cover-name would be the JB's (the Brown backing band in the '70s) mostly instrumental jazzy funk albums. Most of the tunes on those were written by horn players Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker tho James Brown also claimed credit. These records were produced by James.

James also produced a whole lot of other records, mainly for female singers like Marva Whitney, Lyn Collins and others, as well as a classic album for his 'Soul Brother No.2', Bobby Byrd. These all sound like James Brown records with other singers (tho JB often appears on one or two tracks), and are to Brown's catalogue what side-project artists like The Time, The Family etc.are to Prince's.

As for the James Davis and so on - He probably had a few early singles under other names here and there, releasing them for other record labels under different names to make more money, as was fairly common for black artists at the time.