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Doesn't it suck / James Brown related ... The first time the public saw James Brown, he was already well over 31 years old, what? He was never on Television his first 9 years in show business. Why do you think he was never on the air between 1956 and 1964 (his first TV appearances were in 1965.)
It's not like he hadn't had hits. "Please, Please, Please" "Try Me" "Think" "Bewildered" "Night Train" "Prisoner of Love" "Oh Baby, Don't You Weep" "Out Of Sight". PRINCE: Always and Forever
MICHAEL JACKSON: Always and Forever ----- Live Your Life How U Wanna Live It | |
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Yes it does suck. | |
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LittleBLUECorvette said: The first time the public saw James Brown, he was already well over 31 years old, what? He was never on Television his first 9 years in show business. Why do you think he was never on the air between 1956 and 1964 (his first TV appearances were in 1965.)
It's not like he hadn't had hits. "Please, Please, Please" "Try Me" "Think" "Bewildered" "Night Train" "Prisoner of Love" "Oh Baby, Don't You Weep" "Out Of Sight". Ya kidding right?  I think Muddy Waters was around over 20 years and was over 50 when he got his 1st tv spots...in England.  | |
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Tho I think it's self-explanatory, I'll go in to some detail. Black artists dealt w/ a real quota system and some of it was, of course, that there were very few tv outlets for music and all of them were for pop music. JB was never pop and has little crossover appeal to that point.
Crossover was actually quite rare until very recently and those artists who did crossover had to have a certain sound and image. If your music was too "heavy" groove, too dance oritented, too flashy, and too rot gut (ie sweaty, yelling, stomping melodramatics) and most of all too Black in anyway...forget it!!! Blacks DID get on tv, but look at who they were...Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, Chubby Checker, Harry Belafonte, and Motown acts of both genders. In the 50s, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and the like did some spots in movies, but tv was incredibly conservative. IOW, it wasn't just race that kept certain Black artists off tv, but the image and sounds they were about. Most were not "pop" in the cultural sense of the word. [Edited 6/18/09 20:37pm] | |
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brooksie said: Tho I think it's self-explanatory, I'll go in to some detail. Black artists dealt w/ a real quota system and some of it was, of course, that there were very few tv outlets for music and all of them were for pop music. JB was never pop and has little crossover appeal to that point.
Crossover was actually quite rare until very recently and those artists who did crossover had to have a certain sound and image. If your music was too "heavy" groove, too dance oritented, too flashy, and too rot gut (ie sweaty, yelling, stomping melodramatics) and most of all too Black in anyway...forget it!!! Blacks DID get on tv, but look at who they were...Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, Chubby Checker, Harry Belafonte, and Motown acts of both genders. In the 50s, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and the like did some spots in movies, but tv was incredibly conservative. IOW, it wasn't just race that kept certain Black artists off tv, but the image and sounds they were about. Most were not "pop" in the cultural sense of the word. I wouldn't say little, he had one of the biggest albums of 63 with Live at the Apollo and a couple of crossover top 30 hits up until that point. I don't think being black had anything to do with, but being a darker shade of black yeah. The names you listed ... Cooke, Wilson, Supremes, Belafonto and others like Billy Ekstine, ect were lighter more acceptable blacks (if thats the right thing to say) PRINCE: Always and Forever
MICHAEL JACKSON: Always and Forever ----- Live Your Life How U Wanna Live It | |
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Nat Cole had his own show for a minute
And he was dark as they come..if you're talking image-wise Just playing devil's advocate heah...  | |
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funkpill said: Nat Cole had his own show for a minute
And he was dark as they come..if you're talking image-wise Just playing devil's advocate heah... But he song pop-standards, but I see what you mean. PRINCE: Always and Forever
MICHAEL JACKSON: Always and Forever ----- Live Your Life How U Wanna Live It | |
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It was real hard for R&B artists like James to go ahead because of many things but thank God he finally broke through when he did. | |
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LittleBLUECorvette said: The first time the public saw James Brown, he was already well over 31 years old, what? He was never on Television his first 9 years in show business. Why do you think he was never on the air between 1956 and 1964 (his first TV appearances were in 1965.)
It's not like he hadn't had hits. "Please, Please, Please" "Try Me" "Think" "Bewildered" "Night Train" "Prisoner of Love" "Oh Baby, Don't You Weep" "Out Of Sight". So basically, Little Richard & Chuck Berry made TV appearances long before James did. Interesting. | |
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Unfortunately the music artists today don't have the drive to work as hard as artists likes James Brown. I mean learn to really play musical instruments and write songs that will stand the test of time.
There should be a standard music history class that you have to finish before you can put out you own music. I think the quality of modern music would be interestingly different. Too bad it's corporate $ that dictate every aspect of it now. The only bright side of this is, that there are some great new artists who are underground and not mainstream. Just like the rap movement bubbled under the surface for years before it exploded, there is something else that will grab everyones attention again! Release Yourself | |
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LittleBLUECorvette said: brooksie said: Tho I think it's self-explanatory, I'll go in to some detail. Black artists dealt w/ a real quota system and some of it was, of course, that there were very few tv outlets for music and all of them were for pop music. JB was never pop and has little crossover appeal to that point.
Crossover was actually quite rare until very recently and those artists who did crossover had to have a certain sound and image. If your music was too "heavy" groove, too dance oritented, too flashy, and too rot gut (ie sweaty, yelling, stomping melodramatics) and most of all too Black in anyway...forget it!!! Blacks DID get on tv, but look at who they were...Sam Cooke, Jackie Wilson, Chubby Checker, Harry Belafonte, and Motown acts of both genders. In the 50s, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and the like did some spots in movies, but tv was incredibly conservative. IOW, it wasn't just race that kept certain Black artists off tv, but the image and sounds they were about. Most were not "pop" in the cultural sense of the word. I wouldn't say little, he had one of the biggest albums of 63 with Live at the Apollo and a couple of crossover top 30 hits up until that point. I don't think being black had anything to do with, but being a darker shade of black yeah. The names you listed ... Cooke, Wilson, Supremes, Belafonto and others like Billy Ekstine, ect were lighter more acceptable blacks (if thats the right thing to say) It had little to do w/ skin color when it came to White audiences ( ...remember tv was b/w in 1963-64, so who could really tell? Almost everybody photographed darker on b/w tv in that era than in color pics.) I delibrately didn't name people like Sammy, Nat, Satchmo, Ella, etc because they were standard singers who had a different sort of fame, demo, and long established success.
People like JB, Sam, etc did not fit this Vegas-y/supper club mold. It was an issue of the sounds they were bringing. Frankly I think the skin color issue was/is more of a Black thing than a White one. To make this skin color thing more interesting, Blacks had the same drama getting on radio before tv came along. Why was that? 
I don't think JB FULLY crossed over until around 1966, but he was getting there around 63-64. Top 30 wasn't that big a deal...most shows dealt in acts that were Top 20 and upwards. Truly crossover was Top 10 in those days. Berry Gordy, the man most obsessed w/ hits, didn't rate anything as a success unless it was Top 10 and that's pretty true of how the hit oriented tv shows thought as well. [Edited 6/18/09 22:24pm] | |
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I got a bunch of footage from pre-1965, most of which show Brown lip-synching at some white teenage shows.
The famous T.A.M.I. show was taped and broadcasted in March 1964, and it is very well known footage: In 1965, Brown even has his first appearance in a movie - which was brief, but nevertheless ... it shows that Brown already has some mainstream appeal. So your assertion of this thread isn't really correct. But I agree that footage from the early 1960s is rare - but that's understandable. Brown had not really broken into the mainstream and the music business had not yet understood the promotional value of video an TV performances. | |
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TonyVanDam said: So basically, Little Richard & Chuck Berry made TV appearances long before James did. Interesting. Because they were considered Rock n Roll artists, which was a genre that white folks were hip to. R&B on the other hand wasn't. Brown's first record that really made white folks take notice was his 1962 release Live at the Apollo. | |
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I just double checked my archives ... the earliest JB footage that I have is from a 1962 TV broadcast titled Where the Action is.
I have about 15 clips of Brown performing on this show and on American Bandstand between 1962 and 1965 ... but there's much more out there - I estimate at least 30, if not 40, performances. The footage just doesn't circulate on YouTube. But what is true that there is little to no footage of Brown between 1956 (when Please, please, please was released) until 1962. Brown played the Apollo for the first time in 1960 or 1961 if I'm not mistaken. Before he had a few hits, but performed mainly the Chitlin Circuit and played at fairs, bars, armories and other rather shady venues. No surprise that there weren't any TV performances then. [Edited 6/19/09 9:44am] | |
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James Brown made his national television debut on American Bandstand in 1960 or 1961 performing "Please, Please, Please". | |
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Timmy84 said: James Brown made his national television debut on American Bandstand in 1960 or 1961 performing "Please, Please, Please".
This would be coherent with his first appearance at the Apollo. Bottom line, he was definitely on TV quite a bit in the early 1960s. | |
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bugs me how that dvd of James singing in 1968... the band sounds clear and nice, but James singin' into a Wendy's drive thru box, awful | |
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MrSoulpower said: Timmy84 said: James Brown made his national television debut on American Bandstand in 1960 or 1961 performing "Please, Please, Please".
This would be coherent with his first appearance at the Apollo. Bottom line, he was definitely on TV quite a bit in the early 1960s. I think his first appearance at the Apollo was in 1956 though, lol. But I get what you mean tho. | |
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Timmy84 said: MrSoulpower said: This would be coherent with his first appearance at the Apollo. Bottom line, he was definitely on TV quite a bit in the early 1960s. I think his first appearance at the Apollo was in 1956 though, lol. But I get what you mean tho. Oh, no, definitely not. He didn't play the Apollo until 1960. In 1956, he released Please, please, please. That wasn't an immediate hit, it built up over the years. Try me in '58 did better, but that wasn't enough for the Apollo. I'll check on that later though and I will let you know.  | |
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MrSoulpower said: Timmy84 said: I think his first appearance at the Apollo was in 1956 though, lol. But I get what you mean tho. Oh, no, definitely not. He didn't play the Apollo until 1960. In 1956, he released Please, please, please. That wasn't an immediate hit, it built up over the years. Try me in '58 did better, but that wasn't enough for the Apollo. I'll check on that later though and I will let you know. Wow, really? The JET book which James was memorized said he had been performing there since the '50s.  | |
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Timmy84 said: MrSoulpower said: Oh, no, definitely not. He didn't play the Apollo until 1960. In 1956, he released Please, please, please. That wasn't an immediate hit, it built up over the years. Try me in '58 did better, but that wasn't enough for the Apollo. I'll check on that later though and I will let you know. Wow, really? The JET book which James was memorized said he had been performing there since the '50s. I'm really certain that he didn't, but if he did play there in the 50s, I will stand corrected. Maybe in '59? I kinda doubt it, though. I will check into it and let you know what I'll find. | |
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MrSoulpower said: Timmy84 said: Wow, really? The JET book which James was memorized said he had been performing there since the '50s. I'm really certain that he didn't, but if he did play there in the 50s, I will stand corrected. Maybe in '59? I kinda doubt it, though. I will check into it and let you know what I'll find. Cool. Because I was certain the time James met his mother again, it was around 1959 (or 1960 as you said) at the Apollo. But technically James' career didn't really take off until 1962, right?  [Edited 6/19/09 11:40am] | |
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Anyway, I just read that James was on the Apollo's Amateur Night showcase and the reason he was booed was because of his clothes, the next week, he came back with "New York clothes" on and won the competition. So I reckon this was around the mid-or-late-1950s. | |
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Timmy84 said: But technically James' career didn't really take off until 1962, right?
[Edited 6/19/09 11:40am] No, he had a pretty decent career by 1960, but he wasn't crossing over into the mainstream. That started to happen after the album Live at the Apollo in 1962. Performing at the Apollo did not make you a mainstream star back in the day, because the Apollo was an all black venue. | |
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AFAIK, JB played the Apollo in the 1950s, but as an opening act for Little Wille John. I don't think he headlined until later. | |
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Cinnie said: bugs me how that dvd of James singing in 1968... the band sounds clear and nice, but James singin' into a Wendy's drive thru box, awful
yaoming? [Edited 6/19/09 13:52pm] | |
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brooksie said: AFAIK, JB played the Apollo in the 1950s, but as an opening act for Little Wille John. I don't think he headlined until later.
Oh OK, I figured he was on the Apollo in the '50s. Of course he didn't have the credentials yet OBVIOUSLY to become a headliner. So it's safe to say he was a headliner in 1960. | |
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Timmy84 said: brooksie said: AFAIK, JB played the Apollo in the 1950s, but as an opening act for Little Wille John. I don't think he headlined until later.
Oh OK, I figured he was on the Apollo in the '50s. Of course he didn't have the credentials yet OBVIOUSLY to become a headliner. So it's safe to say he was a headliner in 1960. Headliner in 1960 is a safe shot, but I wouldn't place the opening act earlier than '59. Like I said, I'll check at home tonight and will get back to y'all. | |
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I think it comes down to two factors:
The first being that TV was simply not the medium then it grew to be, and the second being the Brown was black and few black artists got the exposure or support they deserved. "A Watcher scoffs at gravity!" | |
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meow85 said: I think it comes down to two factors:
The first being that TV was simply not the medium then it grew to be, and the second being the Brown was black and few black artists got the exposure or support they deserved. Example: Despite the Shirelles' impressive popularity, they weren't allowed to perform on "Ed Sullivan", the Supremes luckily got through in '64. | |
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