James Brown's Musicians Reflect On His Legacy

By Aaron Cohen

Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis
Maceo Parker
Clyde Stubblefield
John "Jabo" Starks
Fred Wesley
Christian McBride

Saxophonist Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis
I started in 1965 and stayed with the band until 1969. I became bandleader in 1966. I was in Rochester, N.Y., went to school there and I went to Miami to visit a cousin who plays saxophone for two weeks and stayed four years. Anyway, [trumpeter] Waymond Reed called me and asked me to come in the band and I thought, OK, that's a good way to earn some money to afford to play jazz. I went to the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C., sat in the wings for about a week to watch the show--the routines were amazing. I finally got my foot in the door, got acclimated, and it started to come naturally for me after a while.

All of a sudden, I found myself with this machine that I could use to exploit my thoughts and desires. James Brown pretty quickly had confidence in me to handle the music with no strings attached, no barriers. I was like a pig in the slop. On the bus, the next day, the band had to be onstage at 5 p.m. every day to do sound check, rehearsal, and so I was able to write music on the bus and have it played the next day, which was amazing. A lot of the guys didn't read music, but I gained their confidence and they looked at me to handle them with the proper respect and I would teach them individually, bar by bar, to put their parts together. It was a process that worked every day, that's why the band was so tight.

After one of the shows, one night somewhere, James called me into the dressing room and grunted a bass line of a rhythmic thing (demonstrates), which turned out to be "Cold Sweat." I was very much influenced by Miles Davis and had been listening to "So What" six or seven years earlier and that crept into the making of "Cold Sweat." You could call it subliminal, but the horn line is based on Miles Davis' "So What." I wrote that on the bus between New York and Cincinnati. The next day we pulled up in front of King Records studio, got off the bus, got in the studio, set up, and I went over the rhythm with the band. By the time we got the groove going, James showed up, added a few touches--changed the guitar part, which made it real funky--had the drummer do something different. He was a genius at it. Between the two of us, we put it together one afternoon. He put the lyrics on it. The band set up in a semicircle in the studio with one microphone. It was recorded live in the studio. One take. It was like a performance. We didn't do overdubbing.

"There Was A Time": If you listen to the horn line, the sequence of it, there are two beats on the first bar, then there's a little figure that goes for a few bars, repeats, next time it goes for three bars and repeats, makes it interesting. Clyde Stubblefield had a nice, solid left hand and he could anticipate James' body movement, which is how James Brown directed the band. We always took the cue from him.

We knew we were putting it down hard and heavy and we knew it was good, but we had no idea that 40 years later it would still be important.

To stand behind James Brown in front of James Brown's band every night was a thrill. Sometimes I thought I should have bought a ticket. He had routines that were incorporated with the arrangements of the music and some of the music came from his routines. If somebody missed a cue he would flash his hand in the wings where he had somebody waiting with a pad and pencil--$5, $10, that would come out of your salary. If your shoes weren't shined, had a wrinkle in your uniform, any flaw like that, you got docked. I didn't get many of them. Some guys, it was unbelievable, at the end of the week, you'd have $50 on your tab. He was strict on appearance, which is a good thing.

The horn section was more musically educated than the rhythm section. I could write stuff and it would propel the band into another level than the other bands on the road. We had stuff that was so slick, it was amazing. We got along great and had a lot of fun. One time we did the Johnny Carson show and after the camera check before the real show, Doc Severinsen's band was backstage and we were set up. What we did was a tune I wrote called, "Chaser." It was a very fast bebop kind of thing. And those guys mouths dropped to the floor to hear the James Brown band playing that, sounding like Count Basie. It was a strict organization, ahead of its time.

We worked on it constantly, we lived together, and what we did all the time. It was love, passion, and desperation sometimes. Hard work, but we were young and could handle it.

I learned not to be so stuck on Western music theory. James Brown taught me that all the things I learned in school, college, was ok, but if it don't hit you in your gut and make you move, something's wrong with it. He encouraged me to abandon lots of rules, because I'm a stickler for this, that, and the other and he got me out of that. I appreciated him for that.



Saxophonist Maceo Parker
(On receiving the news of James Brown's death): I was down in Florida with my family, just vacationing, chilling, and it was unbelievable. Somebody called me before CNN got the news. [Brown's manager] Charles Bobbit must have called somebody and somebody called me at 3:30 a.m. Then I immediately turned the TV on and it hadn't hit CNN yet. I was totally shocked, because we used to joke that "You know, James is going to outlive us all, right?" I called [trombonist] Fred Wesley--we would always say, "James is going to be 200 years old and say, ÔYeah, I remember 150 years ago when all these guys were around.'"--and Fred said, "You think it may be a hoax?" But, no. You just don't want to believe, just want to come up with something that it can't be true.

Somebody sent me some old stuff from 1967, stuff that was recorded and videoed, I think in France, where, goodness gracious, watching myself and James that young and everything is uptempo and fast, I've been watching that because my wife was a dancer on that show and it's really something for the kids and grandkids to watch her. It's crazy. We had been watching that, and then we get the news that he died. But he had been sick. Ain't it just like him, though, to wait for Christmas morning, so every Christmas from now, it'll be, this is the day that James Brown died.

The first thing that surfaces when I try to reflect on the early times is how excited me and my brother [drummer Melvin Parker] were to work with somebody of that magnitude. Especially in my role as one of the horn players: to be one feet, two feet, away from him. To get a firsthand look at how fast he could actually dance and move his feet, spin around, and do all those tricks with the microphone. It was unbelievable, but you're right there watching it, so you gotta believe it, and seeing is believing ok true enough, but my goodness.

I started trying to count the different rotations--he'd do eight, nine, 10 and stop real fast grab the microphone and do something else--how dynamic and fast he was comes to the surface when I reflect back on the early years. He had that unique husky raspy voice, but could scream at the same time, fall on his knees with the cape throwing and all that. He called himself the "Hardest Working Man In Show Business"--or maybe some DJ came up with that--"Mr. Dynamite," he enjoyed every bit of it. Especially the Hardest Working Man In Show Business. He didn't want anybody to outdo him, outwork him. People could see in the audience that this guy is not joking, this guys is really working. That was his thing, his concept, just work, work, work for the people and they have to enjoy what you're doing.

A lot of the music he came up with complemented his dancing. He had the ability to dance that quick way, so he had to come up with music to compensate that. Energy-wise, we were young--me, my brother--had been playing that kind of music, anyway. That was the kind of music that we'd choose. We chose funky, which was right there with the James Brown way of doing it. When we were in high school, we had groups and tried to do little routines, swing the horns around like James Brown, so by the time we got to him, it was like we were practicing and practicing to work with him. All the dynamics were his concept, his way.

Some of it was moderate tempo, and we had slow ballads, like "I Wanna Be Around" and "If I Ruled The World." He enjoyed a ballad every now and then, but that quicky quicky fast stuff was his thing. We'd do sixteenth notes when it was called for (sings "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag").

(On changing the course of popular music): No, we didn't have a sense of that. You just dig down into your soul, your creativity and try to come up with something that's meaningful because everything you play is going to be documented. You know that whatever you play is going to be documented. It's going to be a one-take thing and whatever you play is it. But I always wanted to be in that position since elementary school and high school. As I observed groups, especially Ray Charles' group, I was in awe of Hank Crawford and David Newman. So there was a great pride in being the soloist for James Brown.

Once James Brown found out my concept or style of playing went hand in hand with his style of singing--almost an extension of his singing right to the instrument without missing too much of a beat--that's what he recognized in me. But we did a lot of trading horn licks, solo licks. Fred Wesley and I really went down through there and had a lot of fun doing it. When we got ready to record "Future Shock," we had been trading solos for a while and we were almost tired when he got ready to do the recording and had wished we had recorded the first take. But we were still satisfied with what we did. I got inspired playing with Fred and Pee Wee, I never met anybody who played trombone like Fred.

James would get with Pee Wee at a time, Fred at a time, me, or whoever was designated to be the go-between from what he wanted and what he wanted the band to rehearse. But we didn't have a lot of time for rehearsal. We just tried to get some idea of what he wanted and play and then if he liked what we played, he'd keep it and if he didn't he'd try to change it. Or have the band do "da-da-da-da" and then if you do "da-da-da-da," he'd say, "No, I went "DA-da-da-da-da." It was an experience and we all knew the process and enjoyed the process and knew what we had to go through. But it was a sense of fulfillment to when you went from point A to point finish, that was fulfilling too. We used to do a lot of vamps and when he'd try to get himself together, there was me and [saxophonist] St. Clair Pinckney doing solo work ... and that's how him calling my names in a lot of tunes came about, letting us know who he wanted to do the solo, and what better way to do this than call the cat's name? But it was all good, man. Pee Wee was really good with the chords, the different arrangements, the voicings and all that stuff. Almost nobody like that in terms of voicing and horn arrangements, he was A-number one. Fred learned a lot from him and Fred was very good, too. Fred was a trombone player who was first interested in the bebop stuff. He enjoyed that bebop stuff. At first he didn't know that he wanted to play James Brown stuff, but he didn't know he'd have so much fun and the wide range of music once he got here. We enjoyed a lot of stuff. James was noted for the stuff he recorded and the stuff he sang, but we played a lot of stuff, a lot of jazzy stuff.

We listened to just about anything that was recorded--everything from Johnny Mathis to Ray Coniff, you name it. We had a Nina Simone thing, Jimmy Smith, Tony Bennett, we had all this stuff. That's how you learn, especially ballads. He would sing everything and you learn this stuff just by listening over and over again and then you throw some Ray Charles in there or you start getting into the rhythm and blues stuff like The Coasters, Temptations, Motown, everybody. Ruth Brown. Fats Domino. We'd listen to records and that's how we learn stuff. If I heard it, I could figure out what chords they were doing and melody, we'd play it. As you get older and older, you find what you really like, what your calling is, you branch over there and my thing was the James Brown style. Even though I like the big band jazz stuff. If you do the ballads, you can get a standard and do it in a slow form, that's jazz.

Somehow, for whatever reason, James Brown music and performances, people really, really craved. But you have to remember back then there was no Michael Jackson, no Prince. There were other groups, but not as dynamic. Tell you what: When I first got hired, there was a guy on James Brown's show who was a guest, he didn't have a band at that time, his name was Otis Redding. He had "Come To Me" and "These Arms Of Mine" and James Brown's band backed him. When I first got hired, my job was to just sit in the audience, view the show, what the horns were doing, when they go left or right, and Otis was on the show, and I thought, "Goodness gracious, if he ever got his own band."

We're all born with something where there's something in there musically that wants to get out and you can't ignore it. In James Brown's case, he was a boxer, played baseball, so who knows if that helped train him to have that particular beat ... I don't think so. I think you're born to hear that beat, have that pulse, like a metronome, and then start having the syncopation to make it funky, and then being able to dance and fit music to fit the dance. That's how I think he came up with all that different music. He had to create the music to compensate all the different things he could do dance wise. As entertainers we have all that stuff, nurture it, and try to do as much with it as we can. It's just a God given talent, like the guys who can hit that baseball, throw that football. A lot of stuff can't be taught, it's an innate ability to be able to do. You're thankful for that and handle it as much as you can.

Funky music is syncopated. Once you get the drummer to do that [demonstrates], everybody else has got to fall into that rhythm and that's funky. Again, it's what I started doing or playing, that sort of style before I was in high school, because that interested me somehow. By the time I met James Brown, heard him, and he had the chance to hear me, he heard I had a different approach because it was all funky. Some musicians called it "fatback." When you start hearing all these different concepts, it sealed your ambition to contribute whatever you feel that you can contribute to different everything. And you still got the jazz, where you're not clowning around, where you're serious about the approach, studying bebop. So you do a little of that and then you get to the point where you don't want to be quite as serious all the time. Where you let your hair down a little bit, dance a little bit, clap your hands a little bit, wave your hands in the air a little bit. That's the funky approach.

I wouldn't say the music was different [from 1965 to 1967], just an extension. It's still James Brown, it's still me. An A tune, B tune, C tune, D tune, and so on. It's just an extension of what we do.

If I think about "hard" in "hard work," I think about when we first started, when James was really into not making any mistakes, not have anybody play a note on the wrong chord, or the sax section not doing a phrase exactly like he heard it, then we rehearsed. If we played The Apollo, we'd play a show, maybe have 10 minutes after the show to get some food, then we'd run right back downstairs to rehearse. Then right to another show again, then right to another show again, and then the same thing all day, and then the same thing the next day and the next day. That's hard. But we knew we had to do that, because we knew what we had to go through in order to get to where he wanted us to be. So we had to practice practice practice, rehearse rehearse to rehearse until you got it right to satisfy him. We got to the point where it would be ok with us, but not necessarily with him, so we had to go back and go over this a little bit more again. When you're in a musical group and you know you have to go from point A to point B, then you got to travel some way, by bus or airplane, that's not hard because you already got a mental thing on that because you know you got to do that. Same thing with playing the shows, that's not hard. That's almost like getting paid for doing your hobby--it's what I enjoy doing and was born to do this. Even though we worked a lot, it gave us more time to showcase what we could do and hopefully satisfy more people. Once you did all the states and all the cities, going to Europe, there's a fulfillment out of it.

It was a blessing to be one or two feet away from him to watch what he was doing. But then I got to, "I wonder why he repeats a tune," or "I wonder why he went from one tune to another without any space," or "Why does he do four fast tunes and then slower tunes," and then I'd see if I could get the answers without asking. He had the ability to read the audience, to tell when a song was too fast, or too long, or maybe not long enough. That's what I thought I've learned throughout all those years from him is how to read an audience.

Each individual brought something to the table. When we got together, we were all on the same page because we were all interested in playing this kind of music. Clyde Stubblefield just had his own style--he used that snare drum a lot [demonstrates] and my brother worked the hi hat (demonstrates. Before that, Nat Kendricks was playing drums. Nat played some of the slower stuff, bluesy backbeat kind of thing. Phileard played the uptempo funky, funky kind of stuff. You hear, and then say, "I want to be a little like this, a little like that," that's what you do as aspiring youngsters. It's all good. When you get so many people who are right on the same page to understand what the James Brown thing is and want to do that thing for a while, they come on and do it. It's funky, that's it.

James Brown would want to be remembered as someone who loved performing and who cared about people, trying to give them pride in who they are. And that you got to get out and do something, like where he said, "Quit living on your knees." He had a million of those things.

I was talking with Charles Bobbit and he was with James when he passed. And he said that James sort of wished he had 20, 25 more years, but he accepted the fact that he didn't. When he knew that his time was close, he knew that if it's time, it's time. That's sort of comforting to know. That when he recognized it was his time, so be it.



Drummer Clyde Stubblefield
(On joining the group): I was in Macon, Ga., playing in a jam session and James Brown was in the audience and told someone to tell me to come over to his table when I finished, but I hadn't thought about who James Brown was. When I got through, I sat down at the table and he asked me to try out for his group. Two weeks later I went down to Augusta and there were five sets of drums on stage at a packed house, and I wen,t "Oh my God." We did a song, and the audience just cracked up. I went home after that and heard no more for a week or two and then the next thing I knew, he sent me an airplane ticket to North Carolina to join the show. That was 1965 and I stayed with him until 1970 when I moved to Madison, Wis.

The whole thing started when we'd go to the studio, nobody has an idea of what was going to be done. We'd go in, start tuning up stuff and [drummer] Jabo Starks or I would play a drum pattern--whichever drummer would be playing--the bass player would come in, horns would put something to it, guitar players put something to it, Brown would come in and put some lyrics to it and then you got a song.

(Playing "Cold Sweat"): I just started playing a drum pattern, I didn't know what I was playing. No one gave me a pattern to play and I just started playing a pattern and they said, "OK, let's keep that." It grooved, it was a groovy pattern. "Funky Drummer"--which all the rap artists are using and I never got a penny for--that was a great foundation for making the funk funky. When I was playing with Brown, I wasn't looking forward to nothing but playing music. I had no idea my patterns would circle the world. No one told Jabo and I how to play drums, we would just sit down and start playing a pattern, and they'd put that pattern in the music. We'd just play our thing and it was Jabo or my idea. James had an idea of what he wanted, but he just had the lyrics, a horn part, and we'd put in the rhythm pattern, and we'd have a song. Melody and harmonies were Pee Wee, Maceo, and Fred's stuff. We all had to put our heads together to make it fit so we didn't run over each other and stayed right with each other.

As long as you're on that one, that was the beginning of the song and you had to at least pay attention to the leader on that, because if you missed something you were wrong. That one was the dominating and it's true today, too.

We couldn't wait to get on stage. At showtime, we kicked butt like we felt good, came offstage talking about how we grooved it, it was so beautiful. Every show we did was fantastic.

Whatever we put down came out of the musicians, it wasn't planned and if we liked it we kept it.

I was just a drummer, I wasn't looking for a big outcome. We'd ride the bus and hear one of our songs on the radio and it was like, "Wow, that's the song we just recorded last week or the week before last." And then the radio would say, "Here's a number one song by James Brown," and we'd go, "Wow, it's number one." But we just recorded and put it out there.

We worked hard to make our show work perfectly. But the main rehearsal part was James Brown. He wanted hits when he moved his hands, it was hitting, hitting, hitting, and then come into a song, and then break out of that, hit and come into another song. It was always moving. That was the practice. Learning the song wasn't the practice, learning the hit parts and the turnarounds were the practice. We had the show all fixed up for one night and when he would come onstage he'd say, "We're changing the whole show, so just watch me. I'm putting another song in, and then we're going to this." So we were always on edge wondering what was going to be. It was very exciting.

It was our turnarounds, but the hits were Brown's. I might hit pop pop pop and then Jabo would hit pop and go into "It's A Man's World."

A lot were recorded in one or two takes. By having your own patterns, you're just thinking about playing a groove, so you have nothing else to think about, like "He wants this pattern, I gotta make this turnaround." You just set the groove and put the pattern in it.

Yeah, they were all done in 4/4 time, but a lot of different changes that we had. It was just so hot. It's just our background, that's where we came from, that type of church gospel music, rock and roll. I'm almost 64 and I was playing grooves on garbage can tops and then I came into James Brown's band with the same grooves.

I wasn't putting it in any kind of category or nationality, I was just putting them in a groove pattern. I didn't think if they were African grooves, Canadian grooves, or whatever. I was just putting them in Clyde Stubblefield grooves.

Jabo and I have a group called The Funk Masters now. But I brought how to make a song sound like a great song where it's not a jam, it's a groove, where everybody has their own pattern to play in that groove. It's different--in a jam, everybody's playing on the same line, mostly. But in a groove, you find a line, you get on it, and somebody else is over there and everybody meet up on the corner, turn around and take off again and go on your groove. But you never play the same pattern when you're jamming, so we never jammed, we grooved. We all know how to jam, but to keep from getting up on somebody else's pattern, that's hard to do. I learned a lot from Jabo, he's my mentor.

Well, James Brown is gone and we're surprised he's gone at such an early age. We always figured he would last forever and be here long after we were gone. We're thankful that he left a lot of music here for us. I'm only sorry that he didn't do any new music. He had a lot more music in him and I'm sorry he didn't go in the studio and put some of this music down. But he left us a lot and I'm thankful for that.



Drummer John "Jabo" Starks
It was some good times. It was a good learning process for me coming from an all blues/swing gig to a funk gig. You had to change the way you were doing things. I already knew about pockets, but you had to learn to jell with the rest of the rhythm section. The funk part, to groove with that part, and I learned about the business part, too.

I learned to groove before I joined. I played locally and that's what we were into doing, just playing grooves. You learn to play in a pocket and just hold it there.

James' whole thing, when you were playing with him, was the one. Everything had to happen on the one. However your rhythm changes were made or how you played your patterns, you had to distinguish the one and that helped you stay focused on what you were really doing. You could do anything you want as long as you were on the one. You know where it is, you feel it, so you can do anything you want to do as long as everybody who's with you knows where you are. Especially in the rhythm section. If you're playing, got your one established, it's there. You can feel that, even with the horn players, when all of the solo work, they're still listening for that one. You have to stay on that one to let everyone know where you are.

You had to do the rhythm and blues part before the jazz part, because unless you were one of the giants, you weren't going to make it in jazz. Waymond Reed and Pee Wee Ellis were great jazz influenced people, but you had to make the money, then you could do what you wanted to do. Before I got with James, I was playing in a big band swing and even with James, there were some things that weren't recorded where you could stretch out and play that jazz feel.

[Bassist] Bootsy [Collins], when he came in the band, it was a 360 degree turn with Bootsy's style. So I had to adjust myself to fit the patterns that he was playing. We all played off of each other, but it worked to fit in one glove. You were playing your part, but you were playing your part to fit what everyone was doing. You didn't get in each other's way. With Johnny Griggs, it just enhanced that rhythm and you have to understand how funky Bootsy and his brother Catfish Collins were doing. I had to change to fit into the glove that they were into. You listen, then you try what works. You play a few bars and if that didn't work, you change around. When the rhythm started, you knew how to fit into that same groove. I can't explain technically how it was done, but you listen enough, then you hear and can adjust and do what you do to add to what they're doing to make it all fit together and make it fit as one.

When James came onstage, you didn't see anybody but James. Because the minute you didn't see him was the minute you got caught for not paying attention. When you saw him flicking his fingers, every fine was five bucks. I'm serious. But that was for you not paying attention. I truly enjoyed it, because it said, "Watch me." Those little moves he would make and those little hits he'd make, it was like a dancer. Like what the old guys called "hoofing." When you're tap dancing. I started doing that with James Brown, I started catching all his little moves. There were some that were done on the one, but once the groove started, it didn't have to be on the one. He would make his moves and still keep the groove going. A lot of times, James would start making moves and you'd be like, "Whoa, buddy." But I was blessed to be able to catch it and still hold the groove where it was supposed to be. That had become a little trademark. With James, with all the stuff that would be hitting him on certain tunes, he would forget sometimes the hits that were supposed to be made. I would make them and he'd turn around look at me and smile and then he'll go back. But if you ever paid attention, when he looked around and he knew he missed a couple things, he'd turn around, look at me and laugh and he'd slide and before you knew it, he'd do the same thing and make them that time. He was human like everybody else and he had so many things going on.

James asked me, "Why do you figure you won't pay fines?" I said, "Because you give me this job. You're in charge. You tell me what you want me to do, I'll do it until you change it. It's not my priority to change your show. Until you change it, I'm going to do it exactly as you tell me to do it. All those hits that come in, I'm going to do it when I'm supposed to do it. Whatever your rules are, I'll follow. When I can't do it, I'll tell you that and I'll go home." But I didn't pay no fines.

I've never told a lot of people this: After some shows when he'd miss some of the hits that were supposed to be done, I'd go to his dressing room sometimes--and I had access to James anytime I needed to talk to him--I'd knock on the door, and we shut the door, and I'd say, "You know you owe me $40, don't you?" And he'd just fall out, "You got me, Jabo!" We'd just laugh about it, crack up, and I'd go about my business. But if he caught you, he wasn't funning--you paid that!

You learned a lot from James. It was strictly business. You represented the group, but you represented yourself. You were always dressed neat and addressed each other as Mr. and Mrs. At times we would get together, and I would address him as Mr. Brown. When we were in the dressing room, it would be "Jabo" and "James," but that was in the privacy of us doing it. He was showing guys who were not--I don't want to say not accustomed to it--you had to do that with that group, the way you were dressed and addressed each other, that's what you did. And it was a lot of fun.

James did recordings as if he were working.

I played the way I played and Clyde play the way Clyde played. And that added, because when you listen, you could take something that was done from what Clyde would do and I could add to what I wanted to do, and Clyde could take something that I was doing and add it to what he was doing. You could do the same tune, but do it your way. It helped to hear other drummers and hear what they were doing, especially with our group. You adjusted to that.

When guys come up and say, "You invented this," it makes you feel good.

James should be remembered as an innovator and as someone who tried to give some sound instruction, sound doctrine. That this is who I am, this is what I do. I don't tell you to do as I do, but pay attention to what I'm doing and try to help somebody else as you go along to do something worthwhile. He was a businessman and I learned a lot of business from him. He was an entertainer's entertainer, when he walked onstage, he worked just as hard if there were five people in the audience or 25,000 people sitting there. And he did it all in a respectful way. There was no vulgarity, no degrading of people. It was just a good wholesome groove.



Trombonist Fred Wesley
The band I inherited after [bassist] Bootsy Collins left in 1970 was a band of marginal musicians. I had to put the band together for an Apollo show and I had to rehearse at the Apollo theater and we had the band shaky, but good. They knew all the parts and James Brown asked me if I had the band together and I said, "Yes," and I had my fingers crossed when I said it. But when he got in front of the band, jumping around, tapping his feet, the band came together real good. He was a dynamic performer who had the ability to bring the band together. People say James Brown wouldn't be anything without his band, but any band that James Brown stands in front of is a good band all of a sudden. He had tremendous energy and it was infectious throughout the band, it made everybody tight. If you knew the parts, his energy would lock it together.

James Brown had no musical knowledge, he didn't know any music theory at all. So anything he put together came straight out of his mind, out of his heart and that made it different right away. There were no basis in music theory for that. His energy is what made it work. He would give you rhythms that nobody else ever thought of. He would give you patterns that nobody else ever thought of and his energy made it work. That's what's important to know about him. Everything came out of his mind brand new and we had to make it work.

"Get On The Good Foot" is a good example. Those simple lines, the bass line, the guitar line, other guitar line, are so simple. And the drum beat (demonstrates). There was no reason for that to work, and the horn line, also. That shouldn't have worked. But when you put all the parts together slapped against each other, they worked. Then he came in with his energy, he made it work. It took me a long time to understand what he was doing, but then when I got it, I just communicated it to the rest of the band and we made a great record.

James didn't understand how to do it musically, so we had to do it his way. And his way was just hit it and quit it. Hit it when you're supposed to hit and not hit it when you're not supposed to hit it. Forced music. We just forced it to work. It got to be easy to force it to work after a while because you knew that it was unorthodox, unheard of, so you just made it work. I hope I explained it correctly.

The jazz helped a lot. Jazz is improvisational and being able to improvise helped a lot, but you had to play James Brown parts as is. You couldn't improvise what it was. You would improvise the part itself, but once you got the part, you had to stay with it. Jazz came in handy because you had to improvise the part, but once you got the part, you had to stick with the part. There was no more improvising after you got it. That was important. After you got the part, you had to play it all the time just like that. The bass had to play his part, the horn had to play their parts, and you had to stay on your note. That's the way it worked. By rehearsing it over and over again it stuck to your mind and we took pride in making these difficult parts worked.

We rehearsed over and over again, and then [in the studio], we turned the machine and he starts singing, and then it was one take. But it could have been an all day rehearsal. We used to do six shows at the Apollo, but we took pride in that. A sense of pride in playing that many shows. It's silly now, but I used to play with a fever blister on my lip and bleed all over my uniform and I used to get fined for having blood on my uniform [laughs]. Nobody wanted to get a fine, not because it was a loss of money, but because we just took pride in doing it correctly.

"Hot Pants": He had the basic vamp down. It was very simple and he told me to put a bridge together, so I came up with (demonstrates), which had nothing to do with the rest of the song. It was totally against the rest of the song, but was something that I put together for an opening, but it fit right there for the bridge. We forced it to fit. And it was a good digression from the vamp and it set it up to come back to the vamp. That was how that happened.

"The Big Payback": It was originally for a movie score that was a lead in to a scene that the good guy was getting all his revenge. So it started like that, but settled down into the funkiest beat ever. I have to credit Jabo for laying that groove, Jimmy Nolen, Fred Thomas, and Hearlon "Cheese" Martin for putting that rhythm together. I just gave them (sings), simply that and they locked it together and made it into a great song. That scream by the girl was added later. The basic song went down in one or two takes. I thought that line, "I don't know karate, but I know crazy," I thought that was terrible to put in my song, but what can I say? It was a good song.

"Papa Don't Take No Mess": I wrote the words, a bridge, a hook, and James picked out what he liked about it and added what he wanted to add. It was sort of messed up to my estimation, same way with "Payback." I just wrote a song and he just used the line from my poem, so to speak, and made other things out of it. I guess I was writing it about him.

By that time, I was convinced that we were doing something great. So when I wrote a song, I realized what he did was for a purpose and would be long lasting. I kind of grumbled at first, but I realized it was a great thing.

James Brown had no box to think outside of, so he thought outside the box all the time. I took from him the ability to think of things that didn't conform to any musical theory that I learned. That was very important. I come up with songs now that conform sort of, but that they don't conform is what I take from James Brown. It's not easy because you have to teach music as an art form and as music. You have to teach theoretically, but after you get to a certain point, you can teach non conformity and it's difficult to know where that point is. But a student who is really creative will find that point and stretch above and beyond the musical theory of it.

They are getting it, slowly but surely. One day somebody will theorize the James Brown method. It can be taught, but not yet. The sampling is taking the place of that.

Bassist Christian McBride
The funeral at the Apollo was absolutely touching. The whole city of New York pretty much came to see his body. They brought Mr. Brown's casket on a horse drawn carriage up 125th street, it was dramatic, man. It was a hero's home going. They had his body lying in state onstage and they had people come in and look at his body. I didn't get the final number, but since it was an eight, nine, hour day, I wouldn't be surprised if 20,000 people showed up. It felt very odd, too. James Brown is one of those rare people who's so powerful and iconic that the thought of him not being here doesn't cross your mind. I thought the same thing about Art Blakey and Miles Davis. Like with James Brown, when they died we looked at each other and went, "I didn't know he could die." But I guess, after all, we're only human. At some point during the open casket ceremony, they shut the doors for a half hour and Rev. Al Sharpton conducted a small ceremony. I sat with Mr. Brown's kids and a few of his band members. That put the cap on it for me. I spent my entire life listening to this man's music and studying it and trying to incorporate that same kind of feeling in a jazz vocabulary, so that was a great honor.

It's more a gut, instinctual thing. I don't think it's anything you can plan a blueprint and say, "This is how you translate James Brown's straight-eightth funk into a triplet swing." But there's a certain feeling, a certain momentum that funk has that can easily be transferred to jazz. When you listen to certain James Brown songs, there's always that undercurrent of the triplet feel. Like "Sex Machine" may be the most popular funk song ever, but it's not really straight eighths, there's almost a bouncy jazz feeling up on top that gives it that special loop and, especially now, I don't think any current r&b, hip hop, funk, or bands of popular music still play with that subtle triplet feeling. Everything is hard, driving, plodding. It's funky, but doesn't have the jazz flavor underneath and being around James Brown, I knew how deep his jazz roots were and how the jazz musicians, he tried to take the jazz and incorporate into funk. And we see how many generations of artists he influenced.

Here's the test I always like to do, if I take the bass line to the bridge of "Make It Funky" and just play it by itself and wait for a drummer to join in, unless you know the song, every single solitary drummer will come in on the wrong beat. I love how so many of James Brown songs are on the wrong side of the beat like that. "Doin It To Death" and "Let Yourself Go." I had to count out loud, because if I didn't I'd be on the wrong side. At the release, I'd think it's 5/4, but no, it's just the guitar and bass parts flipped over. They didn't do it on purpose, that's how they felt it--which is pretty incredible.

I first met James Brown in 1994 and we talked about re-recording Soul On Top (Brown's 1969 jazz recording). As things turned out, it didn't happen. But the great part is I got to spend a lot of time with him. He flew me down to Augusta for his birthday bash. For a while, there was a gap where I didn't see him. Then when I got the job at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, I thought, "Great, I can go back and do Soul On Top." I spoke to Fred Wesley and he said it would be great and I should talk to Mr. Bobbit. And I love Mr. Bobbit so much, he's the sweetest, funniest, most jovial dude I've ever met. And he said that he thought it was a great idea, but he also said, "You know how stubborn Mr. Brown is." That went on for two months and one day he called and said that Mr. Brown wanted to do it. I got to see him a number of times before we did the concert, when he was performing at B.B. King's in New York. He was really gung-ho about the show. It was touching to see that he was really excited about it.

James Brown was so kind, so loose, and so unlike anything that we ever heard about James Brown. He came to rehearsal and was like, "OK, Christian what do you got?" We ran down a couple of songs, and I was totally panicking--"Mr. Brown, is the tempo OK?" "Is the band too loud, is the band too soft?"--and he just said, "It sounds great." It even got to the point where he decided he didn't want to come to sound check because he blown his voice out at rehearsal and I said, "Is there anything you need me to do, Mr. Brown?" And he said, "You got it, don't even worry about it. Just make a CD of the sound check and have a runner send it over to me and I'll practice. Don't worry, I'll be ready." And I said, "Don't worry?" It was me I was worried about.

He was great. There was even a part where we had a small train wreck on stage and for three seconds I saw my entire life flash in front of my eyes. We were vamping on "Kansas City" and James Brown gave us the cue and nobody was ready and the number one thing I told the band was, "Be ready for the unexpected if James Brown screams or raises his hand, ignore the music and go with him." But it was in one of those places where nobody would have gotten it. He gave us the cue to take it out, we missed it, and as I was playing and conducting, I had to shout it out, and everybody had a look of terror. About four bars later, we played the ending. When I remember what happened, James Brown was singing, "Do it again!" But he did it cool, like he wasn't pissed. If that was James Brown's band missing that cue, the whole band would have been fined. But he was so mellow, loose, and having a whole lot of fun and that was so special for me. And that was confirmed by Mr. Bobbit. Weeks after we did the concert--we were planning on doing it again at JVC in New York this upcoming summer--and Mr. Bobbit said, "As much fun as Mr. Brown had at the Hollywood Bowl, I'm sure he's going to do this a number of times." Unfortunately we won't get to do it, but we did it that once.

He brought to American music the comfort of being in touch with your primal self. I know in the history of rock and roll, when Elvis came out with "Hound Dog" and wasn't allowed on television because he shook his hips too much and a lot of families thought that had too many sexual innuendoes, frankly that type of worry was candy ass compared to when you hear James Brown singing and you hear this pain and joy and deep sense of emotion that came out of his music. James Brown was coming from a spiritual, primal, instinctual in touch with the God that most people filter out in order to be successful entertainers. James was able to somehow take that raw energy and present it in the most highly entertaining fashion without watering it down, which is pure genius.

Ray Charles went through a similar transformation. When you listen to his early recordings he was coming out of Nat King Cole, Charles Brown, and then decided, "That's not who I am, I'm from Pensacola, Florida, I'm a southern man." James Brown took that and completely took it somewhere else and created his own sound. That's one of the great things he left to America. The last musician who created his own style. You hear scratch guitar and anybody knows will go, "James Brown, or his guitarist Jimmy Nolen." Anybody who has any sense, when they hear the "Funky Drummer" sample will go, "James Brown's Clyde Stubblefield."

We haven't even begun to touch the social repercussions. In a way, James Brown's music meant more to the people out in the street fighting, almost, or dare I say, more than King and Malcolm X. King was still alive when "Say It Loud, I'm Black And I'm Proud" was recorded. Somehow, when James Brown, who was the biggest black artist of that time, came out with that song, it sanctioned everything that came before it. You had the Black Panthers, H Rap Brown, Stokely, these activists, but now you got the world's most popular singer in the black community saying, "Say It Loud," so it was like the entire black community throughout the country said, "OK, now, it's cool." Which is also why James Brown took such a beating when he decided to support Richard Nixon in 1972.

They've made such a mockery of Elvis' image and I hope they don't do that with James Brown. As much fun as they made of Sinatra, there's still a certain level of elegance to the name Sinatra, which Elvis that he doesn't have. It's bad enough that most people of the generation after me just identify James Brown through the Eddie Murphy routine.

It's hard to take band leading lessons from James Brown, in a jazz sense. The way he led his band is a dead art. The dictatorship, scare Ôem, fine you if you don't do this right, that doesn't work anymore. I'll tell you what though, just knowing what's going to work, and that James Brown knew what would work and if it doesn't work, they're still going to find a way to make it work, that's what great bandleaders have.

Outside of anyone else from his generation, his music never got old. You're not thinking nostalgic. It still sounds vibrant, funky, very modern. But if you listen to a Motown record, like "Dancing In The Streets," it's still a great song, but it sounds old. But you listen to "Mother Popcorn," it still jumps out of the speakers at you. Alan Leeds told me that when "Cold Sweat" first came out, he called his brother and they didn't know what to make of it. THey never heard a drum pattern like that. The snare had always been on two and four, but you had this syncopated, off kilter, and a vamp, it didn't have two verses and a chorus, like every song ever had. They didn't know if it was good or not. And, of course, we all know now that it was great. Just a little ahead of his time.

James Brown told me a lot of things. My favorite thing that he ever told me is that "Too many times, people are waiting for the record companies to get you a hit. You can't wait around for them, you have to make it a hit." So many of us jazz musicians have that crab in a barrel attitude, that there just a few of us and we're not making it, and everybody gets pissed off at the person who does make it. But instead of getting mad, let's get smart, which was James Brown's belief.

Anyone know of any good books that discuss the man and his musical legacy?

Sandino said:

Many say his 1986 autobiography, James Brown: The Godfather of Soul, is his best one.

Timmy84 said:

But does it break down in technical terms some of the idiosyncratic concepts in his music or some of his innovations? I'm looking for something similar to the Stevie Wonder:a guide to the classic albums type of things