Brian of Nazareth's James Brown Mixes!

Brian of Nazareth guest post:

To try to capture James Brown's music and distill it to a single hour of music is not possible. It usually results in as many songs as possible crammed onto a single, one-hour disc. It will feature the usual suspects: 'I Got You (I Feel Good)', 'Papa's Got A Brand New Bag', 'Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine', which everyone already knows. And the 3-minute, for-radio singles at that. For the sake of coverage, they include work from outside his peak (before the early 60s and after the mid 70s) at the expense of the more interesting work during it. It might leave you wondering what the big deal is.

It takes some digging to find the interesting bits: the hyper-kinetic live versions, the two-part versions of the singles. Both of these mediums is where JB did his thang. He gets the band to improvise ("When I say 'uhhhh', I want you to hit me one time! You got me?" on Get It Together), makes fun of his band ("I didn't know you were singing Fred?" on Do It To Death) and proves he was Soul Brother Number 1 (the intro to 'It's A Man's Man's Man's World'). Then there's the artists James Brown produced and those he promoted on his revue (they were naturally signed to one of his record labels).

So the aim of these mixes is to put together some of James Brown's music that you likely won't have heard before. The bits that make him kind of a big deal. There are (fittingly) two mixes - parts one and two - that will each have 2 listening parties at 2200BST and 2200EST on Tuesday June 16th (Part 1) and Tuesday June 23rd (Part 2). Links and tracklists to follow.

-Brian of Nazareth