Latest Release
- SEP 27, 2024
- 3 Songs
- A Soulful Christmas · 1968
- Take a Look At Those Cakes · 1978
- Get On Up: The James Brown Story (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) · 1964
- The Payback · 1973
- Try Me! · 1959
- 20 All-Time Greatest Hits! · 1965
- Black Caesar · 1973
- A Soulful Christmas · 1968
- The Singles, Vol. 1: 1956-1960 The Federal Years · 2006
Essential Albums
- The pleasure here lies in listening to James Brown and his band go long. Even on slow jams like "Doing the Best I Can," they groove to their limits, the Godfather baring his soul while instruments enter and exit. As you lock in, the feeling is almost psychedelic—what he calls the JBE (James Brown Experience) on liberating closer "Mind Power." And where the jazzy funk explorations of “Stone to the Bone” push you to unexpected lands, “Forever Suffering” offers soulful comfort.
- Only the second half of Sex Machine was recorded during a 1969 concert; the first consists of studio sessions with Brown’s crackling band, the J.B.’s. The Godfather of Soul is a live wire throughout, spontaneously testifying on “Bewildered,” riffing on the electrifying “Get Up I Feel Like Being a Sex Machine,” and punctuating all with his patented screams and shouts. The group ups the ante with swooping horn flourishes and stop-start rhythms, making for big-band funk unlike any other.
- 1970
- Back before Soul Brother Number 1 landed on the good foot, achieving superbadness courtesy of dripping-wet, nail-hard funk jams, he was still seriously bad-an R&B scorcher in the vein of Little Willie John and The "5" Royales. This was the James of Please Please Please, a young, fiery showman taking his gospel roots, doo-wop and blues influences, and a dangerous passion to a place that would one day go by the name of soul music. Please Please Please boasts Brown's two early smashes (the title track and "Try Me"), but the good stuff doesn't end there. A batch of his other early singles pull back the curtain on the man who, four years later, would ignite the Apollo: the Sam-smooth soul of "That's When I Lost My Heart," the street-corner serenade "Chonnie-On-Chon," the brokenhearted belter "Just Won't Do Right." Please, Please, Please is a rare glimpse at the birth of the Godfather.
Artist Playlists
- Get on the good foot with five decades of funk and soul from Mr. Dynamite.
- Brown's soul superpowers were never more apparent than when he was onstage.
- Their original tunes have been the source material for some of modern music’s biggest hits.
- Live cuts and left turns from the Godfather of Soul.
- The musical children raised by The Godfather of Soul.
Appears On
More To Hear
- Part 2 of Q-Tip's tribute to the great James Brown and Fela Kuti.
- Q-Tip closes out Black History Month with a tribute to James Brown and Fela Kuti.
- DJ Spinna celebrates the Godfather of Soul James Brown.
- Kamasi Washington picks the 5 Best Songs on Apple Music.
- Exploring the power of old school hip-hop, funk, and punk.
About James Brown
In the history of music, it’s likely that no other performer has been as inexhaustible as the Godfather of Soul. Before he was The Hardest Working Man in Show Business, James Brown was a poor boy from South Carolina, born in 1933 in a wooden shack. Convicted of robbery at 16, Brown started a gospel quartet behind bars, and singer Bobby Byrd’s family helped him get out early. Released under the name James Brown & The Famous Flames, 1956’s gospel-inflected “Please, Please, Please” gave Brown his first taste of chart success, but it took nearly a decade of relentless touring to make good on it. With 1963’s blazing Live at the Apollo, listeners got a proper taste of Brown’s explosive talents, and from the mid-‘60s to the mid-’70s, he burned up the R&B charts. It’s this era that defined Brown’s musical legend, and during those years he evolved from upbeat soul (1965’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag, Pt. 1”) to funk marathons (1970’s “Get Up I Feel Like Being a Sex Machine,” which features his all-star band, The J.B.’s), and amplified a message of Black empowerment with 1968’s “Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud), Pts. 1 & 2.” In the ‘80s, artists who sampled his music, like Afrika Bambaataa, with whom Brown collaborated on 1984’s hopeful “Unity, Pt. 1: The Third Coming,” placed him at the vanguard of rap. The relationship was fruitful; Brown’s music lives on in a wider sense than he might have dreamed—as the most sampled artist of all time.
- HOMETOWN
- Barnwell, SC, United States
- BORN
- May 3, 1933
- GENRE
- R&B/Soul