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James Brown Bio
Brown was both a brilliant bandleader
and a stern taskmaster, leading his band to walk out on him in late
1969. Amazingly, he turned the crisis to his advantage by recruiting a
young Cincinnati outfit called the Pacemakers, featuring guitarist
Catfish Collins and bassist Bootsy Collins. Although they only stayed
with him for about a year, they were crucial to Brown's evolution into
even harder funk, emphasizing the rhythm and the bottom even more. The
Collins brothers, for their part, put their apprenticeship to good use,
helping define '70s funk as members of the Parliament/Funkadelic axis.
In the early '70s, many of the most important members of Brown's
late-'60s band returned to the fold, to be billed as the J.B's (they
also made records on their own). Brown continued to score heavily on the
R&B charts throughout the first half of the 1970s, the music becoming
even more and more elemental and beat-driven. At the same time, he was
retreating from the white audience he had cultivated during the mid- to
late '60s; records like "Make It Funky," "Hot Pants," "Get on the Good
Foot," and "The Payback" were huge soul sellers, but only modest pop
ones. Critics charged, with some justification, that the Godfather was
starting to repeat and recycle himself too many times. It must be
remembered, though, that these songs were made for the
singles-radio-jukebox market and not meant to be played one after the
other on CD compilations (as they are today).
By the mid-'70s, Brown was beginning to burn out artistically. He seemed
shorn of new ideas, was being out-gunned on the charts by disco, and was
running into problems with the IRS and his financial empire. There were
sporadic hits, and he could always count on enthusiastic live audiences,
but by the 1980s, he didn't have a label. With the explosion of rap,
however, which frequently sampled vintage JB records, Brown was now
hipper than ever. He collaborated with Afrika Bambaataa on the critical
smash single "Unity," and re-entered the Top Ten in 1986 with "Living in
America." Rock critics, who had always ranked Brown considerably below
Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin in the soul canon, began to reevaluate
his output, particularly his funk years, sometimes anointing him not
just as Soul Brother Number One, but as the most important black
musician of the rock era.
In 1988, Brown's personal life came crashing down in a well-publicized
incident in which he was accused by his wife of assault and battery.
After a year skirting hazy legal and personal troubles, he led the
police on an interstate car chase after allegedly threatening people
with a handgun. The episode ended in a six-year prison sentence that
many felt excessive; he was paroled after serving two years.
It's probably safe to assume that Brown will not make any more important
recordings, although he continues to perform and release new material
like 1998's, "I'm Back". Yet his music is probably more popular in the
American mainstream today than it has been since the 1970s, and not just
among young rappers and samplers. For a long time his cumbersome,
byzantine discography was mostly out of print, with pieces available
only on skimpy greatest-hits collections. A series of exceptionally
well-packaged reissues on PolyGram has changed the situation; the Star
Time box set is the best overview, with other superb compilations
devoted to specific phases of his lengthy career, from '50s R&B to '70s
funk. ~ Richie Unterberger, All Music Guide
James Brown Tickets
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James Brown Tickets
James Brown
09.01.06
House Of Blues - Las Vegas
Las Vegas, NV
James Brown
09.02.06
4th And B
San Diego, CA
James Brown
09.06.06
Madison Square Garden
New York, NY
James Brown
09.06.06
Hollywood Bowl
Los Angeles, CA
James Brown
09.09.06
Maricopa County Events Center
Sun City West, AZ
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