Listen to This

REVIEWING THE ESSENTIAL

James Brown Live at the Apollo

Recommended by: Joe Dana


There is an old question about what five records would you bring with you on a desert island. For a long time, I only had Tom Waits’ Nighthawks at The Diner and the Stooges’ Funhouse record on that special list. I have several records in my collection and many are my favorites but there are special qualities that an album must have to make it to the desert island list. For one thing, I can’t ever get sick of it. Another, it has to stir up several different emotions when I listen to it.

About a year or two ago, I bought James Brown’s Live at the Apollo record. It stayed in my car’s CD player for a good two months. The album made me laugh, feel heartache and most importantly made me want to dance. I finally decided that it would be an album that would be added to that exclusive desert island list.

This is early James Brown in the year 1962. This is years before “I Feel Good (I got you)”, “Papa’s got a Brand New Bag” and “Sex Machine”. This is back when James’ biggest songs were “Night Train” and “Please Please Please” If you ever pick up a James Brown retrospective, the studio versions of these songs seem tame compared to his later work. If you pick up the live versions off this album, the songs have been sped up almost triple time.

The album begins with the famous James Brown intro. There are hardly any breaks in between songs except to introduce the next song with a few bars from the horn section of James Brown’s backing band, the Famous Flames. You could compare it to the way the Dwarves or the Ramones play. You’ve heard of blitzkrieg bop, this is blitzkrieg funk.

Then it comes to an abrupt stop for a 10 minute long song called “I Lost Someone” where James seems to cry his heart out. He gets a bit of the infamous Apollo theater audience participation on the record too. You can hear a woman yelling that her friend lost someone just like James. You can hear James instructing the audience, “Don’t say ‘ow!’, say ‘OWWWW!’

Right when the audience is at its most vulnerable state, James kicks into a seven song medley at breakneck speed starting with “Please Please Please”. He finally closes with his instrumental, “Night Train” which is played so fast, it sounds like a different song altogether.

This album is punk, funk and soul. If the only James Brown you know is played during sports blooper reels and covered by funk cover bands, you need to pick up this record. It is only then that you will truly understand why this man will forever be remembered as the Godfather of Soul.