Posts Tagged ‘funk’
“I introduce you to the hardest-working man in show biz, ladies and gentlemen, the Godfather of Soul, Mr. James Brown”*…
James Brown shows you how…
Don’t go into this expecting Arthur Murray-level clarity of instruction. This is Soul Train-era James Brown, shaking way more than any simple footprint pattern could convey. That’s not to say there isn’t concrete information to be gleaned here, especially if you never really knew which moves constitute The Funky Chicken. Ditto The Boogaloo, The Camel Walk, and something I swear sounds like The Mac Davis.
James proudly demonstrates them all, as unconcerned as a peacock would be when it comes to breaking things down for the folks at home. (Trust me, your kneecaps will be grateful he’s not more explicit.)…
Learn from the best: “James Brown gives you dancing lessons,” from Ayum Halliday (@AyunHalliday) in @openculture.
* Danny Ray, emcee and “cape man” for James Brown
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As we shake a leg, we might send virtuosic birthday greetings to Aretha Louise Franklin; she was born on this date in 1942. A singer, songwriter, and pianist, she began her career as a gospel singer in her father’s church in Detroit. At the age of 18, she signed as a mainstream recording artist for Columbia Records. But it was in the late 60’s when she switched to Atlantic Records, that her career blossomed; she released a string of hits– “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)“, “Respect“, “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman“, “Chain of Fools“, “Think“, and “I Say a Little Prayer“– that cemented her status as the Queen of Soul.
In all, Franklin recorded 112 charted singles on the US Billboard charts, including 73 Hot 100 entries, 17 top-ten pop singles, 100 R&B entries and 20 number-one R&B singles. With global sales of over 75 million records, Franklin is one of the world’s best-selling music artists of all time.
Franklin won 18 Grammy Awards, including the first eight awards given for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance (1968–1975) and a Grammy Awards Living Legend honor and Lifetime Achievement Award. She was awarded the National Medal of Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1987, she became the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She also was inducted into the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005 and into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2012. In 2010, Rolling Stone ranked Franklin number one on its list of the “100 Greatest Singers of All Time”. And in 2019, the Pulitzer Prize jury awarded the singer a posthumous special citation “for her indelible contribution to American music and culture for more than five decades”. In 2020, Franklin was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
“If you fake the funk, your nose will grow”*…
Prince would get mad when people called his music magical: “Funk is the opposite of magic. Funk is about rules.”
Here’s Bootsy Collins laying down the #1 rule of funk: Keep it on the one…
Collins learned about The One from his former bandleader James Brown. Collins thought he was “killin’ ’em” with all his wild playing, but Brown set him straight:
“Son, give me the one. You give me the one, you can do all those other things.” So, I started to understand: If I give you the one, I can do all these other crazy things.” James Brown was the one that told me: “Son, you need to give me the one.” […] He didn’t know the power of that. That changed my whole life. Once I learned where the one was at? It was on.”…
Austin Kleon on the musical maxim that is also a life lesson: “Keep it on The One.”
* Bootsy Collins
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As we return to first principles, we might recall that it was on this date in 1977 that The Fonz jumped a shark on Happy Days, introducing– and immortalizing– the phrase “jumping the shark” as a metaphor for something past its peak, trying too hard.
Please, Please, Please…
He was “the Hardest Working Man in Show Business,” “the Godfather of Soul”– James Brown. Immensely popular with audiences from the mid-Fifties (when “Please, Please, Please,” above, was a hit), he was a tremendous influence on popular music, with admirers who included jazz greats like Miles Davis, and emulators like Sly and the Family Stone, Booker T & the MGs and “soul shouters” like King Curtis, Edwin Starr, and David Ruffin (of The Temptations). He was a famously-tough task master as a band leader; but it served his musicians well, as their education at his hands laid the foundation for several successful solo careers (e.g., Bobby Byrd, Lyn Collins, Vicki Anderson, Hank Ballard, Bootsy Collins, and Carlos Alomar). And he was the ur-source of Funk (e.g., admirer George Clinton cast Brown alumni Fred Wesley and Bootsy Collins centrally in the seminal Parliament-Funkadelic).
But Brown made what was arguably his most influential contribution with his feet: he was, as anyone who saw him perform can attest, an astonishing dancer. As a child, he’d earned pocket money buck dancing to entertain troops headed to Europe at the outset of WWII. Over the years he made that traditional form uniquely his own– inspiring performers like Michael Jackson and Prince, who modeled their moves on his, and prefiguring the current vogue of dance-centric pop performances.
James Brown died on Christmas Day, 2006. But happily, he left behind a guide to the moves that made him famous. The holiday party season, with its fraught occasions to dance, looms; but there’s no reason to fear, Dear Readers– just watch and learn. Michael Jackson did…
As we trip the light fantastic, we might recall that it was on this date in 1946 (when James Brown was 13 years old) that Walt Disney released Song of the South, a feature film based on the Uncle Remus stories of Joel Chandler Harris, in which live actors frame animated enactments of the adventures of Br’er Rabbit– like the story of “The Tar Baby.” The film won the Best Song Oscar for “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah”; but, while the film was re-released theatrically in 1972, 1981, and 1986, and has been released to home video in Europe and Asia, it has never been released to home video in the U.S.— perhaps because Disney executives feel that it might be construed as racist.
James Baskett, who played Uncle Remus, was the first black actor hired by Disney to play a live role. He was unable to attend the film’s premiere in Atlanta, the event hotels there would not have him. (source)
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