It's White on Black. Cliff White examines the output of the sex machine inch by inch.Cathy McGowan, reminiscing on BBC's 'The Story of Pop':

"When he came here he was hailed as the great James Brown – and the show was awful. I mean he just couldn't produce the sound. It was terrible. I mean it was really awful. It was a bad, bad show. A disaster. And the only reason that they devoted the whole show to Brown was because of the following that he'd got here built up because of the hysteria on the part of the mods. You know, it was like everything else. It was like everybody's-gotta- say-you-like-James-Brown-week. So, of course, the demand for James Brown records was such that everyone was writing into the programme saying James Brown. Every mod you asked would say James Brown. So you imagined that he was so big that if you could just get this James Brown... And that's really where Ready Steady Go! fell flat on their face – because it was awful. And the worst thing of all was that when he actually did his numbers the mods didn't like him. When he actually came into the studio they didn't like him. The music and the records were so fantastic, but when they actually came there to the studio to do it live... something went."

Now then, if you're the perceptive kind of reader that the editor like to thinks you are, you'll have begun to realize that Ms. McGowan and her mohair-suited friends were just a teeny bit disappointed with James Brown. What was that again? "...when they actually came to the studio...something went." What "went", of course, on that memorable Friday evening in March 1966, was the cosy notion that here was simply another harmless jigaboo with a trendy kind of rhythm and a humble smile.

There were a lot of them about at the time. In return for the legion of guitar-playing boys next door that were flocking across the Atlantic, we were receiving an amazing array of American talent. Rockers (black and white assorted, some famous, some not so), bluesmen (rural and urban, old and ancient), and a diverse selection of "soul" singers were all suddenly turning up on our shores. And it was the soul stars who were the darlings of the young and hip.

In truth, they were a mixed bunch. Some, like Solomon Burke and Ben E. King, proved to be even greater than their records had suggested, others (choose your own) would have done better to stay home and be admired from afar. But at least they were all greeted warmly at RSG where things were super and smashing so long as they loved our wonderful country and performed their hit(s) adequately. And then came James Brown.

Brown didn't so much appear on RSG as dominate an hour of television that just happened to fill the program's regular spot. He strutted and stamped and screamed, he sweated and grunted and fell on his knees (and screamed), he danced across the stage like he had skates on and then charged around the studio, through the audience, and back again (screaming). In short, he was quite uncontrollable, and he kept it up for the entire show, pouring out barely intelligible lyrics while his bloody great band hit chords that fractured nerves and hammered relentless riffs without mercy.

All in all, he was quite magnificent. Little old ladies in faraway places were moved to bombard TV Times with outraged invective, including, as I recall (although this may possibly be my fancy), a cry of "why are these monkeys allowed on TV instead of our own great stars like Helen Shapiro?" Even the oh-so-hipsters retreated behind a screen of confusion from where they still hurl the occasional brickbat. Yes indeed, Brown stirred reactions that had lain dormant since the hey-day of rock 'n' roll. Two years earlier Little Richard had perpetrated an hour of similar mayhem without any fuss, because even by 1964 rock had become comfortably old-hat, and anyway somehow it was always clear that really he was a sweet boy who just got carried away with himself. As far as the Ray Charles spectacular, screened shortly after – he was so acceptable, he was respectable. Brown was altogether more menacing. In fact, judging by the hysterical backlash you'd have thought he was some kind of revolutionary, bent on smashing the status quo. In a way, you'd have been right.

For the most part Brown has always been portrayed by the mass (i.e. predominantly white) media as a cunning opportunist. Energetic, certainly, sometimes even astute, but basically a musical bore who has achieved his success by understanding and using the mechanics of the industry to his great advantage. Part of this assessment is true enough – Brown has indeed skillfully manipulated his way to fame and fortune. It's the conclusion that this necessarily indicated musical poverty that's at fault.

Before Brown, black performers could either be true to themselves and accept the limited recognition/rewards that came their way, or bend to suit the mores of white establishment controlled show-biz. To a greater extent than is generally admitted this is still true, but at least black music and musicians are now an influential slice of the industry rather than an exploited sub-culture. It would be silly to promote Brown as the sole architect of this upheaval, there are too many other socio-political factors involved, but his has been the extreme example that defines the whole change. He has achieved more than any other single back entertainer, while continuing to produce music that is so intensely personal that it irritates many sensitive black souls, let alone white audiences.

I'm not, here, going to attempt to examine how he achieved the hitherto impossible. Instead I urge you to take a fresh listen to the aural evidence of his defiant independence, for Brown's music has always been the clearest expression of the complex tangle of angry frustration, determination, raw energy and pride with which he has forged his career. Now, with other black bands beginning to break through with updated spin-offs from various Brown themes – and the Average White Band creating waves with a remarkably clever pastiche of what he was doing several years ago – there seem to be grounds for a calmer assessment than the old tooth 'n' nail "he's fantastic/no he's trash" arguments.

After always deliberately vetoing any Greatest Hits/Best Of albums (because he's forever insisting that "the best is yet to come"), in the last couple of years Brown finally compromised by allowing American Polydor to put together two unsatisfactory compilations from his extensive repertoire, under the title Soul Classics. Malcolm Jones at British Polydor seized the opportunity to squeeze an extra four tracks onto each of the original volumes, and is now extending the series with a third album already issued and at least one more on the way.

Compared to, say, Atlantic's Ray Charles Story or the recent Tamla Motown Anthology series, the Brown albums are a frustrating disappointment. The tracks have been drawn at random from all points of his long and complex career and jumbled illogically together without regard to recording dates or continuity of style and atmosphere; all of his extended performances have been issued in truncated form (usually 'Part One' only); and, perhaps the greatest sin, there has been no attempt to sketch in even the simplest of background details. The only sleevenote (500 words on Volume Three) suggests that Brown is probably "the most important artist in the history of R&B music" but does nothing about the packaging to contradict the usual impression of a prolific but shallow hit machine.

Having said that, it must be emphasised that there is far greater evidence of his talent in the grooves. With hardly a dud track amongst the 42 so far used, for the first time it's possible to obtain a meaty selection of Brown’s important recordings without forking out for 20 or 30 albums or a shelf full of singles. Assuming that we'll have to wait until his death before someone takes the trouble to collate a better sampling of the man's work, I wholeheartedly recommend Soul Classics and offer the following notes as a guide around his maze of recordings.
Although cut-and-dried divisions are necessarily an over-simplification, there have been several distinct phases in the revolution of Brown's music reflecting parallel changes I his career. Using these as a base, I have suffixed the album tracks A to F and then summarized the six ages of Brown, craftily headed by appropriate song titles from the relevant period. Included are some generalisations which ardent discographers may wish to pick holes. Don't write and tell me – I'm just trying to make an awkward job less difficult. The additional suffix 'X' indicates bastard tracks recorded without his own band.

Soul Classics – Volume I

(Polydor 2391.057)

Sex Machine (E), My Part/ Make It Funky – Part 3 (F), Cold Sweat (D) , Superbad (E), I Got You (I Feel Good) (C), Money Won't Change You (C), Night Train (B), Make It Funky – Part I (F), Papa's Got A Brand New Bag (C). Soul Power (E) Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose (D), It's A Man's Man's World (CX) Hot Pants (E), Out Of Sight (C).

Soul Classics – Volume 2

(Polydor 2391.116)

Get On The Good Foot (F), I Got Ants In My Pants(F), Honky Tonk (F), Think (F), I'm A Greedy Man (E), Get Up – Get Into It – Get Involved (E), Hey America (EX), There It Is (F), Talking Loud And Saying Nothing(E), King Heroin (FX), I Got A Bag Of My Own(FX), Mother Popcorn (D), What My Baby Needs Now Is A Little More Livin (FX), Let A Man Come In (D).

Soul Classics – Volume 3

(Polydor 2391.166)

Brother Rapp (D), There Was A Time (D), I Don't Want Nobody To Give Me Nothing (D), Licking Stick (D), It's A New Day (D), Say It Loud – I'm Black And I'm Proud (D), Ain't It Funky Now (D), Good Good Lovin (B), Think (B), I'll Go Crazy (B), Escape-ism (E), I Got The Feelin (D), I Can't Stand Myself (When You Touch Me) (DX), Popcorn (D).

After writing the article I realized I'd assumed that you, dear reader, knew certain facts about Brown's career. In case you don't and were about to be confused, here's a bit of background detail: At the beginning of 1956, Brown (and The Famous Flames) were signed by King Records of Cincinnati who issued his records on their subsidary, Fedral, until November 1960 when they were transferred to the parent label. By the end of 1963 Brown had clashed so often with his producers and King's boss Syd Nathan that he ignored his contract and sent his own recordings to Smash, a division of Mercury. Although he was eventually forced to return to Kind until 1971 when he joined Polydor, he retained complete control of his own recordings. He'd stopped using the Famous Flames on record by mid-1964, but kept them as part of the stage show for a couple more years.

What d'ya mean you're still confused?

And now, to the music....
(A) Messing With The Blues (Feb 1956 – Jan. 1959)

The sharp-eyed among you will have noticed that there are no tracks suffixed (A). Brown's first eight sessions yielded 32 tracks with vocal group the Famous Flames, using studio musicians mainly supervised by King's A&R man Gene Redd. With the exception of the very first release 'Please, Please, Please', a beautifully adapted gospel song 'Try Me', and the last side from these sessions 'Bewildered', they were a commercial disaster. Stylistically they were nothing new, borrowing from earlier gospel-based R&B groups like the Dominoes and, in particular, the Five Royales. However Brown was never much of a singer in the accepted sense of the word so the overall sound was much rawer than the predecessors. As American writer Alan Leeds once observed, it was "rather like Little Richard leading The Drifters". When you consider that these are the only sides by Brown that year average '50s vocal group specialist deigns to collect, you'll realise how far removed they are from his later work.

So far Soul Classics ignores these formative sessions, but as well as the three tracks mentioned there are several other interesting examples of Brown's/the group's/the company's search for identity which ought to be aired again, including a frantic rocker 'Chonnie-On-Chon', a novelty song 'That Dood It', and an intense blues 'Why Does Everything Happen To Me'. Collectors who want to hear these and more should look out for Brown's first two LP's. Please, Please, Please (King 610, reissued 909) and Try Me/The Unbeatable JB (King 635, reissued 919), released here on London HA8231 and HA 8203 respectively. Long deleted, they still occasionally turn up in discount stores and oldies lists.

(B) I Got The Money (June 1959 – Oct. 1963)

In the strength of his first national hit ('Try Me'), Brown was signed by a major booking agency, assembled a permanent road band, and began recording highly original, exciting hits. With each success he increased the size of his band and stage-show; by 1962 he'd become America's foremost R&B star. The following year he was awarded million dollar sales for Live At The Apollo, gained his first pop Top 20 entry ('Prisoner Of Love'), and prepared to divorce himself from King.

With a well-rehearsed tight little band punching in and around his unorthodox phrasing, each new record took him further away from his contemporaries and closer to a realistic expression of his own emotions. Unexpected changes of tempo; sudden stops between verses, or even within verses; and a three-sided interplay between Brown, the band, and the Famous Flames, were used on both the fast numbers – the foundation of his intricate dance routines – and the pleading love songs which he extended into hysterical sermons.

Soul Classics includes a few of the best known uptempo tracks (although they've missed the finest of the lot, 'I Got Money'), but all the great wailers are omitted, including 'You've Got The Power', 'The Bells', 'I Don't Mind', 'Baby You're Right', 'Like A Baby', and the superb 'Lost Someone'. Hopefully, future volumes will do something about this. In the meantime Polydor are going one better by reissuing Live At The Apollo. A historic recording by anybody's standards, it captures the young emergent Brown at the precise moment of fruition, when all of his energy and ideas gelled in one cataclysmic performance. Never known to be self-effacing, Brown refers to it simply as "a masterpiece". I'm inclined to agree. BUY IT.

(C) Brand New Bag (Jan. 1964 – Jan. 1967).

The triumphant expression of independent success. From now on Brown is solely responsible for his own recordings and cuts sides all over America, wherever he happens to be at the moment of inspiration. Results are erratic, not only artistically but technically (for instance, 'Money Won't Change You', cut at the Talent-Master studios in New York, is so badly mixed it's liable to shatter your stylus. Live At The Garden, recorded six months later in New Jersey, is even worse. It should never have been issued). But the best are by far the most unique recordings ever made by a "rhythm & blues" singer. Aided by his bandleader Nat Jones, Brown begins to break down traditional forms of song construction. Hits like 'Out Of Sight' (cut in Chicago), 'Papa's got a Brand New Bag (Charlotte, North Carolina), and 'I Got You' (Miami) introduce new concepts in rhythmic progression which owe nothing to King Records or indeed anyone else except Brown and his alter ego, the band.

This was JB's peak period of white acceptance; the years in which he scored his biggest "pop" hits. Although this was partly due to the compulsive attraction of his new style for dancers, it was as much a mood of the times, for this was during the first "R&B boom" when all black entertainers were suddenly the in thing. Being the most flamboyant, Brown got the lion's share of attention – until it was realised just how disturbing he really was. His most widely acclaimed hit from this time, 'It's A Man's, Man's Man's World' had little to do with the overall development of his music, being an intensely performed ballad, written by someone else and recorded with a large orchestra.

(D) It's A New Day (May 1967 – Nov. 1969)

Alfred Ellis takes over from Jones to help Brown complete his rejection of conventional music. The hits become loose two-part improvisations over which Brown is virtually scat singing. White audiences get confused and begin to lose interest, but his impact on black music is immense and can be heard today in a wide range of derivations, from street funk bands to calmer recordings like Ben E. King's 'Supernatural Thing'. At the same time, many of his lyrics reflect his involvement in social programmes and political manoeuvring.

In many ways this was Brown's peak. His music had become so individualistic that it defied categorization; personally he radiated the charisma of a crusading politician; he was expanding his small autonomous corporation to include various other business ventures; and there was seemingly nothing on the horizon to threaten him. In fact his conflicting, and often naïve, political assertions started to backfire; some of his projects (a night club and a chain of restaurants) soon collapsed, and younger black musicians (Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone) were already making waves that would rock his boat.
Although Soul Classics includes most of the essential tracks from the period, they destroy much of the evidence of his creativity by using Part One's only. A great many extended records, including some of Brown's, are indeed totally unnecessary – often just an easy alternative to finding a flip side. However, performances like ‘Cold Sweat’, ‘Mother Popcorn’ or ‘It’s A New Day’ have got to be heard in toto to be fully appreciated. You wouldn’t expect to find the first couple of minutes of ‘Sad Eyed Lady’ on a Best Of Dylan album would you? Well Brown shouldn’t have suffered similar treatment here. I realise that time is at a premium on a multi-track compilation; nevertheless, these were arguably some of the most important and influential black records of the '60s, and it’s a pity Polydor haven’t shown than appropriate respect.

(E) Superbad (April 1970 - May 1971)

A short but vital period when Brown employed younger black musicians to recover from political ambiguity and the sudden loss of the band that had supported him through the sixties. (They left to try for a solo career as Maceo & All The King’s Men). In just over a year he recorded some of his finest sides – all dynamic Afro-rhythmic hits that reaffirmed his commitment to black roots and enhanced his, by then, legendary reputation.

The driving force behind this rejuvenation were the two Collins brothers (Phelps "Cat Fish" – gtr, William " Bootsy" – bass) who were groomed by Brown as part of the New Dapps, transferred to the major league in his own JB’s, and then left to form their own group the House Guests before doing a stint with Funkadelic. Although they only appeared on about half a dozen sides, their fresh approach left its mark on many of Brown’s subsequent recordings.

(F) Make It Funky (July 1971 – present day)

With many new bands building successful careers on the styles that Brown introduced in the '60s, he adopts his ‘Godfather’ image. But although, as a personality, he has become something of a grand old man of black music, he has so far refused to abandon young black audiences and continues to aim his records at that market. Obviously aware that he is no longer ahead of the field, his music has become erratic again in search for a new direction. At his best he is still unapproachable: often he is just an imitation of younger musicians.

Part of the trouble is that Brown got bored. After a decade and a half of challenge during which, step by determined step, he achieved more or less everything he could have hoped for, he had nothing left to fight – so his music reflected dulled emotions. Finding that he could still sell records without any greater effort he started playing games, including calling a nondescript flipside 'Parts 15 & 16' and issuing two versions of the same song as consecutive singles.

Also, modern techniques in recording have done nothing for the man whose greatest performances have stemmed from "live-in-studio" sessions with his own band. Increasing use of pre-recorded backing tracks, multi-overdubs, and various electronic gadgets have proved a poor substitute for spontaneous creativity.

However, I don’t believe that Brown is about to fade gracefully away. Now that his box-office receipts are down, record sales are becoming unpredictable, and other bands are carrying on where he left off, he has something to prove again. I’d hazard a guess that in another ten years someone else will be writing a similar piece about Soul Classics that have yet to be recorded.