My grandparents had a house in Atlantic City, and I spent all of my childhood summers there. It was a big house, three blocks from the boardwalk and the beach beyond. Atlantic City in the ’50s and ’60s was a magical place, one that has been largely obliterated by the forces of progress. It’s as if a giant hand took an eraser and wiped out large sections of my life, only to replace them with gargantuan gambling dens.
Elizabeth James left Virginia in 1940. Like many black Americans who made the journey north, she was looking for a better life. The same can be said of my grandparents, Jews who fled from oppression in Eastern Europe earlier in the century. Somehow, the proud daughter of Virginia and the determined refugees from Europe managed to find each other in New Jersey. Lizzie came to work for my grandparents. She was originally hired as a housekeeper, but she quickly became very much a part of our family, and she had as much to do with raising me as anyone else.
I was not yet 10 years old as I made my way down the darkened stairs that night. I have no memory of what my errand was, or why I would have been moving around in the house that late at night, but it’s not really important. What is important is that I could hear the music grow a little louder as I reached the bottom of the stairs. Lizzie was asleep like everyone else, but her bedroom door was open just enough for me to see a golden glow fill the narrow opening. It was the light from the radio that she kept on her bureau.
The music was some sort of call and response. A singer was exhorting his lover not to leave, and the background voices were echoing his every line. The intensity was far beyond anything that I was familiar with, and only grew stronger as the song went on. It was at once frightening, and incredibly appealing. The singer left no room for any doubt about his sincerity. I stood perfectly still in the darkness. In fact I couldn’t have moved if a fire had broken out beneath my feet. Years later I am struck by the irony of the fact that the singer’s very real expression of pain filled me with an exuberance that I had never felt from music, one that would influence the entire course of my life.
By now you may have surmised that the voice I heard that long-ago night belonged to James Brown, “the Godfather of Soul.” The background voices were those of the Famous Flames, and the song was their big national hit, “Please, Please, Please.” It was originally recorded at WIBB, a radio station in Brown’s hometown of Macon, Georgia, and later re-recorded in Cincinnati and released by Federal Records (a subsidiary of Syd Nathan’s legendary King Records) in 1956. Of course I didn’t know any of that at the time. All I knew was that the music filled me with a spirit that remains in my heart to this day, more than 40 years later.
James Brown died on Christmas 2006 in an Atlanta hospital. He was 73 years old. He had been admitted a couple of days earlier with pneumonia, but remained convinced that he would be well enough to make his scheduled New Year’s Eve appearance at B.B. King’s in New York City. It didn’t work out that way, and as the Reverend Jesse Jackson said, it was just like James to die on Christmas, when he knew he would be the center of attention.
A few days after his death, thousands of people lined the streets of Harlem, hoping to have a chance to view the body of James Brown, which lay in state at the Apollo Theater. That’s a sentence that I never thought I would write, because I never thought that James Brown would die. He hardly seemed mortal. But there he was, in his golden coffin, which was brought to the Apollo in a horse-drawn hearse.
Brown performed at the Apollo many times during his storied career. Perhaps the most legendary show was the 1962 appearance that became the basis of one of the best live albums ever recorded. Brown was intent on capturing the energy of his live show on record, and when Syd Nathan refused to pay for it, he financed the recording himself. Now he’s made his final appearance at the Apollo, before being taken home for burial. It is somewhat predictable, given Brown’s history, that his body still is not buried two months later, while a legal dispute rages around him.
There are some important things to know about James Brown. Start with the fact that he invented the music genre known as funk. His huge 1965 hit, “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” laid the groundwork for a revolution that is still operating in popular music today. Every time you hear the latest hip-hop record, or something by Prince, you are hearing the echo of James Brown. His influence is strongly felt in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock.
More crucial still was his role in raising consciousness in the black community. He was an outspoken supporter of black business ownership, calling it the true path to the “real black power.” He urged kids to stay in school, and in 1968 he released what is perhaps the most important song of the civil-rights era, “Say it Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud).” His message was positive, never angry.
James Brown’s life was filled with business problems as well as personal problems. This superhuman performer was merely human in his offstage life, flaws and all. His career, like those of others, began to wane with the rise of disco music in the 1970s. But he stunned the music world with “Living in America,” his huge comeback record, in the early ’80s. He was one of the first performers to be elected to the Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame, in 1986. After serving two and a half years in prison, he was given a Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1992. He never stopped trying to be a positive influence on young people; just days before his death he was holding his annual event to give toys to needy children in Augusta, Giorgia.
Elizabeth James died a couple of years ago. I lost my grandparents some years before that. Now James Brown is gone as well. The golden glow that came from the radio that night has dimmed. Thankfully, the music will always remain, and so will the memory of that little boy standing alone in the dark, listening.
Ken Shane is a performing songwriter and journalist. His CD, South Ridgeway Avenue, was released in 2003. His writing has appeared in several magazines, and he is currently collaborating on a novel inspired by his songs.
Say It Loud: On Finding James Brown