I used to listen to James Brown’s Foundations of Funk: A Brand New Bag: 1964-1969 while opening Japan Foods, the Japanese restaurant where I spent my late teens learning the value of a dollar. I spent hundreds of mornings washing rice and grilling chicken to Out of Sight, Get It Together, Licking Stick, and Mother Popcorn. I’m transported back to those days every time I hear one of Brown’s classic tracks.
But there was James Brown music long before those genre-defining hits. So, this morning, while doing my rise-and-grind in Saber’s Snowrunner, I put Please, Please, Please on in the background.
I was born in 1975, sixteen years—and an entire Vietnam War—after the release of this album. Hearing Brown croon about his baby leaving, how all he wanted was to hold hands, and repeated doo-wops while his boys backed him up on vocals made me think of the counter at a diner, behind which a soda jerk in a paper hat greeted customers with a “happy to serve you” smile while a jukebox spun these singles of forlorn love.
Most of the tracks on Please, Please, Please are genuine toe-tappers. But I found myself thinking more of James Brown the person than James Brown the musician. I don’t know who he was—not really. But I do know that he was a wild man who got in some serious trouble with the law late in life. I wonder what thread of his character pulled him in that direction, and whether it had already been woven deep into his being way back in 1959.
2025.02.20