Godly feats are only worthy of praise when they’re performed by a person, after all. Dynamite so impressive in the first place. That's why we've put together these 10 titles, distilling Brown down to his most essential cuts without losing the shagginess and humanity that make Mr. It's not the sort of feeling you want creeping in if you're just looking for something to move an ass or two. The man didn't know how to pull back, how to give anything less than too much.Īnd that can be daunting for anyone digging through crates packed too tight with Brown releases, as overwhelming as Brown himself. Anyone who wanted James Brown was probably going to get more of him than they could handle. That workhorse mindset is exactly the sort of thing that gave us so much material to work with. It's trying to reckon with a man so crazed by the idea of putting on a good show that he'd dance himself into a stupor, collapse in a puddle and then put on a cape. It's taking in the vocal-chord shredding screams and raw physicality that helped birth the body-movingest genre this country's ever known. To listen to Brown is to hear a man who danced his ass off in Chitlin Circuit juke joints and theaters where air-conditioning was a far-away dream. Every James Brown slab comes coated in a dried layer of flop sweat. Nobody in the history of American music has ever tried harder to entertain a crowd. For people who want to avoid this side of Brown's discography, there are a few box sets-shouts to 1991's truly incredible 4-CD collection Star Time-that serve as an overview of his career.īut paring down Brown's career to the indispensable highlights misses something essential about the accurately self-styled "Hardest Working Man In Show Business." More than anything, Brown was a striver. Most of his albums feature a few undeniable singles surrounded by tons of re-released, re-recorded or unoriginal material to make one whole long-player. That's an ungodly number, made a little bit less impressive by the fact that Brown surrounded the wheat of his singles with a hell of a lot of chaff. Brown released nearly 70 albums and most of those came between 19. But any statement to the contrary would be a lie. We're here to talk about Brown's best albums, after all.
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