By Vincent L. Hall
Talkin’ about the gift that keeps on giving, you must be describing James Brown. In 2006 he commanded the world stage by dying on Christmas Day. His gift was magnified under the heat of the spotlight, and so was his departure.
Seventeen years after his Yuletide departure, James Brown is still a part of my psyche. You can’t forget a guy who once released 20 songs a year and at least one new dance.
To say that he was the “hardest working man in show business is no stretch or exaggeration.
James Brown is the Godfather of Soul, Disco, Hip Hop, Rap, and whatever music genre comes along in the next generation. Musicians will be samplin’ this brother for another millennium.
Some journalists could impress you by knowing that the orphaned Brown was born in Barnwell, South Carolina. Others could dazzle you by reciting the cavalcade of hits that hallmark his music history.
You know all the history if you saw Chadwick Boseman’s almost-perfect biopic, “Get On Up.” That 2014 classic was eerily precise, down to the hand movements and jive talk. There is no need to bore you with the history.
Long before the street was renamed MLK, there was a place known as “Sportsmen’s Rec” on Forest Avenue in Sunny South Dallas. It was a shooting range, but all the hustlers there used a pool queue. I did a lot of growing up there; somewhere between Big Six and Corner Pocket Right, my daddy taught me about life.
The men there were particularly kind to me. I was a brilliant little kid and very well-mannered. To my credit, I could do the James Brown (yeah, he had his dance), and they would pay me 10 cents a record.
It taught me a lot about pride, presentation, and practice. That jukebox bought me a lot of honey buns.
The first concert I attended was in the early 70’s and it seems like it was only yesterday. There were placards on telephone poles and storefronts all over Dallas, reading, “James Brown Hot Pants Tour.”
The radio played his music all day.
I copped a ticket, certain that everything about J.B. was in my mental rolodex. That was until they draped that second cape on him and walked a weeping James off the stage.
Within seconds, he ran back out screaming “Please, Please, Please!”
Repeat that seven times and change the color of the cape each time, and you still can’t comprehend how powerful his closing was.
But in betwixt and in between all that, James Brown gave Colored folks all over America something that can never be repaid. James Brown took us from Colored and Negro to Black. And if that wasn’t enough, he made us proud to be Black.
“Say it Loud, I’m Black and Proud” changed America. You may be too young or too Afro-centric to remember, but I can recall that calling somebody Black could get you severely beaten.
Colorism is almost as hurtful as racism. Black was often used as a pejorative against Blacks and is the N-word today. But James moved Black from a pejorative to a privilege.
James freed more Negroes than Lincoln!
James Brown has left the stage, and now he’s been draped in a garment he would plead to keep. But the gift of racial identity and cultural pride that he left us is the gift that we must continue to give to our children.
Please don’t take my word. Listen to what GQ said in an April 2020 article.
“How many times has James Brown been sampled?
Having been sampled more than 5,200 times, James Brown is the most sampled artist ever. In comparison, “Funky Drummer” and its beat (created by Clyde Stubblefield) has been purloined some 1,584 times by, among many others, Sweet T and Jazzy Joyce, Public Enemy, Run DMC, Ice Tee, De La Soul, Jay-Z, Kanye West, Dr Dre and George Michael, Madonna, and Britney Spears.
James Brown was a gift to America, and I bet your children would be proud of him, too.
Vincent L. Hall is an author, activist, award-winning columnist and a lifelong Drapetomaniac!
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