Unh! Good God, y'all...
205. James Brown "Say It Loud"
After presiding over the birth of funk, introducing the world to some of it's greatest musicians, and helping to quell the Watts riots by playing a show in exchange for a promise of peace, the Godfather Of Soul decided that the time for hat-in-hand begging for acceptance was past and unleashed this strutting Black Power anthem on the world in 1968.
Fittingly, Brown and the band attack this song with a singleminded determination. James' vocal here is among his fiercest (and for all the garbled spoofs of Brown over the years, one of his clearest), Clyde Stubblefield's drums are as hard as shotgun blasts, yet nimble as a ballet dancer, while Fred Wesley's (this record is his debut with Brown) trombone and the other horns provide the perfect exclamation point to the chorus' declaration.
There has been the occasional snipe over the years about the fact that the schoolchildren providing the wonderfully exuberant response to James' vocals were actually white and Asian as well as black, but Brown has said in interviews that this song was written for his own people, but by extension belongs to anyone who's ever felt out left out or left behind or lost. I once saw some concert footage of a Brown show, where 'Say It Loud," blares as a young black kid of not more than seven dances his butt off. Inspiring moment, that.
After presiding over the birth of funk, introducing the world to some of it's greatest musicians, and helping to quell the Watts riots by playing a show in exchange for a promise of peace, the Godfather Of Soul decided that the time for hat-in-hand begging for acceptance was past and unleashed this strutting Black Power anthem on the world in 1968.
Fittingly, Brown and the band attack this song with a singleminded determination. James' vocal here is among his fiercest (and for all the garbled spoofs of Brown over the years, one of his clearest), Clyde Stubblefield's drums are as hard as shotgun blasts, yet nimble as a ballet dancer, while Fred Wesley's (this record is his debut with Brown) trombone and the other horns provide the perfect exclamation point to the chorus' declaration.
There has been the occasional snipe over the years about the fact that the schoolchildren providing the wonderfully exuberant response to James' vocals were actually white and Asian as well as black, but Brown has said in interviews that this song was written for his own people, but by extension belongs to anyone who's ever felt out left out or left behind or lost. I once saw some concert footage of a Brown show, where 'Say It Loud," blares as a young black kid of not more than seven dances his butt off. Inspiring moment, that.
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