One of these days, I’m gonna write about James Brown.  Actually, I started twice.  Telling the story of how a white boy learned about the black experience.  I’ll append my two attempts.  Neither of which get to the point of working on the South Side of Chicago in the summer of ’69 as a playground counselor at an inner city elementary school where a young girl was raped on the fourth floor and I wondered about all those handwritten signs posted everywhere promoting a POPCORN CONTEST!

Yes, James Brown was an icon.  A truly unique, American one.  A performer who could not only quell riots, but get in trouble with the law.

It’s been well-documented how James Brown not only impacted his generation, but the generation AFTER him, the rappers who sampled seemingly everything he did.  But my personal story began with the "T.A.M.I. Show".  The trailer, in fact.

You see we were rained out in Vermont.  And we went to the movies.  My little sister seems to ultimately believe it was some free-standing theatre in Stratford, where some kids tried to break a light while we watched "Emil and the Detectives".  I believe it was at the Majestic, in burned out Bridgeport, across the street from Mooney’s, where I bought my skis, with bamboo poles and bindings, all for the package price of nine dollars.

But wherever it was, whatever theatre we were attending, both Wendy and I were MESMERIZED by seeing James Brown in the trailer for the "T.A.M.I. Show".  It kind of reminded me of catching the Beatles in their debut on the "Jack Paar Show", playing "She Loves You".  I didn’t know whether to LAUGH or castigate myself for being so out of it and try to jump into the screen, to take part.

I’m the biggest Jan & Dean fan of all time.  I even went to their comeback concert at the Starwood.  And I was familiar with Lesley Gore and Gerry and the Pacemakers and the other acts on the bill.  All except for this one James Brown.  You see he was a black thing.  A negro thing, as they used to say back then.  It was two worlds.  But in one fell swoop, we ignorant white boys were CONVERTED!  Because there was NOTHING like James Brown.  He was giving it 150%!  Moving like no white man could, constantly.  And they had the cape thing in the trailer too.  Which seemed so staged, like something out of "Andy’s Gang", but all we knew in the theatre that something was happening here and we were LEFT OUT!

This event, seeing the "T.A.M.I. Show" trailer, has been a bonding experience for Wendy and me.  There have been phone calls and e-mail.  That’s what a death does, bring us closer together.  Deaths that count, that is.  Jerry Ford?  Seemingly a good man whose impact PALED in comparison to that of James Brown.  James Brown was the real deal.  Even when he came back, with "Living In America" in the eighties.  Hey, get your bad self together and we’ll go out and HAVE A GOOD TIME!

Anyway, trying to catch up on my e-mail, I found another message from Wendy, with a couple of links.

The first is of James and the Flames performing "Out Of Sight" at the "T.A.M.I. Show".  It’s spectacular

James Brown – Out of Sight

But it’s the second link that got to me.  The STONES!

Oh please, let’s not compare.  That’s not the point.  I don’t want to take anything away from Mr. Brown.  It’s just that in a week with so many tributes to the man who still had it, it’s STUNNING to find out that the Stones ONCE had it!

I won’t go to see the Stones anymore.  They’re a joke.  It’s creepy.  Did you see them at the Super Bowl?  They can’t even PLAY "Satisfaction".  And it’s no excuse that it was in the Dome.  As my friend Jake Gold said, that’s where they USUALLY PLAY!  Oh, they were once good.  Especially in ’75, at the Fabulous Forum, with the famous flower stage.  And back in ’72, when they still counted.  But this was AFTER "Beggars Banquet".  And "Let It Bleed".  And "Sticky Fingers".  This was AFTER the Beatles had broken up.  This was when they were the only band standing.

But what about BEFORE they made their masterpiece albums.  When they lived in the shadow of the Beatles.  Purveying a rougher sound, but without quite the world-changing impact, never mind mind-bending creativity?  They were just a singles band, right?

Wrong.

Watch this clip…  Rolling Stones – The TAMI Show

You’ll see my vaunted Jan & Dean.  And you’ll hear the screaming that was de rigueur back then.  But what you WON’T be prepared for is how STUPENDOUS the Stones are.  SO good that I’m wondering whether the sound was fixed after the fact.

No, Jagger can’t really be singing.  Of that I’m sure the second time through.  But the first time I was fooled.  Stunned that he once had it.  Before he slurred his words, became a caricature of himself.

Then again, maybe I shouldn’t beat myself up.  I was caught up in the EXCITEMENT!  We were ALL caught up in the excitement, the MANIA!

Even if it IS a recording, you now know what it was like to play records in your basement.  It wasn’t passive, we weren’t texting or surfing the Net.  We were paying attention.  There was something in these records.  That USED to be in rap records.  A living, breathing, DESIRE!  To express one’s self.  To bust out of your destiny.  To change not only your own life, but the WORLD!

False Start #1:

The King of the Blues, soulful James Brown
The Beach Boys singin’ now ‘I Get Around’

Last night we watched "Monterey Pop".  Oh, not the movie, but the OUTTAKES.  Monica purchased the boxed set for inspiration.

Now legend has it that "Monterey Pop" was the best festival ever.  That it eclipsed "Woodstock".  That you just had to have been there.

False Start #2:

1

So I’m standing in line for the Mountain Top Express, catching up with my sister on the telephone, and she says DO YOU REMEMBER GOING TO THE MAJESTIC AND SEEING JAMES BROWN?  And as Wendy is wont to do, she started whipping off facts, how we’d gone to see "Emil and the Detectives" and there was this movie of James Brown and…I told her that was no movie, that was the trailer for the "T.A.M.I. Show"!

It’s coming back now.  I knew it was the Majestic Theatre, but I just couldn’t remember what flick we were seeing.  Not that we saw that many movies there.  I remember "Let It Be", but that certainly wasn’t 1965, what WAS the movie.

Actually, I wasn’t sure it was the Majestic, I spent twenty minutes on the Net researching old Bridgeport, Connecticut movie theatres.  But Wendy confirmed it.  When two family members remember details the same, they’re facts.

We’d gone to Vermont to go skiing.  But it rained so hard on Christmas Eve that all the snow was washed away.  So, we drove home the very next day.  I’ll never forget my father opening the car door to look for the dividing line of the highway in fog so thick the only reason I didn’t freak out was my belief that if parents did it, they must know what they were doing.

And back in Fairfield with unexpected days on our hands, during school vacation, my parents looked for things for us to do.  And on a rainy evening, it seemingly rained EVERY night of that last week of 1964, they took us over the hill, down to this scuzzy theatre in Bridgeport, across the street from Mooney’s Sporting Goods, where I bought both my skis and baseball glove, to see this movie.

I was already infatuated with Jan & Dean, the fact that they were chosen as hosts of the "T.A.M.I. Show" elated me.  But the trailer was so cheesy, so otherworldly, as to appear unreal.  Was there really a show that included ALL these stars?  Did they play live?  How come I’d never HEARD OF IT?

Then again, this was before the Internet.

But the group that made the biggest impression on my eleven year old soul was the soul man himself, James Brown.  THIS guy, he was giving it his all!  There was this helper, this aide, who kept putting on his cape and removing it.  There was a backing group the size of a high school marching band.  WHAT WAS THIS?  WHO WAS THIS?  And why did they call the group the FABULOUS FLAMES?
This was my introduction to James Brown.

2

I remember hearing the news that Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on my transistor, sitting next to my blotter, delivering the Top Forty hits as I did my math homework.

It was funny hearing it this way.  It was somehow personal.  Like we weren’t all in it together.

I went downstairs and informed my parents.  I don’t think they really believed me.

’68 was a year of death and destruction.  Not only was the Vietnam War raging, but Bobby Kennedy ultimately bit the dust too, in the Ambassador Hotel.

But Martin Luther King’s digs were not quite so upscale.  The pictures showed a building that looked like a motel.  And no shooter was readily identifiable.

Not only the youth had been demonstrating, were off on their own journey of self-discovery, but the black man, and that’s what we were told to call him, was evidencing pride.  Glorified by this song by James Brown entitled "Say It Loud (I’m Black And I’m Proud)".

Whites weren’t afraid of James Brown.  He wasn’t for us.  He was the king of the black community.

Note: Realizing that "Say It Loud (I’m Black And I’m Proud)" charted AFTER the King assassination, I stopped writing.