-"Black" is a thing that were basically put on a man --
on an American Black man, in America.
And, hey, I'm Black, and I'm proud,
but I really don't want to have to say
I'm Black and you have to say you're White.
I want to say that we're people and that we're brothers
and we got the same fight. But now, if you step on my toe,
then I got to defend myself as a man.
Same thing you would have to do it.
Hit it!
♪
♪ Watch me
♪ I got it
♪ Watch me
♪ I got it, hey!
♪ I got something that makes me want to shout ♪
♪ I've got that thing
♪ That tells me what it's all about ♪
♪ I got the soul
♪ And I'm super bad
♪
♪ Got soul
♪ And I'm super bad
♪ I'm a lover, love to do my thing ♪
-Without James Brown,
the whole trajectory of culture just goes somewhere else.
-♪ Hit it
-Everybody wasn't that talented.
Everybody wasn't exactly as driven.
That maniacal drive.
-It's hard for me to think about my dad
as the most important Black man in America,
because he was my dad.
-♪ Got soul
♪ And I'm super bad
♪ Yeah, now
♪
-I love that two things that he brought to the table
were, like, two taboo words -- "funk" and "black."
-♪ Super bad
-What's undeniable and consistently so
in James Brown's presentation of self
is that he's a Black man.
He's authentically and unapologetically Black.
-He found a rugged, ghetto way of translating Black culture.
The energy was in the feeling.
You know, records didn't have feelings back then like that.
-♪ Got to move, huh
-This is the closest you're gonna be connected to the soul
where slavery happened and you saw all this pain happen
and you saw this racism happen.
And you get the men from the South
and having all those different pressures
just squeezed out James Brown out of it.
-My dad...
-♪ Super bad
-...he was hard.
-♪ Hey, I'm super bad
-He wasn't soft.
-♪ Good God, get it, huh
♪ Super bad
-A diamond knows that it's a diamond.
-♪ Super bad
-And in order to rise to the top of the Earth's surface,
it has to endure an extreme amount
of pressure and temperature.
-He was brilliant.
He took all these influences and combined them.
And then he created,
almost single-handedly, this other group.
-He really believed that he could do things
and overcome things.
He marched to the beat of his own drum, literally.
-So it's all deeper than how great he was with the music.
-Hey!
-James Brown is a reflection of the Black experience
in the context of the United States of America.
That's why James Brown's story is an American story.
-My thing, I had to get the way I felt,
and I thought that I would be able to deliver better,
doing it the way I feel, you know?
It's one thing I've always tried to do
is be unlike anybody else.
Everybody over there!
[ Cheers and applause ]
You know, former little shoeshine boy
from a very, very poor family.
My father had to work hard all his life.
And we moved from pillar to post is what the people used to say.
We never really had a home.
I could, as far back as I can remember,
was always renting.
Paying another cat's bills
and never really paying our own.
-My father was born in a shack in Barnwell County,
South Carolina.
There was no breathing. There was no sound.
It didn't look like he was gonna come through.
But then, all of a sudden...
Oww!
[ Laughs ]
...he was alive.
They basically beat life into him.
He always used to say, "I was born dead.
So I had to make a life for myself."
♪
-Miracles just don't happen, but in my case, it did.
Music was the only thing I had.
My father stopped in the second grade.
My mother stopped in the fourth grade.
And I only went to the seventh grade.
No music, no eat, no food. I was a janitor when I cut.
"Please, Please, Please."
♪ Please
♪
♪ Please
-He's growing up, South Carolina,
Georgia, in the Black Belt, as we call it,
being just two generations removed from it,
the heart of slavery and knowing people
who were the children of enslaved folks.
♪
-Have you ever been broke and hungry?
I have really been broke and hungry.
Plenty of times in my life.
I raised up.
I-I come up through that kind of thing, you know?
Broke and hungry.
-My grandmother and grandfather grew up so poor,
Grandma Susie, she was a caregiver,
like most of the people during that time.
I mean, my dad was born in 1933,
and she was born back in the teens.
-My grandfather was a proud man.
He went without food,
and to keep from borrowing food from a neighbor,
my grandfather would walk 17 miles.
He saw that the life he had as a sharecropper
wasn't going to be enough to support the family,
so that's when he decided he would move to Augusta.
-James's father was extremely violent.
He beat her a lot.
She finally fled to New York City.
There's a history of Black and White men
who treated women like property and beat them.
It'd be like, "Oh, he was,
you know, just putting his wife straight."
-My grandfather was abusive to my grandmother.
Not all the time, but he saw it.
And then he was abusive to my father.
So he saw that heavy hand early on.
-That violence absolutely can revisit itself
in interactions that he has with other people.
-♪ I don't know how to sing the blues ♪
♪ Like I used to sing them, yeah ♪
-What you see growing up,
you think this is how things are supposed to be.
You don't really see a healthy relationship.
-It's one thing for your father to not be there,
but I think it's a whole nother set of obstacles
when you're dealing with your mother abandoning you.
My Aunt Honey, my grandfather's sister,
helped raise him as a man.
-My father was a very poor man.
And then my mother, she was a houseworker.
That's the early separation of the things happening.
So I was kind of brought up with my aunt
and caught a little hard.
So I did a lot of things to try
to be like the other guys, you know?
I never had the chance to experience
growing up as a kid.
-He grew up in a whorehouse. That's really the reality of it.
And what he saw at a young age was,
you wouldn't want any of your children to see that.
May make you think of women different,
treat women different.
-I was 9 years old
before I got my first pair of underwear out of a store.
All of my clothes were made, sacks and things like that.
You know, I remember when I used to go
to Floyd School, man, jack.
You couldn't look at me no way.
-No, at us. -Oh, okay.
You couldn't look at us no way.
-Me and you. -And miss nothing.
And you always see the thing. Yes, sir.
-You did. -'Cause the patches
was hanging loose.
As a boy, I shined shoes.
I worked at the car lot. I worked in a sawmill.
I picked cotton, danced for nickels
and dimes to pay the rent.
Jack, anytime you can't eat
and don't know where you're gonna get your next meal,
and if you don't get there early,
you won't be able to sleep in the bed,
you have to sleep on the floor or on a pallet...
Well, we had to pay $5 for rent for a month.
18 people lived in a home.
They couldn't get it up to save their life.
18 people.
And I danced for the soldiers.
In 20 minutes, I had $19.
♪ Hey! Hey, hey, pretty baby ♪
♪ With your fine old foxy self
♪
♪ Hey, pretty baby, with your fine old foxy self ♪
♪
-Augusta being a military town,
he spent a lot of time out tap-dancing for soldiers.
-They would come into the brothels,
so it's like, "How can I make a little money?
So I'm going to do my little buck dances,"
is what they call it.
-Buck dancing is one of those traditions
that comes out of the history of slavery,
connected to African dance.
But it gets brought over and transmuted into this culture.
And it was a certain kind of performance
that was expected to produce entertainment for White folks
watching Black folks.
-I paid the rent for three months
and put 4 in my pocket.
I went to a movie, my daddy whupped me,
and I come back and gave it to him,
and I went back and made some more,
went back to the movie. Come back and got me again.
-In this country,
particularly if we're talking about Black people,
generational trauma is often associated
with physical violence.
Mr. Brown's father disciplining him, beating him,
I don't know if he thought that he was doing anything wrong.
But now we know through research
that that violence that's inflicted upon children,
it changes them.
That trauma, you carry with you.
-♪ Want to love you, baby
♪ Ease my misery
♪
-One night, we were riding around in South Carolina.
He said, "Reverend, you talk to your father?"
I said, "No, I don't know where he is," and all that.
And I started talking about it --
"He left, and they cut the lights off,
and they took mama's Cadillac and da da da da."
And he said, "Son, stop. My mother and father left me."
-And ever since that time, I've been fighting,
trying to do it for myself.
-Oww!
♪ Talk about love, a doggone shame ♪
♪ Talk about love, I hate that name ♪
-My first talent show I won
was the Holland Talent Review in Augusta, Georgia.
That was the Lenox Theater.
The Lenox Theater was on Ninth Street --
Campbell Street at that time.
Today, it's James Brown Boulevard.
-He grew up in the South, and he understood this notion
that your value to other people is in what you can do.
-If you were on a plantation,
you weren't allowed to read books.
You weren't allowed to congregate in big numbers.
But what you could do is perform.
-♪ Come on up here
-Plantation owners and overseers,
they would allow slaves to perform in limited,
circumscribed ways.
They wanted a certain kind of performance from slaves.
-♪ Ooh, unh
♪ Come on
-James Brown's relationship to buck dancing
is where you really have to start.
It's about doing it rhythmically
and producing certain kinds of sounds with your whole body
but especially the lower half of your body.
You think of Sammy Davis Jr.
You think of that whole Black entertainment tradition.
So much of that is about the understanding
of what the feet have to do in performance.
♪
-That's exactly what art is.
We took our situation and made it beautiful.
No matter how ugly it was meant to be, we made it beautiful.
And that's what James Brown did.
And he took the history of that and the perseverance therein,
and used this experience as opportunity for him to blossom.
♪
-In Augusta, Georgia,
he would visit the house of prayer as a young boy.
And in the house of prayer, it's a lot of brass.
It's like jubilee.
He was attracted as a young child to that music.
-At the end of World War II,
when the big band era was starting to die,
they had what they called jump bands,
sort of like compact big bands.
♪
-My influence was Louis Jordan.
Fella who recorded a song by the name of "Caldonia"
and a lot of things that were very, very big in the '50s
and the late '40s.
♪
-Louis Jordan's band was the most popular one
in Black culture at that point.
His music was funny. Absolutely funny.
-♪ Caldonia, Caldonia
♪ What make your big head so hard? ♪
-♪ Oww!
♪
♪ Whoa
♪
1949, I was a juvenile delinquent.
Broken home.
Five kids, you know, underprivileged.
A low-income family and a lot of things I just didn't have,
and a lot of knowledge weren't there for my parents,
and they just didn't understand.
♪ Been a long time
♪ I acted like a clown
♪ I really don't know what to do ♪
♪ What to do
-Well, unfortunately, it was a situation
where there's a car theft was involved,
and he was sent up for car theft.
-I was 15 years old.
I was taken by the authorities, the police.
Took me about 300 miles away from home
to a camp just like that,
where I had 8 to 16 years.
8 to 16 years. That's a long time.
-James Brown being arrested at such a young age,
being told that you have minimum eight years
that you're going to serve, for a young person,
that's their foreseeable future.
"You're taking my foreseeable future away from me
for trying to boost a car battery."
-One time, a reporter asked him,
"Mr. Brown, you were stealing.
You were doing these types of things. Why?"
And my father's response was, "Survival."
[ Cell door slams ]
♪
-Along with Mr. Johnny Terry, my father was an inmate
at Alto Correctional Institution in Alto, Georgia,
and they became cellmates. They entertained their self.
The two would dance and sing in the cells.
Other inmates saw him, and they were really attracted to the --
"What are these two guys doing in this cell?
They're having so much fun."
At that time, that's when the other inmates
started labeling my father with the nickname "Music Box."
-Bobby Byrd, who was a clean-cut, upstanding citizen,
was part of a gospel unit
that would often perform at various functions
schools, churches, and, in this case, prison.
-On one particular weekend, Mr. Terry and my father
went to see the gospel group perform,
and that was the beginning of the magic
between my father and Mr. Byrd,
because he saw what Mr. Byrd was doing on stage
and he said, "This is great. This is what I wanted to do."
-Uncle Bobby became friendly with him,
and in order for him to get out of the detention center,
he had to have a home. And he didn't.
-Served almost four years.
But one day, I got wise to myself and said,
"I want to get straight," and I sat down
and wrote a letter to the parole board myself, you know?
And they accepted me.
-So Mr. Byrd and his family
orchestrated a way to help my father
get paroled into their household back in Toccoa.
-The Famous Flames. -That's my group.
James, he wasn't in the group at first.
-Bobby Byrd expressed an interest in him and said,
"Let me help you," and took him in.
And that's where he met his first wife and --
and just started a life there.
-It was all written by, by the Lord up front, you know?
And said, "You got to live this out, James Brown,
and be an example to people of what can be done
and the way you should be going, you know?"
-My experience was -- was like a teaching,
but it was also luck, you know?
People out there are pulling in your corner,
and then somebody upstairs
who kind of gave you that extra chance.
♪ Yeah, pretty baby
♪ This is what I say
♪ You can always pay my way
-How my parents met,
it all kind of goes back into his friendship with Bobby Byrd.
Mr. Byrd wanted to take my father out
to a basketball game at a local high school.
Whitman Street High School.
And my mom, Velma Warren, was a basketball player on the team.
She was very athletic,
and it was like instant magic between the two.
Shortly after that, when he married my mother,
he knew that, "Hey, I have to find
something better to really feed my family."
-But I know that I had to make it.
I had to have a determination to go on,
and my determination was to be somebody.
-Most of the groups were nice, smooth-singing people.
James came in with this rowdy type of a idea,
up-tempo, gutsy stuff.
We'd start rehearsing, and we had --
the porch would be full of people
and everybody peeping through the windows
and that kind of thing.
They didn't do that for no other groups.
I knew we had something.
-♪ I grabbed what I had in one hand ♪
♪ And my baby by the other
♪ A giant grabbed my coattail and said ♪
♪ Don't you go another farther
-He and Bobby Byrd formed what became the Famous Flames,
and they started playing
all those White colleges, like Clemson,
the University of Georgia, University of South Carolina,
building up their audience.
♪
James started getting booked
by all these White college fraternities and their parties.
Southern frat groups were hiring Black bands
because, man, they were stirring up those women.
You know, they -- [ Laughing ] They --
they were getting those women excited.
-He said when he first heard the ladies scream,
he knew music was it.
[ Laughing ]
[ Women screaming ]
-Him and Mr. Byrd would practice like
I don't know what to become successful.
-♪ Da da la, da da la
♪ Da da la, da da la
-During that time, a lot of Black entertainers
would perform at local clubs in Alabama, Lower Georgia,
and they wanted to see the impact
that they were having on their crowds,
and I think that was the first time they went down
and they met and saw Little Richard.
-♪ Lucille
♪ You won't do your sister's will ♪
-Little Richard was already out there.
Little Richard was doing his thing.
So at that time, he was hotter than dad.
-In the 1950s, James Brown borrowed a lot of his look
and sound and style from Little Richard.
-They had the same manager, Brown and Richard,
and Richard was double booked.
Wasn't nobody turning money down in those days.
-James Brown would actually fill in for Little Richard,
and people were kind of like,
"I don't know if that's Little Richard or not,"
but for a while, James Brown was able to pull it off.
-People sometimes forget that Little Richard
was the direct influencer of James Brown.
-That friendship lasts over the course of 5 or 6 decades.
And they loved each other.
-Mr. Brown, if we could get into
something of your background.
When did you first begin?
-Well, Brother Brown, I guess we should bring this thing down
and start by just calling me James, brother.
Okay? -Right on.
-All righty.
I started professionally in 1956,
the first of '56,
when we recorded "Please, Please,"
the last of '55, and it was released April of '56.
-♪ Please, please, please, please ♪
-♪ Please, please, don't go
-♪ Please, please, please
-He recorded "Please, Please, Please"
pretty much as an independent recording in Macon.
-When I heard myself, I just kept running around
and saying, "That's me. You know that's me.
That's me, man! You hear this cat singing?
That's me, man."
"Please, Please" was out about a year being played on the air
just on a demo.
-The guy from King Records heard it being played
and got James signed to King.
-One night, it was -- it was raining,
and a fella come through, and he was sitting
in a restaurant, and he heard the record,
and he said, "Who's this guy?"
He said, "Well, you know, that's a local group round here."
And I was in Florida, and they called me from Georgia.
And I drove up 500-some miles and got the okay
and drove another 500 to record it.
-It was an interesting label that culturally was living
in hillbilly and country music.
Syd Nathan had the presence of mind to see a marketplace,
certainly among the Black community
for a music like James Brown's.
-Syd Nathan was not sold on James Brown immediately.
When he first heard "Please, Please, Please,"
he was like, "Well, where's the lyrics?
Like, where's the...?
Is 'please' the only word you're gonna say?"
-♪ Please, please, please, please ♪
♪ Please, please, please, please ♪
-And my first record, "Please, please,"
went right to the top.
-♪ I love you so
♪
-♪ Try me
♪ Just try me
♪ And your love
♪ Your love will always be true ♪
♪ Whoa
♪ I need you
♪ I, I
♪ Alright
♪ Whoa-oh
♪ I
-My records were a cross of R&B and race music.
-That's right. You never got played on stations
Elvis got played on. -That's right.
-You never got -- I never worked at a station
that played your records. -That's right.
-Lot of what we called White stations never played you.
-Mine was underground.
-James Brown not being on his first album
is just a typical expression of erasure,
of Black bodies and Blackness
that we're on the other side of, in some respects,
but that we still have to negotiate today.
-If you were Black in the '50s,
and you wanted to make it in show business,
you needed to be tall, light-skinned --
as he'd say, "light-skinneded" --
wavy hair, and a certain polish.
♪
-So, here you have this shorter man who's dark-skinned,
and he has something to prove.
♪
-James Brown is stepping into himself
as he is presenting himself, this beautiful,
dark-skinned Black man who's screaming at you,
talking about, "Please, please, please, please."
-First, "Please, Please, Please" had the Famous Flames on it.
Just the Famous Flames.
Then it became James Brown with the Famous Flames.
Now, all that was done unbeknownst to us.
You know, we didn't know this was about to happen
until that record came out.
Then it had James Brown and his Famous Flames.
That's where the problems started right there.
-Well, dad being dad -- [ Laughs ] --
being James Brown before he was "James Brown,"
kind of took over.
♪
-It's always trouble when you single someone out.
Naturally, it's gonna be tension,
so the Famous Flames quit and moved back to Toccoa
to get, like, regular day jobs.
-A lot of people think that when James recorded
"Please, Please, Please" that...
that shot his career into high gear and everything.
It was another two years before James had another hit.
-♪ I need you
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪
♪ Oh, oh, walk with me ♪
-♪ Walk with me
-His second successful hit, which was "Try Me,"
wound up selling a million units
and became James Brown's saving grace.
The power of James Brown is,
he somehow got the Flames back into the fold.
-He literally built himself from scratch.
I mean, this was one of those guys
who just felt every inch of the soul that he gave people.
-Soul is a man finding his way into something
that he don't have a theory for.
He's singing just what he feels.
♪
-♪ Aaaaaaah
-We're talking about an artist/audience relationship.
If you didn't represent excellence,
they would let you know.
James Brown is a performer
who cut his teeth in the Chitlin' Circuit, right?
He had to become the hardest-working man
in show business.
That wasn't just a title.
That was something he really was invested in.
♪
The Chitlin' Circuit was a run of venues,
primarily in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s,
where African-American performers could play.
They had these small spaces in these kind of sundown towns
or even in bigger markets,
where Black performers could literally go entertain the crowd
and really build themselves up and build their brands.
-You had the Uptown Theater in Philly,
the Regal Theater in Chicago,
the Howard Theatre in Washington, D.C.,
the Fox Theatre in Detroit,
and the Apollo Theater in New York.
These were like a tour.
-But one thing you better not do...
you better not be wack and take Black people's money.
Ain't got no money for you to waste
by me spending my time and what little money I got
on you being a terrible-ass act.
♪
-Black people gravitated to a James Brown concert
because James Brown was a phenomenon.
He was unprecedented.
♪
-Well, that's James Brown.
Dancing, singing, entertaining,
falling to the floor with,
you know, the theatrics and everything.
It was enhancing everything else that was going on musically.
The totality of it was an experience,
the ultimate experience,
that people are still --
such as Bruno Mars or Janelle Monáe.
Like, there are so many artists out today
who are still coming from this --
this influence of the great James Brown.
-You move around a lot, don't you?
-Yes, I do a lot of dancing. -You get down on the floor?
-Yes. Splits, knee drops.
I can make the mike stand just stand there,
and I can spin around three or four times.
Triple spins and everything.
-Did you plan that or did that just start happening?
-It happened.
Along with the cape act, as well,
where I throw the cape and run off and come back.
That was -- It happened extemporaneous,
right off -- to impulse.
And then it became -- it was so great,
it had to become part of my act.
-My mom loved all my father's music.
And my father was performing.
I mean, he was throwing watches, necklaces,
taking his shirt off, throwing it in the audience.
And the audience was going wild.
♪
-He had the most exciting stage show in the business,
and logic tells you, "We should release this,
make a record out of this."
-[ Singing ] ♪ Alright
-James Brown saw the connection
between him and his audience live.
People falling out, trying to jump on stage.
They're screaming before he even get a note out.
And the Apollo at the time
is the hottest venue in the world.
It's Harlem.
It's the epicenter of Black culture.
To be the king of that,
you got to get that on that real.
-In 1962, I had a planned show at the Apollo Theater
to give the public what they want.
-The show was -- It was exciting.
Him doing this as a live album and expecting people to buy it,
his record company didn't think it was a good idea.
And then James said, "I'm going to do it anyway."
-He went to the labels and whatnot, and they was giving --
You know, they didn't think it would work or whatnot.
"It's fine. I'll take my own money and I'll do it."
He paid for it himself.
He produced that thing with his own cash.
-We're used to live albums now,
but at that time, what are you, crazy?
-♪ Hey, come on, hey, hey
♪ I'm feelin' alright, huh
-They said it couldn't be done.
I've always been a man to do my own thing
and control my own destiny.
-♪ I'm feeling alright, get it
♪ Uh, uh, uh
-So, now, ladies and gentlemen, it is star time.
Are you ready for star time?! [ Audience cheers ]
-"Live at the Apollo" is one of the most important albums
in the history of recorded music
because it captures James Brown and his band
at a very specific time in the evolution of his career.
He had figured out how to perform in such a way
that was going to win people over.
-It is indeed a great pleasure to present to you
at this particular time --
national and international known
as the hardest-working man in show business.
Here to sing "I'll Go Crazy."
-The emcee famously did the big introduction.
"The hardest-working man in show business. Mr. Dynamite."
Bah-bah-bah. And the band is wailing. It's like...
-James Brown and the Famous Flames!
-Then everybody in the place just lost it!
-The record company didn't believe in it.
The record person said,
"You can't sing the same thing over and over."
And I said, "Well, I can because
when you sing it live, it's different."
-Well, you know in the studio recordings, they can fix it.
They can -- They're gonna, "Take two. Take three."
What he was thinking is, "Well, I'm going to give them
the feeling of being there,"
which you still get when you listen to it now.
Put it on now, you feel like you're at the show.
-He and his band had gone through so much,
and he had gone through so much to get to where he was.
It's an album that actually confirms its title
because it is all the way live.
♪
-It's one of the earliest examples of being viral.
Every household had to have
"James Brown: Live at the Apollo, Volume 1."
He revolutionized the live album.
Deejays, they're playing the entire album
from start to finish.
And it's a hit, but not only that,
but this album is also making its way overseas.
♪
-"James Brown: Live at the Apollo"
was a big hit album.
Collecting records in those early days was quite expensive.
-♪ Believe me
♪ I'll go crazy
-Not all these records were readily available in England
and not easy to get.
But that one was, and we all shared it around.
I just loved the tone of his voice,
and it's so raspy and so powerful
and doing those high screams, and, yeah, it was amazing.
♪
♪ Try me
-♪ Try me
-♪ Darlin', tell me
♪ I need you
-I write and arrange all my tunes with my records,
and I've never taken music in my life.
I write all the lyrics, all the music,
record the record and everything.
So when the record come out, it's James Brown.
It's not somebody else.
♪
♪ Hey
♪ Yeah
♪
-"Live at the Apollo" peaked at number two
on the Billboard charts.
It was on the charts for 66 weeks.
So that's, what, a year and 14 more weeks.
So -- Wow. That says quite a lot.
Especially at that time.
-It's the opposite of the way the label was thinking.
That's genius thinking.
He's knowing the power of the show.
He's seeing the power of the show.
He's seeing the power of how people feel,
and they're crying and falling out every night.
I do feel like the live album gives you a different feeling
when you listen to it. That's the whole purpose of them,
is that you do feel like you're there,
and they do feel like the little --
the little imperfections are great.
♪
[ Audience cheers ]
♪
-♪ Ohh
♪ Ohh-ohh
♪
-♪ I don't mind
-♪ Your love
♪ I don't mind
-♪ I don't mind
-♪ The one you thinking of
-James Brown was an amazing singer.
He comes out of a Black church tradition
where you know how to sing.
You imbue a song with a certain kind of power.
You're able to tell your own story
by kind of pulling your voice out of your body
in such a way that it enters into your music.
-♪ I found someone to love me ♪
♪
-James Brown. He appealed to everybody.
I get visitors at the Apollo from France,
Germany, Japan, Italy, Australia, Belgium, Israel.
And they all talk about James Brown.
-I'm a religious man because a man must believe
in something, you know?
I know I believe in myself, too.
I'm religious that way, too.
I'm religiously believing in James Brown.
-♪ I said I lost someone
♪ But I know where I'm gonna find them ♪
♪ All aboard! -♪ Yeah!
-♪ All aboard! -♪ Yeah!
-♪ The night train
♪
-The success of "Live at the Apollo"
woke up another part of James Brown,
which is the business acumen.
-To bootstrap if you were Black
is Booker T. Washington theory.
Work hard. Have a trade.
You utilize what skill you have
to bring yourself up in the American fabric,
and those will be the things that were earned profit
that helped to make you more self-sufficient,
which is really something that James Brown
was really, really big on.
-This is a man who was fierce in his self-determination
and his desire to also have
that kind of autonomy and sovereignty.
He was determined to do that.
-Having a whole lot of creativity about yourself
and no place to exercise it, it's very bad.
-The tension between James Brown and Syd Nathan
was almost necessary for Brown's
"I have to do it myself" character.
-Hold it. That was a good start, man. We're rolling.
-Tell him not to holler that much.
-Mr. Nathan said cool the melody a little bit, you know.
I mean, make it more of a melodic thing.
Because you're singing the hell out of it,
but, you know, just a little more melody
like you did on the -- -Trying to sing too hard.
Tell him -- -Yeah, don't sing too hard.
-♪ Get away from me
-♪ Get away, get away
-Well, one would easily say that being in jail
is a far cry more difficult than speaking truth to power
to a White man who holds purse strings.
Throughout all of his difficult upbringing,
James Brown was able to adapt and was able to be ingenious.
♪
-♪ Why
♪ Does everything have to happen to me? ♪
-James Brown felt that he wasn't going to
get the kind of money
that he wanted from King Records.
He knew exactly what he wanted. He knew exactly how to do it.
-I don't want to be totally programmed.
I want to be able to think for myself to some degree.
I think one thing that makes a Black man
that's more heavier for the soul
is because of the fact that he had extra-hard knocks,
and he's lived with the word "can't" for so long.
-W.E.B. Du Bois talks about the way in which the slave song
is the one great gift that came from slavery.
Everything else is crazy,
but the song and the sound
illuminates this truth about the nature of freedom.
-For James Brown, the dollar is freedom and power.
So he cuts a side deal on Smash Records,
doing what he felt was best for his future.
-Let's make a record. One take. Here we go.
♪
-♪ You've got your high-heeled sneakers on ♪
-Smash Records. They turned me loose.
I wrote "Out of Sight" and "Maybe the Last Time."
Had a two-sided hit.
-"Out of Sight" represents
a major tempo shift in James Brown's music.
"Out of Sight" had a slower,
slinkier, sexier,
syncopated groove,
and the slower that funk gets,
the nastier funk gets.
-You know, if you get a good James Brown "Huh,"
you felt it!
-♪ Ho!
♪ Hey, hey
-He used an alias for "Out of Sight."
"Ted Wright" is actually James Brown.
Syd Nathan has an injunction slapped on him
to stop all future pressings.
-Fortunately, at that moment, it was a hit record.
-In this sort of arm-wrestling game that they had,
James Brown had the upper hand
because he comes back to King Records
on his own terms with a bigger percentage.
-Business is a part that you've got to adapt yourself to
so you can be prepared for whatever might come up.
-From one minute to another,
you can't tell how this guy James Brown is going to act,
and we respect the fact that he has made it.
And he will fight with me
and say, "Mr. Nathan, you are wrong."
♪
-As an olive branch.
Syd Nathan gave James Brown his own imprint,
which was Try Me Records.
-Even when I was coming up in the industry,
myself or Puff or Jay-Z or anybody in that era
was always like, "Okay, well, once we get a record big,
then how do we get our own record label?
How do we get our own this? How do we get our own that?"
And he was really the first one to show you
that all that could happen.
-James Brown was really setting
the standard of excellence,
having a crystallized vision for himself
where he wanted to be,
always creating a "yes."
And this is something that I saw with Beyoncé.
-♪ Alright tonight
♪ And I do just what I want, ow ♪
-He wouldn't take no for an answer.
And he was fearless. His music was fearless.
His sound, sonically, was fearless.
-He decided that he wanted to not only draw his own people,
but he wanted to draw White audiences.
♪
-He got on the "T.A.M.I. Show,"
and everybody said,
"Well, he's not gonna fit," and this and that.
James Brown definitely was a showman, and he proves it.
-The stakes were high in the "T.A.M.I. Show."
Those were probably the highest stakes
that James Brown had gone up against
in terms of other artists.
-The greatest of the great, including such kings
of rock entertainment as...
♪
...and today's hottest exponents
of the Merseybeat from England,
The Rolling Stones!
-Steve Binder. He was the producer.
And Binder said, "Well, you go on last."
You kind of did what you were asked to do.
You're not gonna go, "I'm not going to go on.
I want to go on here. I want to go there."
If you're asked to go on at the end, you go on at the end
and you do your thing, you know?
And then James came to me and he said,
"Well, I'm not comfortable with this."
And I said, "Well, it's gonna be edited
and you could end up as the final act."
In 50 years of hindsight,
should have said to Steve Binder,
"I'd prefer to go on before James."
[ Laughs ] But, you know, I didn't.
-If you've been around most entertainers,
you know they do not like
somebody taking away that thunder away from them.
And I'll say this about
Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones.
They had that "T.A.M.I. Show" taken away from them
by James Brown and the Famous Flames.
-♪ All aboard! -♪ Yeah!
-♪ The night train
♪
[ Crowd cheering ]
♪ Miami, Florida
♪
♪ Atlanta, Georgia
♪ Atlanta, Georgia, ah!
♪
-The "T.A.M.I. Show" was the first time
you really got to see him in front of a mixed crowd
doing this amazing, electrifying set.
-Oh! Oh, God! When he did "Night Train"?
Oh, man! Yo! Come on. Come on
-♪ Night... ♪ Train!
-♪ Train
♪
-It really signaled that Black music
was a predominant force in music.
James Brown was literally on his way to take over.
♪
♪ Yeah
♪