The Hit Man, The Godfather Of Soul, The Soul Brother N°1, The Internationally Known Mr.James Brown ”The Singles Volume 6 (1969 – 1970)”

The Hit Man, The Godfather Of Soul, The Soul Brother N°1, The Internationally Known Mr.James Brown

”The Singles Volume 6 (1969 – 1970)”
( Compilation Hip-HOP Select Records, 2009 )

Tracklisting:
Disk 1:
01 – You Got To Have A Mother For Me (Part 1) 02:53
02 – The Little Groove Maker Me 05:20
03 – You Got To Have A Mother For Me (Long Version) 05:23
04 – I Dont Nobody To Give Me Nothing (Open Up The Door, Ill Get It Myself) (Part 1) 03:07
05 – I Dont Nobody To Give Me Nothing (Open Up The Door, Ill Get It Myself) (Part 2) 02:49
06 – I Love You 03:35
07 – Maybe Ill Understand 03:19
08 – Any Day Now 03:31
09 – Im Shook 02:52
10 – The Popcorn 03:04
11 – The Chicken 02:50
12 – Mother Popcorn (You Got To Have A Mother For Me) (Part 1) 03:18
13 – Mother Popcorn (You Got To Have A Mother For Me) (Part 2) 03:07
14 – Lowdown Popcorn 02:48
15 – Top Of The Stack 02:50
16 – World (Part 1) 03:12
17 – World (Part 2) 02:59
18 – Let A Man Come In And Do The Popcorn Part One 03:06
19 – Sometime 03:07
20 – Im Not Demanding (Part 1) 02:57

Disk 2:
01 – Its Christmas Time (Part 1) 03:12
02 – Its Christmas Time (Part 2) 03:16
03 – Aint It Funky Now (Part 1) 03:10
04 – Aint It Funky Now (Part 2) 03:15
05 – Popcorn With A Feeling 02:58
06 – Part Two (Let A Man Come In And Do The Popcorn) 03:10
07 – Gittin A Little Hipper (Part 2) 02:11
08 – The Brother Got To Rap (Part 1) 03:14
09 – The Brother Got To Rap (Part 2) 03:42
10 – Its A New Day (Part 1 & Part 2) 05:50
11 – Georgia On My Mind 04:23
12 – Funky Drummer (Part 1) 02:38
13 – Funky Drummer (Part 2) 02:56
14 – Let It Be Me 02:58
15 – Talkin Loud And Saying Nothin (Part 1 & Part 2) 05:12
16 – Bewildered 03:01
17 – Brother Rapp (Part 1 & Part 2) 05:26
18 – A Man Has To Go Back To The Crossroads 03:04
19 – The Drunk 03:06

Comment:
It was no surprise when James Brown’s band collapsed in early 1970– its members must have been incredibly frustrated. They were at the height of their powers, a devastating live act with a string of hits that showed no sign of abating. They also had a star who was barely recording with them while he chased a badly misunderstood crossover ideal in an attempt to reposition himself as a Frank Sinatra type, and whose vacillations about what to release made Hamlet look like John Wayne. The sixth volume of Hip-O’s mail-order-only retrospective of Brown’s singles and scheduled-but-unreleased singles opens with “You Got to Have a Mother for Me”, a surefire hit with a chattering groove that broke new ground for him; it almost got pressed before he decided to scrap it, and it stayed in the can until the late 80s.
In 1969, JB covered Chuck Jackson’s “Any Day Now” with an arrangement by his new protégé Dave Matthews (not that one), scheduled it as an A-side, changed his mind about that version, re-recorded it, scrapped it in favor of an original called “I’m Shook”, had 35,000 copies pressed, then decided he didn’t want to release it after all. “I’m Not Demanding” was prepared as a single twice, then canceled. “The Brother Got to Rap” was another funk grenade cut with the touring band, prepared for rush release, then scratched before it could be pressed. (When the band fell apart a few weeks later, Brown remixed it, faded down its on-mic references to specific musicians, and released it as “Brother Rapp”.) “Talkin’ Loud and Saying Nothin’”, a surprisingly awesome stab at acid-rock (recorded with Matthews and a Cincinnati band that also made a dubious psychedelic album under the name the Grodeck Whipperjenny), was pressed, then yanked before it could be distributed.
Meanwhile, the stuff that actually did make it into circulation often seemed like bizarre choices. The instrumental hit “The Popcorn” was followed by a remake of “You Got to Have a Mother for Me” with “Popcorn” shoehorned into its title, then by the instrumentals “Lowdown Popcorn” and “Popcorn with a Feeling”, as well as “Let a Man Come In and Do the Popcorn” and its follow-up– the second half of the same take, “Part Two (Let a Man Come In and Do the Popcorn)”. JB put a huge promotional push behind “World”, an overwrought, funkless “Let the Sunshine In” ripoff (with strings), which he thought would be his big outreach to the hippies. (They preferred to dance to his good records.) The singles he actually did release with his touring band included a pair of improvised warmup jams.
And damned if he didn’t call it more often than not. “Mother Popcorn”, the new version of “You Got to Have a Mother”, was one of the hottest singles he ever made– Clyde Stubblefield’s cymbal smashes are as galvanizing as funk gets. Stubblefield’s prestidigitative drum break at the end of “Funky Drummer”, one of those wait-the-tape-was-rolling? jams, became the king of all samples. Both halves of “Let a Man Come In” hit the R&B Top 10. Even “Talkin’ Loud” pales next to the hard funk version he released for real a few years later.
Of all the volumes in this series so far, this one’s actually got the fewest clinkers– a Christmas single whose melody Soul Brother #1 evidently didn’t learn before he walked into the booth, “World”, another top-heavy ballad called “A Man Has to Go Back to the Crossroads”. Even the throwaways (Matthews-arranged versions of “Georgia On My Mind” and JB’s oldie “Bewildered”, a duet with Vicki Anderson on “Let It Be Me”, a six-minute call-and-response from an Apollo gig) are at least worthy of the man’s sandpaper-and-lava voice. And the cuts with the touring band still glisten with power like sweat on a champion heavyweight: the jawdropping paean to male dominance “It’s a New Day”, the impossibly tense percolator “Ain’t It Funky Now”, and especially the two-part throwdown that replaced “You Got to Have a Mother” on the schedule, “I Don’t Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door, I’ll Get It Myself)”. A victory strut with a three-against-four rhythmic switchup, it was one of Brown’s most bluntly political statements, but it was also a personal manifesto, and a warning for anyone who tried to get too close to him. James Brown needed other people to realize his vision, but his erratic whims were just more proof that he was running the show.
By Douglas Wolk, February 3, 2009

MFS is always remembering You, dear Godfather!

By Pier