Brown and his Horns

Brown had a special relationship with his horn section. He’d sometimes improvise a vocal-and-horn duet with them, and those musicians would often be the ones he’d call out to on recordings, either by name (“Maceo!”, “Fred!” – Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley) or by his yells of “Hit me!”

‘Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved’ is a fun example of the latter, with Brown yelling, “Hit me!” and then soon after, “Two times!” (for two blasts of horns) and “Bring it down” for a brief, horn-led bridge section before the main groove revs up again.

On ‘Doing It to Death’ by Fred Wesley & The J.B.’s (Brown’s band had their own releases) on which Brown features, there’s multiple mentions of “Maceo.” Mid-solo, Brown says to Parker, “Maceo! Wait a minute! I bet you can’t play that funny little horn over there behind you!” In fact, on that track, he also shouts out Wesley (“Now, take ‘em up, Fred”, “Fred, can you take us higher?”, “Fred, Fred, Fred” and so on) and drummer Jabo Starks (“Hey, Jab!”).

Early on in his funk era, Brown was heard calling on the horns. On ‘Licking Stick’ (1968), Brown says, “Horn!” more as a direction caught on microphone than in a musical fashion. On this track, the horns resemble percussion instruments. They are just another drum among many. Brown wrote of ‘Licking Stick’, “It was another one-chord song like ‘I Can’t Stand Myself,’ but it had even more of a funk groove. It was a rhythm section tune.”

The focus was on the drums and bass, with the guitar and horns emulating rhythm instruments. But in the years to come, the horns would have a wider role.

Fred Wesley

Revamping his band in the early ’70s and getting Wesley to lead in place of Pee Wee Ellis, Brown believes, “changed [his] sound somewhat.” He wrote in his autobiography, “I think it made it even funkier than when Pee Wee Ellis ran it. Pee Wee was a reed man, and Fred played trombone, which is on the same clef as the bass, piano and guitar. So Pee Wee and Fred, as arrangers and band leaders, would come up with two different concepts of voicing the stuff. Rhythmically, Fred had more than Pee Wee did.”

Amazingly, despite this rhythmic strength, and the One and Wesley’s trombone playing being such key elements of Brown’s music, Wesley himself had no real concept of the One.

Wesley said: “Now, on the One, musically, in a 4/4 bar, you have one, two, three, four, of course, which is – one is the One, but as James Brown characterises the One, I don’t think he really meant, ‘One, two, three, four.’ I think he meant wherever he put his foot down the hardest is the One. Like I say, I’m not sure about this. Everybody takes the One as something different. Like George said, ‘Everything Is On The One’, which was on the four right there. So when you ask me about the One, you’re not asking somebody that’s real knowledgable about it. I’m just someone who puts the One wherever someone else thinks the One is, and I go with the One as strong as I can. I have no One. Everything is One to me.”

Maceo Parker

Brown wrote that Parker was “an aggressive, dynamic player and a real worker.” Originally hired thanks to Brown being impressed with his drummer brother, Melvin, Parker reckons he owes some of his success due to the fact that Brown enjoyed rhyming “Maceo” with “blow.”

He told The Current, “Because of the fact that we had more than one saxophone player somehow he had gotten to the point where he did like my style and it definitely became an (sings) 'OK I want you to blow Maceo.' Maybe Maceo rhymes with blow, I don't know. But this is how it all started. But then his music he recorded goes all around the world and so did (sings) 'I want you to blow Maceo. Come on Maceo.' And then as it goes all around the world people physically think, 'God James Brown really likes this guy, he must be O-K.' And that's how it all started and that's why it kind of led from that to this interview.”

It might also have something to do with his musical ability, of course. Parker has said how his mother told him that when he was a young child, he could imitate what somebody would play on the piano. His high school band director saw potential in him when he was in eighth grade, and Parker would go to the band room during recess to listen to his teacher play “almost every day.”

Brown was sanguine about Wesley and Parker’s departures when he wrote: “Fred Wesley and Maceo left to join Bootsy [Collins] in P-Funk. I think they wanted to work more than they were doing with me. I was sorry to see them go, but I didn’t blame them.”

Before they joined George Clinton in outer space, they laid down plenty of great tracks with Brown.

Extended Jams, Horn Motifs and Solos

In the ’70s, Brown got his band stretching out for seven-, eight- and nine-minute extended jams. The shortest track on 1973’s The Payback, Brown’s most acclaimed album, lasts almost six minutes, with the rest running over seven minutes.

In this era of stretching out, there would often be a horn motif that brought the listener “home” after either minutes of grooving without much melody, a solo, or improvised vocal-and-instrument riffing.

‘People Get Up And Drive Your Funky Soul’

Part of Motherlode, a 1988 compilation of late ’60s and early ’70s work, this is one of the most never-ending feeling tracks in Brown’s catalogue, somehow both extremely repetitive and extremely fun.

Several elements of the song stay exactly the same throughout the vast majority of the nine minutes: a bassline, scratchy guitar with as many muted notes as those played (taking the idea of percussive guitar even further than usual), and a snare that gets hit on the two and four so many times that if it was sentient it would have an existential crisis when the song finished.

Wesley gets space to solo, having already been name-checked (“Fred, get yourself together”) before Brown ushers him in (“Fred! Hit it!”). Wesley’s still blowing away when Brown starts singing again (“In Naussau. In Germany” starting a long line of places where “They’re driving that funky soul”).

Although it’s only played twice, a brilliant horn motif gives the song shape (perfectly introduced by the last phrase in Wesley’s solo). When the riff comes in again, Brown knows they’ve got a good thing going when he says, “There it is. There it is.”

Wesley’s trombone and sax from Parker and St. Clair Pinckney combine to create a thick sound. (Pinckney gets a nod in ‘I Refuse To Lose’, with Brown saying, ‘Make it squeal, Pinck!’) The riff has some suspense, the last note of the second phrase leaving you hanging, waiting for those two final satisfying blasts that bring you back home.

Without the motif, the track could feel one-note. Whereas with it, it feels like it’s moving towards something. Brown calls it “home” (“Take ‘em on home, Fred”), seemingly in a similar way to how a musician might refer to a “home” chord – the chord in a key which others revolve around, or the "head" in a jazz piece (the "head" being the main theme, or motif.) Jazz often follows a head-solos-head form, as a pop song follows verse-chorus-verse-chorus. Brown repeatedly asks, "Can we get some head?" in 'Blues & Pants' (1971).

‘Brother Rapp’, 1970

The highlight of ‘Brother Rapp’ is the riffing between Brown and Parker’s saxophone. Before their duet really gets going, there’s a brilliant build up to a Parker solo with Brown rapping, “Good God / So I can blow / Before I go / Come on! / Maceo!”

Parker’s solos (or duets) are always rhythm-focused. He found funk playing came naturally, saying it was “something I could just do day one”, and made the decision to play funk “instead of trying to get real deep into the jazz thing, trying to play all those Charlie Parker lines or riffs”. Parker’s definition of funk is, “Syncopated groove,” while jazz he calls, “Straight four.”

His phrases are usually snappy, catchy and short. In fact, sometimes they’re just one note. Brown trades single notes with Parker, with the former yelling, “No! No! No!” towards the end of the duet.

‘Make It Funky’, 1971

“Slide your slide, Fred,” says Brown, telling Wesley how to play his trombone. He interrupts his solo around the 8:40 mark (“Fred, wait a minute. Wait a minute, Fred”) to ask him about his instrument (“That’s a black horn. Why is it black?”), apparently paying no mind to the fact that he’s being recorded (“You call that a what? Oh”).

A couple minutes later, the highlight of the jam comes in a brilliantly fun duet with Brown grunting and yelping, and Wesley transposing these various noises into lines on his horn. Brown sounds like he’s relishing the opportunity to let loose (“Fred! Me and you!”). In a similar vein to ‘Brother Rapp’ with Parker, Brown then repeatedly invites Wesley to play a single note (“Ga! Ga!”) before the latter obliges.

Funky playing came naturally to Wesley too. Although in contrast with Parker, Wesley has said, "I'd get these people telling me I was a funky trombone player, that they ain't never heard the 'bone played that way but I tell you now, same as I said then, I just play this thing; I just play the way I play. Wasn't ever any aim to play funk music or to be funky – it was never conscious. I can't tell you what I did to sound that way. I just played. It's just the sound that comes out. Far as I'm concerned I've always been playing jazz."

‘Hell’, 1974

This was the title track of a fantastic album. For no apparent reason, there are gong sounds between many of the tracks. The Internet has mentions of this, but no explanation. Just as bewildering and amusing is Brown’s decision to make a funk version of ‘When The Saints Go Marching In’.

Around 3:30, Parker, prompted by Brown’s shout of, “Give ‘em Hell, Maceo! Good God, hit ‘em hard!”, plays a solo that would slot right in on any of Brown’s many Christmas-themed funk cuts – its cheer and innocence comically at odds with Brown’s world-weary complaints like, “It’s Hell payin’ taxes / When there’s no money left,” and “Paying bills from the day you’re born, good God / Till your body starts getting old.”

Of course, Parker is a master funker, sought out by some of the greatest foremen of funk from Brown to George Clinton to Prince, so perhaps it was a deliberate decision to inject some Christmas cheer into ‘Hell’.

‘I Can’t Stand It “76”’, 1974

The band and particularly Parker are on fine form. Parker starts a solo, prompted by Brown to “Get it! Get it, Mace!”, after 5 minutes with a tantalising first few notes before Brown, mystifyingly, calls to “Slow it down” just as Parker’s getting on a roll. Maybe Brown knew that would spur his band on, as when the jam picks up again it’s more energetic than at any point before.

In one of his more unique addresses to the horn sections, Brown repeats, “I want all the horns to join hands.” He tells them repeatedly to “Hit it!” and “Gimme!”, which is when the motif—a brief riff in this track—comes around.

After The Payback’s stretching out, ‘I Can’t Stand It’ was one of only two tracks on Hell to go for six minutes or more. But in the following years, there would be plenty of longer cuts – one of the finest examples being ‘I Refuse To Lose’.

‘I Refuse To Lose’, 1976

Arriving on Get Up Offa That Thing, an album that goes without receiving much retrospective acclaim, the track is built off a restless bassline, and a feel-good horn riff that strikes a perfect balance between repetition and novelty, always coming back around at satisfying moments.

The musicians, asides from Brown, were uncredited on the vinyl release. Brown’s autobiography goes without mentioning his music between when Wesley and Parker left (’75) and shows in ’78.

The horns are triumphant, bold and insistent, fitting of a tribute to Muhammad Ali. Brown quotes, and hilariously misquotes Ali, first stating, “I said I sting like a butterfly and float like a bee” – presumably mistakingly, given the original “sting like a bee” would also rhyme with Brown’s preceding line, “I feel like Ali".

Perhaps part of the reason why the track stretches on is to give Brown a chance to correct that mistake, eventually stating around 6 and a half minutes in, “Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee". That theory actually seems credible when you consider that after the horn motif returns, Brown shouts, “Wait a minute!”

Then again, it’s probably more likely that he just enjoyed jamming. After nine minutes of ‘Drive Your Funky Soul,’ there’s some studio laughter when the jam has eventually wound down, and as though to explain the song’s length, Brown says, “Since we had it groovin’, you know.”

In part 4, we’ll dig into Fela Kuti’s music and how it differed from, and shared similarities with, Brown’s funk.