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The Wonders of Live Music, part 3 – ‘Papa's Got a Brand New Bag' and 'Cold Sweat' by James Brown
The Wonders of Live Music, part 3 – ‘Papa's Got a Brand New Bag' and 'Cold Sweat' by James Brown
The Wonders of Live Music, part 3 – ‘Papa's Got a Brand New Bag' and 'Cold Sweat' by James Brown
It’s 1965. James Brown is a big deal in R&B and soul music. He’s had hits like ‘Please Please Me’, ‘Think’, and ‘Try Me’. His legendary live album, Live at the Apollo, had spent 66 weeks in the charts, peaking at number 2. Brown has earned the nickname of The Hardest Working Man in Show Business.
And then... the ferocious blast of horns at the beginning of ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’ ushers in a new era of music.
Such was the impact of the track, it may be appropriate to refer to music that preceded it as ‘Pre-Bag’. Pre-Bag, R&B and soul music was built on the upbeat – the emphasis was on the second and fourth beats of each bar.
Brown turned that around, and had his band emphasising the first beat – the One. In doing so, he arguably invented a whole new genre of music: funk.
Brown once remarked of his new sound, “I had discovered that my strength was not in the horns, it was in the rhythms. I was hearing everything, even the guitars, like they were drums.”
Jimmy Nolen’s guitar chords are not so much strummed as stabbed, his verse part sounding like hammers on slabs of ice-cold metal. Writing in his autobiography, James Brown: The Godfather of Soul, Brown praised Nolen’s sound as “hard and fast without any sustain”. Even as the chords ring out more during the bridge, after Brown has sang, “Papa’s got a brand new bag,” everything is building towards the next drum beat on the One.
The horns, similarly, are restricted to short lines of melody, particularly on ‘Part 1’ (the single was split on two sides). Even on ‘Part 2’, Maceo Parker’s saxophone solo doesn’t stray far from the theme. Often his phrases lead the way into, and help accentuate, the One.
Brown's vocals join the rest of the instruments in leaning towards rhythm. Remarkably, it was only one year earlier that he had recorded the album Showtime. Largely made up of ballads like ‘Sweet Lorraine’ and ‘Blues For My Baby’, it was a world away from what was to come. ‘New Bag’ features no sweet, soulful crooning – Brown’s lines are short and sharp.
The drums are tight and hold a steady groove. They are less remarkable than what is played over them: where previously melody would shape a song, now there was extra rhythmic emphasis added on top of the drums. The brilliantly dancing bass line features more notes than the guitar and leads the chord changes, but is still about the groove.
‘New Bag’ was based on an earlier recording, 1964’s ‘Out Of Sight’ (from the album of the same name). The latter is a little looser, a little more bluesy. It’s less urgent, and while it’s music you can tap your foot to, it doesn’t demand your attention like ‘New Bag’’s urgent rhythm.
‘New Bag’’s lively, excitable energy may owe something to the fact that it was recorded while the song was still fresh. Brown wrote that he was “holding up a lyric sheet” during the recording, which was a first take. Engineer Ron Lenhoff then sped up the recording and edited the original take, almost seven minutes long, down to around two minutes per side.
A few months after ‘New Bag’, Brown recorded a new version of ‘I Got You (I Feel Good)’, perhaps his most famous song. The track first appeared on the Out of Sight album, and it too was a reworking of an older recording, titled ‘I Found You’. In Brown’s words, it was a “much hipper, up-tempo version” of ‘I Found You’. ‘Feel Good’ continued the development of funk, with its horn arrangement leaning further towards rhythm so as to be almost purely percussive.
Two years later, Brown recorded ‘Cold Sweat’, which some argue is the first true funk song. Again a reworking of an older track (in this case, 1962’s ‘I Don’t Care’), it took the concept of emphasising rhythm over melody even further. ‘I Don’t Care’ – which Brown called “a slow, bluesy tune” – “became an almost completely different tune, except for the lyrics”.
While ‘New Bag’ and ‘I Feel Good’ featured more traditional twelve-bar blues chord progressions, ‘Cold Sweat’ all but abandoned the idea of a chord progression. It has just the one chord change, arriving in the bridge with Brown singing, “I break out in a cold sweat.”
‘Cold Sweat’ started with Clyde Stubblefield’s drum groove. It was the first track Brown recorded with Stubblefield, who, thanks to his drum break here (“Let’s give the drummer some!”) and later in ‘Funky Drummer’, would become one of the most sampled musicians in history.
Brown would refine his funk further with a new band on tracks like 1970’s ‘Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine'. But his new era started in 1965, and ‘Brand New Bag’ and ‘Cold Sweat’’s undeniable grooves were the works of a true musical innovator.
In Brown’s own words: “Later on they said it was the beginning of funk. I just thought of it as where my music was going. The title told it all: I had a new bag.”
The One, and several musicians who worked with Brown, would later take Parliament-Funkadelic to new heights of funkiness. The genre would see more innovations such as slapping and popping on electric bass, widely credited to Sly and the Family Stone’s Larry Graham. On 1969’s ‘Thank You (Fallentinme Be Mice Elf Again)’, Graham’s bass line works as both a rhythmic and melodic driving force.
A decade and a half after his innovation, Brown was still funkin’. Playing the North Sea Jazz Festival, he and his band performed a medley of ‘Cold Sweat’, ‘I Can’t Stand Myself When You Touch Me’ (1968), and ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’.
At 49 years old, his dance moves weren’t about to slow down. During the jam after ‘Brand New Bag’, he twice goes into the full splits, and he pops up from kneeling and push up positions as though he’s thirty years younger. Clad in a red and shining-gold bodysuit, most of his chest showing, he’s still every bit the showman. Twice the audience are called on to give it up for “Soul Brother Number One all over the world, Jaaaaaames Brown!”, “Mister Dynamite!”
Of course, all the showmanship would fall flat if the band weren’t up to scratch. The J.B.’s are impeccably tight, with the transitions in and out of songs rehearsed to be seamless. The rhythm guitar never relents through the medley, the high pitched strums in ‘Brand New Bag’ particularly impressive.
The way Brown presents ‘New Bag’ hints at its history-shifting revelation: “In 1965, this was the sound.” They only perform two verses of ‘New Bag’, playing at breakneck speed, before Brown enjoys a call-and-response section with his backing singers.
Playing at such a speed, the funk looses some of its feel. But the band’s energy is infectious. There are hardly pauses to sink your teeth into the rhythm, but the band sweep you up with their dizzying urgency.
It’s 1965. James Brown is a big deal in R&B and soul music. He’s had hits like ‘Please Please Me’, ‘Think’, and ‘Try Me’. His legendary live album, Live at the Apollo, had spent 66 weeks in the charts, peaking at number 2. Brown has earned the nickname of The Hardest Working Man in Show Business.
And then... the ferocious blast of horns at the beginning of ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’ ushers in a new era of music.
Such was the impact of the track, it may be appropriate to refer to music that preceded it as ‘Pre-Bag’. Pre-Bag, R&B and soul music was built on the upbeat – the emphasis was on the second and fourth beats of each bar.
Brown turned that around, and had his band emphasising the first beat – the One. In doing so, he arguably invented a whole new genre of music: funk.
Brown once remarked of his new sound, “I had discovered that my strength was not in the horns, it was in the rhythms. I was hearing everything, even the guitars, like they were drums.”
Jimmy Nolen’s guitar chords are not so much strummed as stabbed, his verse part sounding like hammers on slabs of ice-cold metal. Writing in his autobiography, James Brown: The Godfather of Soul, Brown praised Nolen’s sound as “hard and fast without any sustain”. Even as the chords ring out more during the bridge, after Brown has sang, “Papa’s got a brand new bag,” everything is building towards the next drum beat on the One.
The horns, similarly, are restricted to short lines of melody, particularly on ‘Part 1’ (the single was split on two sides). Even on ‘Part 2’, Maceo Parker’s saxophone solo doesn’t stray far from the theme. Often his phrases lead the way into, and help accentuate, the One.
Brown's vocals join the rest of the instruments in leaning towards rhythm. Remarkably, it was only one year earlier that he had recorded the album Showtime. Largely made up of ballads like ‘Sweet Lorraine’ and ‘Blues For My Baby’, it was a world away from what was to come. ‘New Bag’ features no sweet, soulful crooning – Brown’s lines are short and sharp.
The drums are tight and hold a steady groove. They are less remarkable than what is played over them: where previously melody would shape a song, now there was extra rhythmic emphasis added on top of the drums. The brilliantly dancing bass line features more notes than the guitar and leads the chord changes, but is still about the groove.
‘New Bag’ was based on an earlier recording, 1964’s ‘Out Of Sight’ (from the album of the same name). The latter is a little looser, a little more bluesy. It’s less urgent, and while it’s music you can tap your foot to, it doesn’t demand your attention like ‘New Bag’’s urgent rhythm.
‘New Bag’’s lively, excitable energy may owe something to the fact that it was recorded while the song was still fresh. Brown wrote that he was “holding up a lyric sheet” during the recording, which was a first take. Engineer Ron Lenhoff then sped up the recording and edited the original take, almost seven minutes long, down to around two minutes per side.
A few months after ‘New Bag’, Brown recorded a new version of ‘I Got You (I Feel Good)’, perhaps his most famous song. The track first appeared on the Out of Sight album, and it too was a reworking of an older recording, titled ‘I Found You’. In Brown’s words, it was a “much hipper, up-tempo version” of ‘I Found You’. ‘Feel Good’ continued the development of funk, with its horn arrangement leaning further towards rhythm so as to be almost purely percussive.
Two years later, Brown recorded ‘Cold Sweat’, which some argue is the first true funk song. Again a reworking of an older track (in this case, 1962’s ‘I Don’t Care’), it took the concept of emphasising rhythm over melody even further. ‘I Don’t Care’ – which Brown called “a slow, bluesy tune” – “became an almost completely different tune, except for the lyrics”.
While ‘New Bag’ and ‘I Feel Good’ featured more traditional twelve-bar blues chord progressions, ‘Cold Sweat’ all but abandoned the idea of a chord progression. It has just the one chord change, arriving in the bridge with Brown singing, “I break out in a cold sweat.”
‘Cold Sweat’ started with Clyde Stubblefield’s drum groove. It was the first track Brown recorded with Stubblefield, who, thanks to his drum break here (“Let’s give the drummer some!”) and later in ‘Funky Drummer’, would become one of the most sampled musicians in history.
Brown would refine his funk further with a new band on tracks like 1970’s ‘Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine'. But his new era started in 1965, and ‘Brand New Bag’ and ‘Cold Sweat’’s undeniable grooves were the works of a true musical innovator.
In Brown’s own words: “Later on they said it was the beginning of funk. I just thought of it as where my music was going. The title told it all: I had a new bag.”
The One, and several musicians who worked with Brown, would later take Parliament-Funkadelic to new heights of funkiness. The genre would see more innovations such as slapping and popping on electric bass, widely credited to Sly and the Family Stone’s Larry Graham. On 1969’s ‘Thank You (Fallentinme Be Mice Elf Again)’, Graham’s bass line works as both a rhythmic and melodic driving force.
A decade and a half after his innovation, Brown was still funkin’. Playing the North Sea Jazz Festival, he and his band performed a medley of ‘Cold Sweat’, ‘I Can’t Stand Myself When You Touch Me’ (1968), and ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’.
At 49 years old, his dance moves weren’t about to slow down. During the jam after ‘Brand New Bag’, he twice goes into the full splits, and he pops up from kneeling and push up positions as though he’s thirty years younger. Clad in a red and shining-gold bodysuit, most of his chest showing, he’s still every bit the showman. Twice the audience are called on to give it up for “Soul Brother Number One all over the world, Jaaaaaames Brown!”, “Mister Dynamite!”
Of course, all the showmanship would fall flat if the band weren’t up to scratch. The J.B.’s are impeccably tight, with the transitions in and out of songs rehearsed to be seamless. The rhythm guitar never relents through the medley, the high pitched strums in ‘Brand New Bag’ particularly impressive.
The way Brown presents ‘New Bag’ hints at its history-shifting revelation: “In 1965, this was the sound.” They only perform two verses of ‘New Bag’, playing at breakneck speed, before Brown enjoys a call-and-response section with his backing singers.
Playing at such a speed, the funk looses some of its feel. But the band’s energy is infectious. There are hardly pauses to sink your teeth into the rhythm, but the band sweep you up with their dizzying urgency.
It’s 1965. James Brown is a big deal in R&B and soul music. He’s had hits like ‘Please Please Me’, ‘Think’, and ‘Try Me’. His legendary live album, Live at the Apollo, had spent 66 weeks in the charts, peaking at number 2. Brown has earned the nickname of The Hardest Working Man in Show Business.
And then... the ferocious blast of horns at the beginning of ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’ ushers in a new era of music.
Such was the impact of the track, it may be appropriate to refer to music that preceded it as ‘Pre-Bag’. Pre-Bag, R&B and soul music was built on the upbeat – the emphasis was on the second and fourth beats of each bar.
Brown turned that around, and had his band emphasising the first beat – the One. In doing so, he arguably invented a whole new genre of music: funk.
Brown once remarked of his new sound, “I had discovered that my strength was not in the horns, it was in the rhythms. I was hearing everything, even the guitars, like they were drums.”
Jimmy Nolen’s guitar chords are not so much strummed as stabbed, his verse part sounding like hammers on slabs of ice-cold metal. Writing in his autobiography, James Brown: The Godfather of Soul, Brown praised Nolen’s sound as “hard and fast without any sustain”. Even as the chords ring out more during the bridge, after Brown has sang, “Papa’s got a brand new bag,” everything is building towards the next drum beat on the One.
The horns, similarly, are restricted to short lines of melody, particularly on ‘Part 1’ (the single was split on two sides). Even on ‘Part 2’, Maceo Parker’s saxophone solo doesn’t stray far from the theme. Often his phrases lead the way into, and help accentuate, the One.
Brown's vocals join the rest of the instruments in leaning towards rhythm. Remarkably, it was only one year earlier that he had recorded the album Showtime. Largely made up of ballads like ‘Sweet Lorraine’ and ‘Blues For My Baby’, it was a world away from what was to come. ‘New Bag’ features no sweet, soulful crooning – Brown’s lines are short and sharp.
The drums are tight and hold a steady groove. They are less remarkable than what is played over them: where previously melody would shape a song, now there was extra rhythmic emphasis added on top of the drums. The brilliantly dancing bass line features more notes than the guitar and leads the chord changes, but is still about the groove.
‘New Bag’ was based on an earlier recording, 1964’s ‘Out Of Sight’ (from the album of the same name). The latter is a little looser, a little more bluesy. It’s less urgent, and while it’s music you can tap your foot to, it doesn’t demand your attention like ‘New Bag’’s urgent rhythm.
‘New Bag’’s lively, excitable energy may owe something to the fact that it was recorded while the song was still fresh. Brown wrote that he was “holding up a lyric sheet” during the recording, which was a first take. Engineer Ron Lenhoff then sped up the recording and edited the original take, almost seven minutes long, down to around two minutes per side.
A few months after ‘New Bag’, Brown recorded a new version of ‘I Got You (I Feel Good)’, perhaps his most famous song. The track first appeared on the Out of Sight album, and it too was a reworking of an older recording, titled ‘I Found You’. In Brown’s words, it was a “much hipper, up-tempo version” of ‘I Found You’. ‘Feel Good’ continued the development of funk, with its horn arrangement leaning further towards rhythm so as to be almost purely percussive.
Two years later, Brown recorded ‘Cold Sweat’, which some argue is the first true funk song. Again a reworking of an older track (in this case, 1962’s ‘I Don’t Care’), it took the concept of emphasising rhythm over melody even further. ‘I Don’t Care’ – which Brown called “a slow, bluesy tune” – “became an almost completely different tune, except for the lyrics”.
While ‘New Bag’ and ‘I Feel Good’ featured more traditional twelve-bar blues chord progressions, ‘Cold Sweat’ all but abandoned the idea of a chord progression. It has just the one chord change, arriving in the bridge with Brown singing, “I break out in a cold sweat.”
‘Cold Sweat’ started with Clyde Stubblefield’s drum groove. It was the first track Brown recorded with Stubblefield, who, thanks to his drum break here (“Let’s give the drummer some!”) and later in ‘Funky Drummer’, would become one of the most sampled musicians in history.
Brown would refine his funk further with a new band on tracks like 1970’s ‘Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine'. But his new era started in 1965, and ‘Brand New Bag’ and ‘Cold Sweat’’s undeniable grooves were the works of a true musical innovator.
In Brown’s own words: “Later on they said it was the beginning of funk. I just thought of it as where my music was going. The title told it all: I had a new bag.”
The One, and several musicians who worked with Brown, would later take Parliament-Funkadelic to new heights of funkiness. The genre would see more innovations such as slapping and popping on electric bass, widely credited to Sly and the Family Stone’s Larry Graham. On 1969’s ‘Thank You (Fallentinme Be Mice Elf Again)’, Graham’s bass line works as both a rhythmic and melodic driving force.
A decade and a half after his innovation, Brown was still funkin’. Playing the North Sea Jazz Festival, he and his band performed a medley of ‘Cold Sweat’, ‘I Can’t Stand Myself When You Touch Me’ (1968), and ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’.
At 49 years old, his dance moves weren’t about to slow down. During the jam after ‘Brand New Bag’, he twice goes into the full splits, and he pops up from kneeling and push up positions as though he’s thirty years younger. Clad in a red and shining-gold bodysuit, most of his chest showing, he’s still every bit the showman. Twice the audience are called on to give it up for “Soul Brother Number One all over the world, Jaaaaaames Brown!”, “Mister Dynamite!”
Of course, all the showmanship would fall flat if the band weren’t up to scratch. The J.B.’s are impeccably tight, with the transitions in and out of songs rehearsed to be seamless. The rhythm guitar never relents through the medley, the high pitched strums in ‘Brand New Bag’ particularly impressive.
The way Brown presents ‘New Bag’ hints at its history-shifting revelation: “In 1965, this was the sound.” They only perform two verses of ‘New Bag’, playing at breakneck speed, before Brown enjoys a call-and-response section with his backing singers.
Playing at such a speed, the funk looses some of its feel. But the band’s energy is infectious. There are hardly pauses to sink your teeth into the rhythm, but the band sweep you up with their dizzying urgency.