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Friday Funk #29 – ‘I Refuse To Lose’ by James Brown
Friday Funk #29 – ‘I Refuse To Lose’ by James Brown
Friday Funk #29 – ‘I Refuse To Lose’ by James Brown
Built off one of the finest horn motifs in James Brown’s catalogue and a itchy-feet bassline, ‘I Refuse To Lose’ was among the standout tracks on 1976’s Get Up Offa That Thing.
The song, like many of Brown’s ’70s era, uses a duo of guitars, which he and Fela Kuti often had playing polyrhythmic parts. Here, they work more in tandem, playing together on the One every other bar. The two parts are different enough to add to the fidgety feel of the song without making it unsettling.
The guitar in the left speaker plays tight and scratchy, possibly palm-muted chords, and the guitar on the right has a brighter tone and is played with more sustain. The right-sided guitar flits between a single-note lead line and bright chords, and is the sole instrument besides hand claps in the short bridge section from 0:50.
That bridge section is a highlight because once you’ve heard the song a few times, you know that fantastic horn riff is coming back around. The motif is used enough to sound happy, familiar and reassuring after the more antsy verses, but not so much that it loses its novelty.
The guitars are really supporting instruments for the bass, which dances on and off the pulse and has an unignorable, gut-deep tone. Brown’s records often sounded great sonically, asides from the brilliant musicianship. Get Up Offa That Thing’s LP release credited few people, and the engineer wasn’t one of them. The album was kind of forgotten about until the streaming era. It was never released on CD in the US or UK, only Japan.
The band play so well it makes it even more of a shame the musicians weren’t credited. Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker weren’t around – they’d left the band in ’75 and hopped on the Mothership.
Brown’s voice rarely sounded more authoritative. Even when he hilariously misquotes Muhammad Ali’s “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”, swapping the two by mistake, Brown sounds like he can’t be messed with.
He later gets the quote right, and then says a bunch of other people also refuse to lose: himself (“James Brown” – he liked referring to himself in the third person), his woman, and for some reason Elvis Presley.
The song’s title and refrain is another Ali quote, and Brown gets a lot of great mileage out of it. It fits so well with the triumphant horns, and Brown hits the second syllable in “refuse” hard on the One. You can hear it over and over – which you do, with the song lasting seven and a half minutes.
In the bridge section, where James is singing, “In the pocket, yeah, sock it in the pocket” and “Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance”, the bass plays a long sliding note at the end of each phrase when James’s vocal melody is resolved. The vocal melody is resolved; the bass’s melody is unresolved. Then it flips – when Brown’s melody is unresolved (“I refuse to lose”), the bass phrase finishes with a staccato note completing its melody.
It may have been an intentional decision, or it might have been what felt right instinctively. Having too much tension results in something like Talking Heads’ agit-funk. This wasn’t that. ‘I Refuse To Lose’ is party music. It’s meant to feel “So good, so good, so good.”
Built off one of the finest horn motifs in James Brown’s catalogue and a itchy-feet bassline, ‘I Refuse To Lose’ was among the standout tracks on 1976’s Get Up Offa That Thing.
The song, like many of Brown’s ’70s era, uses a duo of guitars, which he and Fela Kuti often had playing polyrhythmic parts. Here, they work more in tandem, playing together on the One every other bar. The two parts are different enough to add to the fidgety feel of the song without making it unsettling.
The guitar in the left speaker plays tight and scratchy, possibly palm-muted chords, and the guitar on the right has a brighter tone and is played with more sustain. The right-sided guitar flits between a single-note lead line and bright chords, and is the sole instrument besides hand claps in the short bridge section from 0:50.
That bridge section is a highlight because once you’ve heard the song a few times, you know that fantastic horn riff is coming back around. The motif is used enough to sound happy, familiar and reassuring after the more antsy verses, but not so much that it loses its novelty.
The guitars are really supporting instruments for the bass, which dances on and off the pulse and has an unignorable, gut-deep tone. Brown’s records often sounded great sonically, asides from the brilliant musicianship. Get Up Offa That Thing’s LP release credited few people, and the engineer wasn’t one of them. The album was kind of forgotten about until the streaming era. It was never released on CD in the US or UK, only Japan.
The band play so well it makes it even more of a shame the musicians weren’t credited. Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker weren’t around – they’d left the band in ’75 and hopped on the Mothership.
Brown’s voice rarely sounded more authoritative. Even when he hilariously misquotes Muhammad Ali’s “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”, swapping the two by mistake, Brown sounds like he can’t be messed with.
He later gets the quote right, and then says a bunch of other people also refuse to lose: himself (“James Brown” – he liked referring to himself in the third person), his woman, and for some reason Elvis Presley.
The song’s title and refrain is another Ali quote, and Brown gets a lot of great mileage out of it. It fits so well with the triumphant horns, and Brown hits the second syllable in “refuse” hard on the One. You can hear it over and over – which you do, with the song lasting seven and a half minutes.
In the bridge section, where James is singing, “In the pocket, yeah, sock it in the pocket” and “Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance”, the bass plays a long sliding note at the end of each phrase when James’s vocal melody is resolved. The vocal melody is resolved; the bass’s melody is unresolved. Then it flips – when Brown’s melody is unresolved (“I refuse to lose”), the bass phrase finishes with a staccato note completing its melody.
It may have been an intentional decision, or it might have been what felt right instinctively. Having too much tension results in something like Talking Heads’ agit-funk. This wasn’t that. ‘I Refuse To Lose’ is party music. It’s meant to feel “So good, so good, so good.”
Built off one of the finest horn motifs in James Brown’s catalogue and a itchy-feet bassline, ‘I Refuse To Lose’ was among the standout tracks on 1976’s Get Up Offa That Thing.
The song, like many of Brown’s ’70s era, uses a duo of guitars, which he and Fela Kuti often had playing polyrhythmic parts. Here, they work more in tandem, playing together on the One every other bar. The two parts are different enough to add to the fidgety feel of the song without making it unsettling.
The guitar in the left speaker plays tight and scratchy, possibly palm-muted chords, and the guitar on the right has a brighter tone and is played with more sustain. The right-sided guitar flits between a single-note lead line and bright chords, and is the sole instrument besides hand claps in the short bridge section from 0:50.
That bridge section is a highlight because once you’ve heard the song a few times, you know that fantastic horn riff is coming back around. The motif is used enough to sound happy, familiar and reassuring after the more antsy verses, but not so much that it loses its novelty.
The guitars are really supporting instruments for the bass, which dances on and off the pulse and has an unignorable, gut-deep tone. Brown’s records often sounded great sonically, asides from the brilliant musicianship. Get Up Offa That Thing’s LP release credited few people, and the engineer wasn’t one of them. The album was kind of forgotten about until the streaming era. It was never released on CD in the US or UK, only Japan.
The band play so well it makes it even more of a shame the musicians weren’t credited. Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker weren’t around – they’d left the band in ’75 and hopped on the Mothership.
Brown’s voice rarely sounded more authoritative. Even when he hilariously misquotes Muhammad Ali’s “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee”, swapping the two by mistake, Brown sounds like he can’t be messed with.
He later gets the quote right, and then says a bunch of other people also refuse to lose: himself (“James Brown” – he liked referring to himself in the third person), his woman, and for some reason Elvis Presley.
The song’s title and refrain is another Ali quote, and Brown gets a lot of great mileage out of it. It fits so well with the triumphant horns, and Brown hits the second syllable in “refuse” hard on the One. You can hear it over and over – which you do, with the song lasting seven and a half minutes.
In the bridge section, where James is singing, “In the pocket, yeah, sock it in the pocket” and “Dance, dance, dance, dance, dance”, the bass plays a long sliding note at the end of each phrase when James’s vocal melody is resolved. The vocal melody is resolved; the bass’s melody is unresolved. Then it flips – when Brown’s melody is unresolved (“I refuse to lose”), the bass phrase finishes with a staccato note completing its melody.
It may have been an intentional decision, or it might have been what felt right instinctively. Having too much tension results in something like Talking Heads’ agit-funk. This wasn’t that. ‘I Refuse To Lose’ is party music. It’s meant to feel “So good, so good, so good.”