A sad note for this Christmas Day. When I was younger I had musical ambitions; I wanted to play cowbell in the James Brown band. Now I will never be able to do that. When I was growing up, there were radio stations which played Elvis, and another which played James Brown. I preferred the James Brown station. I got to see him perform live several times. C Hamilton Remembering James BrownMore Santa's Helpers courtesy of Peter from Asian-Batht@yahoogroups.com============ James Brown 1933-2006 Living In America video version Yeah, uh! Get up, now! Ow! Knock out this! Super highways, coast to coast, easy to get anywhere On the transcontinental overload, just slide behind the wheel How does it feel When there's no destination - that's too far And somewhere on the way, you might find out who you are Chorus: Living in America - eye to eye, station to station Living in America - hand to hand, across the nation Living in America - got to have a celebration Rock my soul Smokestack, fatback, many miles of railroad track All night radio, keep on runnin' through your rock 'n' roll soul All night diners keep you awake, hey, on black coffee and a hard roll You might have to walk the fine line, you might take the hard line But everybody's working overtime (chorus) I live in America, help me out, but I live in America, wait a minute You might not be looking for the promised land, but you might find it anyway Under one of those old familiar names Like New Orleans (New Orleans), Detroit City (Detroit City), Dallas (Dallas) Pittsburg P.A. (Pittsburg P.A.), New York City (New York City) Kansas City (Kansas City), Atlanta (Atlanta), Chicago and L.A. Living in America - hit me - living in America - yeah, I walk in and out Living in America I live in America - state lines, gonna make the prime, that I live in America - hey, I know what it means, I Living in America - Eddie Murphy, eat your heart out Living in America - hit me, I said now, eye to eye, station to station Living in America - so nice, with your bare self Living in America - I feel good! Sex Machine videoRolling Stone articleJames Brown: More than the Godfather of Soul By Greg Kot Tribune music critic December 25, 2006James Brown was more than just a soul-music giant. He was a visionary. The world dances today to the sound of his drum, and in James Brown's universe every instrument was a drum. Brown died Monday at 73 of heart failure in Atlanta after being taken to Emory Crawford Long Hospital with pneumonia. Whereas legendary peers such as the Beatles, Elvis Presley and even Bob Dylan have been transformed from counterculture rebels into cuddly icons, Brown leaves a pricklier legacy. "Said to be singularly 'raw,' 'uninhibited,' 'possessed,' he became the mysterious, exotic black Other of colonialist fantasy," wrote Bruce Tucker in his introduction to the singer's autobiography, "James Brown: The Godfather of Soul." If there is a lingering popular image of who James Brown was, it is of that exotic, possessed entertainer. He was the "Hardest Working Man in Show Business," with buckets of sweat soaking through his suit, makeup and pompadour. There were the hot-foot dance steps, the flying splits in polished boots, and finales with a cape draped across his shoulders. On stage, he didn't so much sing as scream, grunt and growl, like a libido gone haywire. But that image is a cliché. Brown was a great showman, but he was no cartoon. That he was demonized by legal troubles didn't help. But he was no circus act. He was a brilliant singer, musician, band leader and conceptualist. From the mid-'50s to the mid-'70s, he had a run of innovation, creativity and popularity that rivals any recording artist of the last half-century. In 1986, he was among the first batch of artists, including Presley and Chuck Berry, to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. "You gotta dance to release that pressure," he told the Tribune in 1991. "But you need to set an example too." Throughout his career, Brown tried to have it both ways, mixing high-powered grooves with messages that would define his community. He struggled with alcohol and drug abuse and a run-in with police that landed him in prison. But without him, popular music would not be the same. The artists in his debt are legion, including Michael Jackson, Prince, Mick Jagger, George Clinton, Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys. The innovations one hears today in the likes of Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado have their roots in Brown's ground-breaking mixes of the '60s, which pushed rhythm into the forefront of pop. "He was an innovator, he was an emancipator, he was an originator," said Little Richard. "Rap music, all that stuff, came from James Brown." The singer was born poor in Barnwell, S.C., in 1933. He was abandoned by his parents when he was 4, and grew up on the streets of Augusta, Ga., under the care of relatives and friends. He was later sent to reform school for breaking into cars, where he met gospel singer Bobby Byrd. The two became friends, and Brown joined Byrd's group, the Gospel Starlighters, which evolved into an R&B group, the Famous Flames. The group was signed by Cincinnati's King Records label in 1956, and "Please Please Please" hit the top 10 a few months later. Brown may not have invented soul music - let's let Ray Charles have that honor - but he certainly embodied it on "Please Please Please" and follow-ups "Try Me" and "I'll Go Crazy." In 1963, Brown capped the soul era with a landmark concert recording, "James Brown Live at the Apollo." For those wondering what soul music is, here's your primer. With its call-and-response vocals, pleading voices, braying horns and dramatic tempo and mood swings, this was the ultimate bridge between the spiritual and the erotic, gospel and blues, rhythm and rhyme. By that time, Brown was already a star, but he was just getting started. In 1965, he began remaking popular music from the ground up. "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" continued his string of massive hit singles, but this one sounded like nothing else in Brown's canon - or anyone else's, for that matter. With "Brand New Bag" and the ebullient "I Got You (I Feel Good)," Brown began stripping down his sound, until every instrument - horns, voices, guitars - sounded like a drum. Brown transformed his 13-piece band into a giant rhythm section that echoed and updated the centuries-old polyrhythmic music of Africa. Guitarist Jimmy Nolan dispensed with solos for a terse chicken-scratch stroke that overlapped the drums and bass. Horns blasted staccato responses instead of long, languid jazz-inspired lines. In 1967, "Cold Sweat" took this rhythmic style even further, and Brown punctuated his innovation with a single command: "Give the drummer some!" The song is Ground Zero for what would soon become known as funk, which flourished throughout the next decade and also gave rise to disco and hip-hop. In several versions of "Cold Sweat," Brown can be heard dictating the song's progress. "You don't have to do no soloing, brother," he barks at drummer Clyde Stubblefield. "Just keep what you got, cause it's a mother." As ordered, Stubblefield's give-the-drummer-some break in "Cold Sweat" wasn't really a solo, but it is one of the most copied drum patterns in popular music. It was later sampled by hip-hop producers as a foundation for countless rap vocals. Brown hired brilliant musicians, many of them steeped in jazz, and arranged songs on the fly around their abilities. He was Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn rolled into one; he didn't need sheet music or charts because the music was all in his head, a product of feel and the needs of the moment rather than scripted composition. His bands became finishing schools for generations of think-on-their-feet improvisers, included bassists Bootsy Collins and Bernard Odum, drummers Stubblefield and John "Jabo" Starks, and horn men Pee Wee Ellis, Fred Wesley and Maceo Parker. Brown orchestrated them all in recording sessions or in concert, and his commands - "Take it to the bridge!" "Hit it!" "Quit it!" "Maceo!" - are as much a part of funk lore as the songs themselves. These interjections are the sound of a leader who not only knew exactly what he wanted to hear, but when and from whom. Sometimes even Brown couldn't help but get caught up in the excitement: "Excuse me while I do the bugaloo!" he'd exult. When it wasn't happening, however, Brown let everyone know it. Violations of his stern code were greeted with scowls and fines. The singer was like a general, and as one of his songs said, "Papa don't take no mess" from his troops. He alienated plenty of skilled musicians, but when one left, there were always eager recruits waiting in line to join the hottest touring band in the business. With "Cold Sweat," Brown entered his greatest and most radical era. The tracks he recorded in the late '60s and early '70s fused the sophistication of jazz-style arrangements with brutally raw funk, and gave rise to such ecstatic booty shakers as "Get Up I Feel Like Being a Sex Machine," "Hot Pants" and "Make it Funky." With these recordings, Brown established himself as the godfather not just of soul, but of all subsequent styles of dance music: funk, disco, hip-hop. In so doing, Brown lost some of the massive crossover audience that appeared to be his for the taking. He sacrificed melody for rhythm, and chord changes for groove. For Brown, his musicians and their audience, the tonalities and textures of rhythm-based music were endless, but they didn't necessarily lead to catchy ditties that could be played on commercial radio. Instead, Brown was all about stretching songs past the three-minute comfort zone of pop music, and into extended vamps, improvisations and jams tailored for concert performances and dance floors. Not everything Brown had to say was in the groove, however. He was as topical lyrically as he was innovative sonically. His cautionary tales in "Public Enemy No. 1" and "King Heroin" presaged rap. "The white horse of heroin will ride you to hell ... to hell ... to hell ... until you are dead ... dead, brother," Brown intoned on the latter. His 1968 landmark "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud" embodied the civil-rights era and galvanized the African-American community after Martin Luther King's assassination. From the same era, Brown issued another manifesto, this time on male-female relationships: "It's a Man's Man's Man's World." Though it's commonly mistaken for a chauvinist rant, the song is actually a plea for companionship, a lament about how all the power in the world "wouldn't mean nuthin' ... nuthin' ... without a woman or a girl." Brown's hits faded as his godchildren disco and then rap began to dominate the late '70s and '80s, but his sound remained ubiquitous. He collaborated with hip-hop artists such as Afrika Bambaataa and his songs were sampled thousands of times on house and hip-hop records. "I Got You (I Feel Good)" enjoyed a second life as the theme of several television commercials, and he re-entered the charts with the 1985 single "Living in America." Along the way, he was married four times and fathered four children. But in 1988 he was sentenced to prison in South Carolina for failing to stop for police and two counts of assault in connection with a gun-brandishing confrontation and chase that began outside his Augusta, Ga., office. Brown vehemently denied the charges, saying that he ran only after police began firing at him. "It was out of character for me," Brown told the Tribune after his release in 1991. In 2003, he was pardoned by the South Carolina parole board. He was back at work soon after his release from prison, and resumed his heavy tour schedule. A dependency on pain killers put him in a hospital for a week a few years ago, but he recovered and continued to perform live. Even as he entered the Atlanta hospital on Sunday, he was still planning to play on New Year's Eve at B.B. King's Blues Club in New York. Brown is survived by at least four children. Friends were making flight arrangements Monday to come to Atlanta to determine how to memorialize Brown him, according to his agent. "He was dramatic to the end - dying on Christmas Day," said Jesse Jackson, a friend of Brown's since 1955. "Almost a dramatic, poetic moment. He'll be all over the news all over the world today. He would have it no other way." Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune ================== Christmas around the worldC Hamilton a moderator of several Yahoo groupsupdated list and information about these groups