The artist James Brown called his musical brother: “I wasn’t just a fan”
James Brown transformed the black-and-white banality of the 1950s into a vibrant flash of funk-fueled light, boasting seemingly endless (and often chemically administered) resources of energy and an unending sense of individuality. Despite that individuality, though, the funk forefather never blinkered himself against the various other musical revolutionaries tearing up the rule book at that time.
Although it is often the 1960s which gets tagged with having a ‘revolutionary spirit’, courtesy of the counterculture age and the advent of acid-riddled sonic explorations, the seeds of that cultural shift were planted the decade prior, with the likes of James Brown.
Sure, it wasn’t until the 1960s that Brown’s name started being strung up in lights, with utterly iconic records like Live at the Apollo and generation-defining performances, but the roots of his funk sound were forged with The Famous Flames during the mid-1950s, when the American R&B scene was just starting to cross the bridge over to rock ‘n’ roll.
When the slicked-back hair and gyrating hips of rock ‘n’ roll first hit the mainstream, spurred on by the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, and, of course, Elvis Presley, the style tended to divide opinion among R&B musicians like Brown.
While some embraced the emerging rock age wholeheartedly, others highlighted the fact that rock ‘n’ roll was little more than predominantly white artists emulating the sounds, rhythms, and styles of Black artists, during a time in which those same artists and communities were subject to horrific levels of prejudice within all levels of American society.
For many, Elvis Presley represented the antithesis of that idea. After all, you only had to take a passing glance at his apparently outrageous dance moves or hear a few seconds of his distinctive vocal style to realise that he owed it all the the obscure and forgotten blues and R&B artists who came before him. R&B titan Ray Charles, for instance, once declared, “Black people have been going out, shaking their behinds for centuries. That’s all Elvis was doing, was copying that. He was doing our kind of music.”
“So what the hell am I supposed to get so excited about?” Charles demanded during that 1994 interview with NBC. However, for James Brown, there was a hell of a lot to get excited about when Presley came around. “I wasn’t just a fan, I was his brother,” the ‘King of Funk’ once shared, uniting the pair as American musical royalty back in the 1950s and 1960s.
“He said I was good and I said he was good; we never argued about that,” Brown continued. “Elvis was a hard worker, dedicated, and God loved him. Last time I saw him was at Graceland. We sang ‘Old Blind Barnabus’ together, a gospel song. I love him and hope to see him in heaven.”
Concluding, “There’ll never be another like that soul brother.”
Although tragically, that gospel song was never released – if it was even recorded in the first place – but it does reflect a kind of unity between the two respective musical royals. United under a common adoration of gospel, blues, and R&B, as well as a penchant for spectacular live performances, James Brown and Elvis Presley made for a natural brotherhood, even if their mutual respect never made it into the recording studio.
