Why James Brown was a fan of opera
James Brown didn’t earn the title of ‘The Hardest Working Man in Show Business” by setting reasonable expectations for himself. He also wasn’t particularly interested in adjusting those impossibly high standards when it came to the people he shared a stage or studio with.
One of the most notorious taskmasters of all time, Brown’s bandleader persona was uncompromising and unforgiving. Even at the height of his success in the late 1960s, he didn’t give an inch, often turning rehearsals and recording sessions into brutal grinds, and regularly punishing or fining band members that fudged a part or showed up late to the bus.
“If they are going to work,” Brown told one reporter in 1968, “They’d better be there when it’s time to work…or else.”
It’s not hard to break down the psychological roots of some of this behaviour. Before he was Soul Brother number one, James Brown was a kid growing up in a very poor family in Augusta, Georgia, during the Great Depression, no less. To help put food on the table, he took odd jobs working on farms and in coal yards, and would sometimes earn an extra nickel by putting on performances and showing off his dance skills to National Guard soldiers camped outside of town. He needed to work constantly and be perfect in order to come back the next day.
Once he grew into a perfectionist and the undisputed ‘Godfather of Soul’, Brown would often discuss his appreciation for other artists and professionals who shared his belief in the virtues of a tight ship.
He gave props to the Beatles as “plain good businessmen” and talked of his admiration for the old big bands of jazz, which had to operate much like his own backing band. There was another, somewhat more surprising genre of music which he also singled out in a 1968 interview published in the Roanoke Times in Virginia.
“I like opera because it’s perfection,” Brown said. “You know those opera singers have to be perfect or it’s no good, you understand?”
Brown didn’t say that he necessarily enjoyed opera aesthetically, or that he listened to it regularly. But he certainly recognised the level of determination and skill that went into putting those performances together, and it was the same spirit that drove him to play over 300 shows a year.
As further supporting evidence of Brown’s not-so-secret opera fandom, he agreed to join the legendary opera singer Luciano Pavarotti in 2002 for a very interesting duet on Brown’s ‘It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World’ at one of the annual ‘Pavarotti & Friends’ concert events. Both men would be gone within the next five years, but they sound remarkably strong in this performance, backed by a full orchestra and clearly enjoying raising each other’s games.
After the performance, as Brown walked backstage clearly on cloud nine, a reporter asked him how he was feeling about singing with the great Pavarotti. That’s right, somebody unironically asked James Brown how he was feeling.
“I feel good!” Brown shouted back as if he’d never said it before. This is what perfection looks like.
