UNH! GOOD GOD!

(The following is substantially derived from a recent e-mail to a friend, 10/15/09.)

It is hard to believe that James Brown is now dead. When I went to see James at the "Pavilion" in Charlottesville, Virginia just before his death in or about 2007, he was 77 years old, and he was so frail by then, it was obvious he could not drop to the stage singing "Please, Please!" nor do the "James Brown" anymore. I waited in vain, but I can't do those dances anymore, either.

As a randy teenager, I was crazy about James Brown, and I would go see him anytime he was appearing in Richmond, Virginia where I finished high school back in the early 1960's, and even later. James even appeared at my college one weekend. I spent many a night up in the "nosebleed" section of the Mosque balcony in Richmond, being one of about 10 white folks in the whole place, watching James, dropping to his knees, sweating like a horse, with his shirt off and screaming "Please, Please!" into the mike, and the crowd is going apeshit!

Then, one of his sidemen would come from offstage with James's cape, put it gently around his shoulders and help him up off the stage, then assist him pitifully hobbling offstage. As James would reach the side of the stage, he'd FLING the cape off, run back to the mike, grab it and pull it down onto the stage in a kneeling position again, again hollering "Please, Please!" into the mike. This would happen three or four times, and by the end there was such a frenzy in the audience that I feared the balcony would collapse!

I kid you not!

About 25 years before James died, some friends and I were sitting in the bar of the Richmond Marriott one evening having a drink. My friends had fixed me up on a blind date with a friend of theirs.  (She did not even have a seeing-eye dog!)  We noticed that James Brown was giving an interview nearby. He was to do a show at the Richmond Coliseum later that evening.

I was fidgeting and gibbering about getting James's autograph. About 20 years earlier, I had seen James Brown in the Atlanta airport and had forfeited an opportunity to get his autograph then. At the time, wearing an absolutely beautiful gabardine tan suit and matching cape that contrasted with his extraordinary dark skin, he was surrounded by a bevy of middle-aged black women who were fawning all over him, and this white boy knew better than to intrude on that scene. James was grinning from ear to ear, and I was not going to try to get in the middle.

So when the interview was over at the Marriott, I went over with a pen and Marriott cocktail napkin to ask James Brown for his autograph. There was this very long, deadly pause while James just stared at me with glittering eyes! It was eerie! He seemed stoned "out of his gourd" on something. FINALLY, after an excruciatingly long pause, he moved in slow-motion, took my pen and the napkin and scrawled his signature thereon, appending the phrase "Rocky III" or something like that, being the movie he had then recently completed with Sylvester Stallone wherein he had debuted his song, "Living In America." I quickly excused myself and went back to our table, but my blind date was EXTREMELY nonplussed by my groupie adulation and, needless to say, we never got together again. It seemed she could not wait for the evening to end thereafter, but I had James Brown's autograph, so I did NOT GIVE A DAMN!

Michael Jackson ripped James off with his vaunted "Moonwalk," which was nothing more than a warmed-over "James Brown" or "Camel Walk" that James perfected. A performance by James Brown in his prime was just amazing stuff. I have most of his records and CD's. I saw it all. I was there. I am so eternally glad I was. Many times.

There will NEVER be anyone like James Brown ever again. Not even close. He was a true musical pioneer. 

UPDATE: I have performed karaoke a couple of times yet have never tried to do so seriously.  I know that my straightforward rendition of a good song would never measure up to the expectations of any audience, regardless of the amount of alcohol it might have consumed!  But I have, in fact, performed Madonna's first hit, "Like A Virgin" in the style of James Brown, and it has been rather well received!

Unh!  Good God!