James Brown biography
Late 1960s
In November 1967, James Brown purchased radio station WGYW in Knoxville, Tennessee for a reported $75,000, according to the January 20, 1968
Record World magazine. The call letters were changed to WJBE reflecting his initials. WJBE began on January 15, 1968 and broadcast a Rhythm & Blues format. The station slogan was "WJBE 1430 Raw Soul". At the time it was mentioned "Brown has also branched out into real estate and music publishing in recent months".
Brown continued to refine the new funk idiom. His 1967 #1 R&B hit, "Cold Sweat", sometimes cited as the first true funk song, was the first of his recordings to contain a drum break and the first that featured a harmony that was reduced to a single chord. The instrumental arrangements on tracks such as "Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose" and "Licking Stick-Licking Stick" (both recorded in 1968) and "Funky Drummer" (recorded in 1969) featured a more developed version of Brown's mid-1960s style, with the horn section, guitars, bass and drums meshed together in intricate rhythmic patterns based on multiple interlocking riffs.
Changes in Brown's style that started with "Cold Sweat" also established the musical foundation for Brown's later hits, such as "I Got the Feelin'" (1968) and "Mother Popcorn" (1969). By this time Brown's vocals frequently took the form of a kind of rhythmic declamation, not quite sung but not quite spoken, that only intermittently featured traces of pitch or melody. This would become a major influence on the techniques of rapping, which would come to maturity along with hip hop music in the coming decades.
Brown's style of funk was based on interlocking syncopated parts: funky bass lines, drum patterns, and iconic guitar riffs. The main guitar ostinatos for "Aint" it Funky" (c. late 1960s), and "Give it Up or Turn it Lose" (1969), are examples of Brown's refinement of New Orleans funk- irresistibly danceable riffs, stripped down to their rhythmic essence. On "Aint" it Funky" (c. late 1960s), and "Give it Up or Turn it Lose" (1969), the tonal structure is bare bones. The pattern of attack-points is the emphasis, not the pattern of pitches. It's as if the guitar is an African drum, or idiophone. Alexander Stewart states that this popular feel was passed along from "New Orleans-through James Brown's music, to the popular music of the 1970s."
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"Bring it Up" has an Afro-Cuban guajeo-like structure. If fact, on a 1976 version, Cuban bongos are used. All three of these guitar riff are based on an onbeat/offbeat structure. Stewart states: "This model, it should be noted, is different from a time line (such as clave and tresillo) in that it is not an exact pattern, but more of a loose organizing principle."
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Brown's recordings influenced musicians across the industry, most notably Sly and his Family Stone, Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, Booker T. & the M.G.'s and soul shouters like King Curtis, Edwin Starr, Temptations David Ruffin, and Dennis Edwards. A then-prepubescent Michael Jackson took Brown's shouts and dancing into the pop mainstream as the lead singer of Motown's The Jackson 5. Those same tracks were later resurrected by countless hip-hop musicians from the 1970s onward. As a result, James Brown remains to this day the world's most sampled recording artist, with "Funky Drummer" itself becoming the most sampled individual piece of music.
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