James Joe Brown Influence

“As a performer, I’ve had names like Mr. Dynamite, The “Please Please Please” Man, The Harest Working Man in Show Business […] My full legal name is James Joe Brown.” These are the words from Mr. Brown himself in his autobiography: James Brown: The Godfather of Soul (1986). In the epilogue of his biography, Dave Marsh (1990), wrote that in January 1986, he was “inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.” Although this godfather has “soul” on his title, he has made a name for himself in the blues, funk, rock and roll, rap and hip hop genre. He dominated various music styles including pop. He was a large influence in pop because many of the styles and rhythms came from Brown’s invention, way before digital equipment was invented. In fact,

Without the knowledge of African American music and Brown’s impact into popular music today, one would not guess that his style translated into the core of rap and hip-hop music. “Rap owes multiple debts to James Brown, primarily in its use of ostinati”, which is defined as a continuous musical phrase or rhythm. What rap music did from this was to “elevate the ostinato to a position of importance through the use of ‘sampling’, whereby fragments of previous recordings overlap or are superimposed onto the basic rhythm track, or used as the basis for the rhythm of the track.” (Brackett, 1992). According to Gerri Hirshey (1982) on Rolling Stone, JB’s first rap record was “America Is My Home”, which was not a hit. Assuming this is because is was different from most of his songs, this was the first song that was the closest to sounding like rap music. He was rhyming and rather than singing, he just used spoken words, as if he was just talking (like slam poetry). Along with his influence to rap and hip-hop, he played a big influence in hip-hop artists today. One that comes to mind so clearly is Bruno Mars, especially with his latest album that sounds like 40’s hit songs all into one album. The whole album “24K Magic” has bits and pieces of James Brown written all over it. Not to mention Mars has similar features to Brown, he also does a similar kind of performance with him and his

He put an emphasis to the instrumental part of his tunes and used many disco instruments such as strings, winds and even the harp. With that being said, his influence to disco music was not as great as the latter music styles. Among those genres, Gospel music was not mentioned. He did not necessarily have an influence in Gospel music, but he did change the way it was structured. According to Iain Chambers (1985), “singers like Ray Charles and James Brown introduced the screams, shouts, sobs and grunts of the preaching and testifying singer. The gospel ‘choir’ was substituted by the brass, the ‘church’ replaced by sustained chords on the piano or organ.” The style of blues changed for them and they broke it up into short staccato rhythms or riffs, with instruments answering to the yells and grunts of the singer. They called this a type of “secular preaching” that was not so coming for the popular crowd, by changing the style of Gospel music, it attracted younger people. Brown’s band mostly consisted of jazz players (Echols, 2008), so jazz was definitely incorporated into Brown’s style of music, especially with the use of instruments of such. His tunes with saxophone solos make you think jazz; it is hard to believe how many music styles he mashes all into his