Brown Gets Funky With Famous Friends

Publié le par olivier

Robert Palmer, James Brown and Aretha Franklin at the Taboo Club in Detroit (1987)

Robert Palmer, James Brown and Aretha Franklin at the Taboo Club in Detroit (1987)

We had a funky good time, just like James Brown promised during his two-show TV taping at Club Taboo in downtown Detroit a couple of weeks ago.

In fact, things got even funkier than Soul Brother No.1 probably expected.

Let's talk Wilson Pickett, for instance. The Wicked One reportedly plied that reputation offstage during a previous visit to Detroit; at least that's the reason why he was miffed over all the advance publicity the Cinemax "Soul Session" - a tame title for what became as major a musical blow out as this area has seen - received during the week.

So Pickett, fearing the long arm of the law was still reaching for him, pulled out and then sneaked back in. He wouldn't do Saturday's all-star show, the producers said. But he slipped into Friday's show, whipping through Cold Sweat with Brown and then burning through his own Midnight Hour.

And when Saturday's finale came around - with Brown, Aretha Franklin, Robert Palmer, Joe Cocker and Billy Vera vamping through Living In America - Wilson was just wicked enough to slide into that little jam, too.

Brown Gets Funky With Famous Friends

So things were crafty offstage, but the weekend's real magic was onstage - two nights of soul, the hot-buttered variety, that made it impossible for anyone in Taboo to stand still.

It was TV production done right: The crew just set up their cameras, let the musicians roll and did their best to catch what was going on. As one producer told the several hundred patrons shoehorned into Taboo: "Forget it's TV. Go crazy and have a fabulous time. Forget that we're here."

That certainly wasn't hard to do once the music started cooking. On Friday it was Brown and his band - plus Pickett - working through 16 songs in an hour and 40 minutes, from the gospel-tinged pathos of Try Me and Georgia to the frenzied funk of Doing It To Death, Sex Machine and Make It Funky. And on Saturday, when it seemed like things couldn't get too much better, Brown and his guests pulled out all the stops in a 15-song, two-hour throwdown that battered every corner of the club.

The treat was seeing the sheer joy on the faces of these music veterans - Brown has been at it for 30 years, after all - as they belted out their songs with the kind of gusto and conviction reserved for the most major of gigs. Which is just what they considered it, according to Palmer.

"I used to sing I Feel Good in my band when I was 19," said Palmer, who flew in from his Bahamas home Friday with his 9-year old son, Jim, who had never seen snow before. "As much as I was brought up on Ella Fitzgerald, Lena Horne, Billie Holiday - to a certain extent that was my parents' music. The first music I found that was my own was James Brown, Wilson Pickett... to be asked to sing with them, it's an honor, you know?"

Palmer kept pace with Brown on Try Me and I Feel Good, and Brown's 13-piece band turned Palmer's hit, Addicted To Love, into a rave-up that put the high-tech original to shame.

Cocker, reading the lyrics off cue cards (kind of), delivered a passionate version of When A Man Loves A Woman, and he and Brown cooked during rendition of I'll Go Crazy.

What about the first-ever meeting between the King (Brown) and Queen (Aretha) of Soul? Underwhelming, to be honest. In fact, it was hotter in rehearsals on Friday afternoon. On Saturday, the mix of It's A Man's World and Do Right Woman never got off the ground - despite a flashy, microphone-catching knee-drop by Brown - and Franklin's own Jimmy Lee, though tighter, was a toss-off.

She was warmed up for Please Please Please, however, trading steamyvocal licks and even joining Brown for a quick slow dance onstage. The entire company's Living In America finale was loose but joyous.

James Brown and friends during the finale (1987)

James Brown and friends during the finale (1987)

The Cinemax folks will have a hard time selecting just an hour's worth of music to broadcast in May. After Brown told Palmer, "You cannot leave," the protege voiced everyone's sentiments with a simple: "Good!"

Gary Graff/Knight-Ridder (Spokane Chronicle - Jan. 1987)

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