the greatest album of all time

when i moved back to fort worth from colorado in 1980, i briefly shared half of a duplex at 309 winthrop, just up the street from where gallery 414 is today, with a coworker from the rekkid store named j.d. fields. j.d. was a deejay, and he and i used to fantasize about bootlegging james brown's live at the apollo because it was the greatest musical artifact we could think of that, at the time, wasn't in catalog anywhere. what stopped us from infringing on the godfather of soul's intellectual property (besides the fear of retribution) was the fact that neither one of us could afford the price of a clean copy, assuming we were able to find one. not long after that, solid smoke reished it, along with a pert righteous single elpee compilation called can your heart stand it that did a respectable job of summing up '56 through '69 and opened the gates for the subsequent flood of reissues that culminated in the star time box in '91.

it seems particularly fitting that j.b. is currently lying in state at the apollo theater in harlem, because live at the apollo -- the original one, recorded 1962, released 1963 -- made his career, and his record company didn't want to release it. he recorded it on his own dime, and after that, he made the records that he wanted to. it's short, 32 minutes, and it includes most of his hits from the preceding six yrs, presented seamlessly, with instrumental bridges, by a band that's as tight 'n' tough as a patent leather shoe. like ray charles live and b.b. king live at the regal, live at the apollo totally epitomizes a certain kind of black showbiz excitement that white rockarollas could only aspire to, altho a handful would certainly try to duplicate it (cf. the stones' performance in the t.a.m.i. show, when they had the unenviable task of trying to follow j.b.'s entahr "please please please" routine with the capes, etc.; or, um, the first side of the mc5's kick out the jams).

myself, i was most affected by the period in j.b.'s music that he initiated in '65 with "papa's got a brand new bag" and jimmy nolen originating the kind of chicken-scratch riddim gtr that the whiteboys in my neighborhood used to snicker at but none of 'em could play. (they might not have been really listening, but d. boon and andy gill surely were.) a few yrs ago, when i very briefly played gtr with vernon garrett, he'd tell me to pare down and simplify any riddim part i came up with, because he'd learned from j.b. that the funk comes from the interlocking action of a bunch of simple, almost skeletal parts -- got to respect _the one_. j.b. taught us that every instrument is a riddim instrument, including the voice, and he used his voice that way, when he wasn't using it like a force of nature to obliterate everything in its path. (and those skinny legs in constant motion -- graceful bastard!) without him, not only are sly, george clinton, and prince's achievements unimaginable, but so is fela's. and '70s miles'. and public enemy's. and...