(Polydor)
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
I've really got to call my friend Anthony and ask him how he feels about James Brown these days. We used to sit around talking about girls and listening to old soul music and our favorites were Ben E. King, Otis Redding, and especially Sam Cooke. I was surprised to hear him somewhat dismissive of Brown the first time we talked about him, and remember him focusing back on Cooke to demonstrate a belief that by exposing a greater emotional range, by actually exhibiting containment and artful calculation, he was a true artist of considerable depth and Brown just flew off the handle, a boy busting out with vague snatches of pounding funk all strung together. Though I couldn't deny that Cooke and Redding stirred some pretty deep shit in me that no one else did necessarily, I did counter by saying that JB too was capable of documenting desperation and need, which seemed to be what moved us both about the others' best records, on "Please, Please, Please" and "Try Me" and "It's a Man's Man's Man's World." My larger defense of Brown, though, was that his brand of catharsis was really no less valid and sophisticated than what you hear on "Hawg for You" or "Chain Gang," just expressed differently and all the more like something from a plane beyond what most of us can really explain -- a kind of avant garde burst of feeling.
Those three songs didn't change his mind and I left it alone, but later Anthony heard me playing "It's a New Day," included as the opening track on this watershed compilation, and it messed his theory up a little bit. In the Jungle Groove was getting a lot of play from me around that time; I was in one of my heavy Beatles bootleg phases and I think it was the only non-Liverpudlian thing I was listening to frequently right then. Sometime after processing it once or twice I could tell Anthony started to turn around, and the revelation came in one stilted word: "band." James Brown wasn't a phenomenal singer, he was a phenomenal bandleader, and his psychological playground was the body. Yours, mine, everyone's -- which is no less deep or important or resonant than those "honest you do" refrains on "You Send Me." "It wasn't just about him," Anthony mused, "it was about all of the group. He was channeling things for them."
At the time of its release in 1986, Jungle Groove was basically a cash-in. Brown had some commercial success in the '80s but certainly faced a growing reputation as a sort of novelty or nostalgia act. In the same way that Endless Summer represented a canonization of a band that was growing artistically stale, Groove is a reconfiguration of the entire idea of James Brown and his career. It's hard to say how much his legacy today owes to this collection, but it's not unthinkable that this reactionary move to the increasing popularity of Brown's work as sampled material in hip hop is still reflected in the way that people think of James Brown.
Certainly, as a sampler of the turntable-ready beats-and-grooves within Brown's canon, In the Jungle Groove is unbeatable. The centerpiece would be the hypnotic "Funky Drummer," twelve full minutes (including reprise) of this once-rare holy grail of funky, dirge-like rants. The nine tracks here are focused upon cohesion rather than chronology or any comprehensive aspirations -- there are plenty of other CDs for that -- jumping around between classics and far-flung obscurities, original recordings to outtakes to remixes. As an introduction to the depth of Brown's catalog, you'll find it wanting; it doesn't even touch his best music -- but as a rundown of his appeal and an instantaneous fan-maker, it soars, as I learned myself when accidentally converting my friend.
Best of all, Groove offers the perfect dosage of Brown as the dancing machine and the outsize personality; he's often buried on these songs by the band interplay that made these late '60s / early '70s sessions such dangerous magic, and when he bursts through and grabs your attention it's like he's just one of the instruments. And whereas the idea of circa-1986 remixes of Brown's work might sound like something that would've dated horrendously by now, this is actually the rare instance of such a notion done correctly. The massive sound of "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose" here, the insanity of the augmented dropout that introduces the outtake "I Got to Move," and above all the flight of groove ecstasy -- as irresistibly transportive as any piece of cascading shoegaze or conventional R&B -- that is touched most divinely by this version of "Talkin' Loud and Sayin' Nothing," well, authenticity ain't nothin'. After Brown goes off on the crazed tangent in which he urges the engineer to "keep the tape runnin, we gonna do somethin' funny" and then proceeds to chant or rap or half-sing or something a cappella for nearly a full minute, holding the tension with godlike William Castle dramatic flair, before he lets it go and the pregnant moment just explodes -- just nothing else seems relevant after that. And when In the Jungle Groove is over, no urge or need however trite or heavy seems pressing enough except the one that tells you to play the fucking record again, right now.
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