On Mon, 19 Apr 1999 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
<< it's a great list, david, but i pick brown (as i did in an earlier
post), if only because he all but birthed soul, funk, and hip
hop--hell, you can probably throw disco in there as well. i know that
by making such a claim i leave myself open to all kinds of nitpicking
(sp?), but jb cut a mighty wide swath through his half of the century. >>
In a message dated 4/19/99 3:28:44 PM Central Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
<< He sure did, and while he definitely gave birth to funk, I think it's an
overstatement to say he did the same for soul and hip hop. Clyde
McPhatter was most likely the original soul man (goin' all the way back to
1950 when he cut "Do Something For Me" with the Dominoes), and Ray Charles
was the music's most influential early force. His earliest
gospel-influenced recordings date a few years before JB's earliest stuff.
As for hip hop, sure JB was (and still is) a major influence, but I think
it's a bit of a stretch that he gave birth to the form -- it didn't really
come into being until Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa started rappin' over
the breaks while spinnin' discs at block parties in the South Bronx during
the mid-70s.--don >>
of course, don, that's why i said that brown ALL BUT birthed the music
referenced above (and why i self-deprecatingly pre-empted argument with my
"nitpicking" aside). and admittedly, my comments indulged in more than a bit
of poetic license, but only by way of saying that soul, funk, disco, and hip
hop ultimately gather around brown's legacy--be it his little willie john-
and 5 royales-influenced r&b from the '50s, or his mid-'70s pre-mike
moon-walking, give-the-drummer-some proto-hip hop (and the latter way before
bam so much as had a notion). in other words, much as miles davis' body of
work encompassed much of the jazz universe of the second half of the 20th
century, the same is true of brown's for the pop universe. hell, he even cut
some fairly definitive twang, including takes of the tennessee waltz and bill
doggett's honky tonk.
