Harriet Brown Obsessions

James Brown was arguably the most important and innovative R&B artist of the '60s and '70s, a singer, songwriter, and bandleader who rewrote the book on how the music would sound as he redefined soul, laid the groundwork for funk, anticipated the grooves that would drive hip-hop, and even influenced new movements in rock and jazz. This box set collects five albums from James Brown's extensive back catalog, dominated by recordings of Brown's fabled live shows. Live at the Apollo is a classic 1962 concert set from New York's Apollo Theater that documents Brown's dynamic stage show at a time when he was widely regarded as the most exciting performer on Earth. Sex Machine, released in 1970, is another live set that captures Brown's powerhouse stage band the J.B.'s (including Bootsy Collins, Maceo Parker, and Fred Wesley) tearing through a breathtaking set of extended funk workouts. And Revolution of the Mind is a 1971 release that preserved another show at the Apollo, playing a set that covered his '60s soul hits as well as his more recent funk groovers. Along with the three live discs, this set includes two compilations of Brown's classic funk performances, 70's Funk Classics and In the Jungle Groove.

Sho is Funky Down Here is James Brown’s 1971 fuzzy, psychedelic-funk album, created by his then-bandleader David Matthews. Sho is Funky is the genesis of Brown’s “Talking Loud And Saying Nothing,” later to become a hip-hop sample staple informing A Tribe Called Quest, Large Professor, Brand Nubian and others. Now-Again Records is presenting the first official reissue of the album lacquered directly from the original master tapes at Capitol Studios.

Forty-two songs cut between November 1940 and August 1946, and the perfect companion to Bear Family's It's Magic box set – anyone who's been even tempted to own that will have to get this more modestly priced precursor to that material. Day's period singing with Les Brown is, today, regarded with a degree of love and affection reserved for Ella Fitzgerald's era with Chick Webb, or Frank Sinatra's work with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey. Yet Sony Music's own releases devoted to Doris Day and Les Brown spread the music around to several different CDs, and suffered from sound that, today, seems substandard. These newly remastered tracks, offered in chronological order, including one previously unissued song ("Are You Still in Love with Me"), not only display a far richer, warmer sound, but have been presented with the kind of care that is normally reserved for the best parts of a label's catalog – which these sides definitely are. Day's voice during this period (she was 16 when she cut her first sides with Brown) was an astonishingly expressive instrument.

Sam Brown first shot to fame with the massive UK No. 4 hit "Stop" in 1989. The album of the same name went on to sell over 2.5 million copies worldwide. It also spawned the UK Top 15 hit "Can I Get A Witness?". Her follow-up album "April Moon" yielded the single "Kissing Gate", charting at No. 23. Above all, Brown is an outstanding musician with a voice so distinct and powerful that it didn't take long for fellow musicians to recognize. She was a backing singer on Pink Floyd's "The Division Bell" album and worked with David Gilmour on his 2003 acoustic concert tour throughout the UK & Europe. In 1994, she was a guest with future husband Jools Holland's Rhythm & Blues Orchestra and became their vocalist in 2000. The Very Best of Sam Brown is the compilation album from the UK singer-songwriter, Sam Brown. It was released worldwide in 2005. Includes the previously unreleased demo version of ‘Stop!’

Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown's tough-minded approach to the blues, country, Cajun, and jazz insures a minimum of nonsense and a maximum of variety, while his virtuosity on the guitar and fiddle insures the highest standards. Nonetheless, Brown's 1997 album is a landmark for the 73-year-old picker who won a Rhythm & Blues Foundation Pioneer Award. All 13 tunes on Gate Swings find Brown working with his regular road quartet plus a 13-piece horn section, enabling him to prove that Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Lionel Hampton have been as important to his music as any bluesman or Creole fiddler. Gate Swings includes tunes by all three of those big-band leaders as well as compositions by Buddy Johnson, Percy Mayfield, Louis Jordan, and Brown himself, and they all swing with the massive force that only a big horn section can muster. Brown has leaned in this direction before, but Gate Swings is special, because it features the horn arrangements of Wardell Quezergue, an alumnus of the Dave Bartholomew band who arranged many of the best New Orleans R&B hits in the '60s and '70s.