This is one of the first things James Brown did after returning to Syd Nathan’s King label after Nathan won his lawsuit against Smash Records for releasing some Brown recordings and charting well with them. Brown’s renegotiated King contract permitted him to publish his own material, collect bigger royalties and determine his artistic course. He delved further into the rock-solid yet highly syncopated vamp form he had solidified on “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag.” His hoarse squeal and the punch of the horns mark the gestation within soul music of a genre that would soon be known as funk. You cannot hear this record and not dance.
32.)Hold On – The Radiants (1967)
This echo-drenched barrage of strings, fuzz guitar and background vocals is this group’s last real moment of glory. Maurice McAlister had laready left to be one half of Maurice and Mac. The other member who dated back to the early-sixties formative days at Greater Harvest Baptist Church was Leonard Caston, who co-wrote this gospel-steeped storm of sound and delivers its frenzied shouts with jaw-dropping conviction. This record is proof, along with the 1960s work of Little Milton, Fontella Bass and The Dells, that Chess should have been able to assert itself as a major player in Chicago soul and even give Motown a run for its money. Caston went on to produce Eddie Kendricks’ post-Tempations hits and otherwise remain vital in the music business.
33.) When A Man Love A Woman – Percy Sledge (1966)
This record is a most persuasive argument for the notion of drawing upon one’s local talent pool. The Fame Studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama had just begun to make a name for itself as the South’s other soul music center (the foremost of the moment being the Stax operation in Memphis). A soul artist who had already had hits for Fame, Jimmy Hughes, turned Rick Hall and company on to his cousin, a twenty-five-year-old orderly from a nearby hospital. The backwoods guitar and the solemn organ provide the perfect backdrop to Sledge’s wail of total devotion. Jerry Wexler, vice president of Atlantic, the record’s national distributor, bagan to lavish attention on the little recording facility by the Tennessee River and thereby shape American musical tastes for years to come.
34.) Flamingo – Earl Bostic (1951)
Bostic, a sax veteran of Lionel Hampton’s band in the tradition of Illinois Jacquet and Arnett Cobb, became identified, through his work on the King label, with gritty reworkings of jazz and pop standards. His treatment of this old Duke Ellington dance number was his biggest hit in this vein. His squeals and bellows somehow sound romantic, juxtaposed as they are against mellow vibes and the chromatic walkdowns of the bass. This is classic early-fifties black-supper-club music.
