James Brown - IN THE NEW YORKER?

Gourevitch's remarkable, magazine-length profile of The Godfather of Soul

For many years, “The New Yorker” magazine has represented the very best in American magazine writing. Should a fiction writer get a story in “The New Yorker” he or she would need at least an ostrich plume to demonstrate the “feather-in-the-cap” equivalent of that achievement. It’s that big a deal.

Some of our finest writers planted their work there. J.D. Salinger, John Updike. John Cheever. Roger Angell, E.B. White, Woody Allen, John O’Hara, my personal fave A.J. Liebling. and many, many more. Too many, really, to list here.

While the magazine does occasionally stray into surprising areas - like Liebling regularly covering boxing - one imagines the traditional highly intellectual New Yorker reader actually fainting at the sight of blood, spilling their martini - I just about fell over when I saw the July 29, 2002 issue. It was a magazine that was almost entirely devoted to a staggeringly long, penetrating, flat-out, astonishing profile of musician James Brown by Phillip Gourevitch.

James Brown? In THE NEW YORKER? Whaaaaaaat?

James Brown, on stage during the remarkable “T.A.M.I Show” in 1964

The story, modestly titled, “Mr. Brown” is a remarkable and highly improbable saga, superbly written, immaculately reported, and ultimately well worth taking up just about the whole magazine. I’d have loved to been in the editorial meeting for that issue. “We’re going to do whaaaaaaaaaat? For the whole issue?”

Gourevitch shares Brown’s extraordinary tale, a poor kid growing up in an Augusta, Ga. brothel, serving time in prison for petty crime, somehow finding a way through his unusual, innovative, deeply evocative singing style climb out of that emptiness, carving out what would become a rich, original vein of American music that only he, James Brown, could have come up with. It was a vein he would mine so scrupulously - and relentlessly - for so many records and concert performances for decades, it’s not an overstatement to say he transformed popular music.

He is a giant figure in our music, not just black music. While he has had his scrapes with the law, too - all of which Gourevitch carefully measures - by the stories’ end, you recognize, as I think Gourevitch did, just a great American tale. He was someone who found a way to rise out of poverty and despair on the strength of his vision, his talent and his relentless, unbending will.

Speaking as someone who’s spent a good portion of his life writing, this monumental assignment, the very idea of trying to profile someone whose irresistible music generally featured a dazzling array of grunts, squeaks, screams, hollers, sighs, stirred by a relentless, irrepressible, driving beat, well, that was a mighty task.

Since it is music that is the very pinnacle of IN-articulation, you would think this presented a staggering problem for any writer. But the story of Brown’s rise is so compelling and so uniquely American - it couldn’t have happened anywhere else - you can’t help but keep turning these pages. Which must have happened at The New Yorker. They couldn’t NOT tell this story. Lucky for us.

Growing up in lily white New Hampshire - I well remember our absolute shock upon seeing an opposing team trot out an African-American player in our Tiny Town League baseball game - whatever minimal connection I had to Black America came through just three things; my love of Muhammad Ali, black players in baseball (Willie Mays, in particular) and music.

For me, mostly, it was Motown, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, etc.. But I kept reading so many great things about “James Brown Live At The Apollo,” a live album that Brown paid for himself he was so certain he had something remarkable, that I went out and got the record. Good call.

As someone whose taste in music has generally been driven by either great lyric-writing (Dylan, Springsteen, U2) or brilliant guitar-playing (Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page) for me to wander into James Brown’s rhythmic world - and it IS a world - got me well, shaking my butt (not that I would ever let anyone witness such a spectacle.)

Examining some of the dramatic events of Brown’s life and finding out about what he did in Boston in 1968, barely an hour away from where I grew up, I was stunned. I KNEW NOTHING ABOUT IT, HEARD NOTHING ABOUT IT. It made me wonder why. How did I miss it?

Here’s what it was. After Dr. Martin Luther King had been gunned down in Memphis on April 4, 1968, there were riots in every major American city. It was beyond serious. The National Guard had been called out, there were armed men ringing our own Nation’s Capitol, fearing a black uprising. In Boston, a city where racial issues and busing had about torn the city apart, newly elected mayor Kevin White was panicked.

When he found out that Brown had previously scheduled a concert in Boston Garden the next day, he grabbed the opportunity. When somebody floated the idea of televising the concert - for free! - something that just wasn’t done in those days, White pushed for it. It took some doing but Brown reluctantly agreed and - as always - delivered.

Somewhat comically, the concert was aired on Boston’s EDUCATIONAL TV station - WGBH. Imagine that! Here was a station that played exclusively classical music and Lawrence Welk on Saturday nights. And now, viewers, here’s uh, James Brown?

In fact, the station had to pre-empt a showing of Anton Chekhov’s play “Uncle Vanya” to televise the concert. Wonder how that went over with Boston’s upper crust ?

Even all these years later, we can only imagine the across-the-board despair, hurt and anger in the black community after King’s shocking death. Here was Brown, landing in a powder keg of an American city - and here’s the newly elected mayor asking him to quiet things down. And he did. There were no riots in Boston that night.

Though there was a moment when the concert might have erupted - see the attached video clip - watch how Brown masterfully quiets things down by appealing to the crowd’s sense of dignity, of proper behavior in a public setting. Wow. Let our hip hop heroes munch on that one for a while.

Even though I grew up barely an hour away, I didn’t know a thing about it until I saw the VH-1 special “The Night James Brown Saved Boston.” Brought it to my classroom, too.

It was the kind of moment in American history we SHOULD have known about, don’t you think? And it made me feel a bit embarrassed that I didn’t know a thing about it. I do now.

Later, when I’d read about the famous T.A.M.I show in 1964, a legendary concert in California that featured just about everybody who was anybody in music: Chuck Berry, Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, Jan and Dean, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones AND James Brown, and learned that Brown was really annoyed that the Stones were chosen to close the show, I had to see how he handled it.

Brown went out and put on a performance that was something to see. Impeccably dressed, flawlessly coiffed, his crackerjack band razor-sharp (and heavily fined if they missed a single beat), I wanted my students, growing up on the baggy-pants, way-too-casually dressed stars of today, to see what a highly disciplined, completely focused, physically-demanding artist could bring to a stage and our world. They were impressed. As were the Stones, who vowed never to have to close a show after James Brown again.

If you’ve seen James Brown in action, you already know I’m talking about. Sliding, dancing, grooving, dominating the stage in a way that made the previous performers look like junior high talent show participants… if you haven’t seen it before, take a peek. He’ll get you moving.

(For the older folks, take it slow. Hope you don’t pull a muscle.)

James Brown at the Boston Garden, April 5, 1968

Here are a couple of links for further research;

The original New Yorker article - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/29/mr-brown - might need a subscription to read the whole thing

An excerpt in The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2002/sep/27/artsfeatures