“The Hardest Working Man In Show Business”- “Mr. Dynamite”-The James, Please, Please, Please Brown Story (2014)-A Documentary Review Of Sorts

DVD Review

By Josh Breslin   

Mr. Dynamite: The Rise Of James Brown,  starring James Brown, the Famous Flames, and others, 2014   

No question I wanted to do this documentary evaluation of the life and times of the “godfather of soul” James Brown who came all surly and cocky out of Augusta, Ga around the middle third of the 20^th century and had to fight off Sam Lowell, the former chief film editor here and now something of an emeritus although such designations are frowned upon under the new dispensation of one site manager Greg Green. The reason that I wanted to do this review though is probably not exactly what the reader would think-the place of a man, a black man in the history of rock and roll, of soulful rock, and his effect on young white guys who came up dirt poor in places like North Adamsville and Carver, Ma and Olde Saco up in Maine without the racial harassment part that James suffered growing up in the redneck, white supremacist Southern non-hospitality. Maybe say three or four years ago I might have centered on those points and only made some pointed but passing reference to his shameful treatment of women throughout his life.

But in the age of #MeToo that is hardly an adequate way to treat his life. The problem, a problem Sam Lowell first brought up a couple of years ago when he did an Alfred Hitchcock film review is exactly what one, no, what a male reviewer, or maybe any reviewer is supposed to do about some kind of balance between whatever cultural meaning any performer from acting to painting and everything in between has on society and the personal life factors where the power balance is askew. I cannot help but in the back of my mind in the case of James Brown be aware that his art, however much honored and historically relevant, is decisively marred by his personal hostilities and actions toward women.          

James Brown came up from the dirt down in Augusta, Ga from a family setting that was not good. He “escaped” via music first through the gospel traditions which a number of musicians from his generation and a little later were grounded in. Later moving “uptown” to rhythm and blue he latched onto various groups which would evolve into the Famous Flames and form the core of back-up bands under various names for most of his early career. The big breakthrough hit was Please, Please, Please in 1956 which had enough sexual energy and innuendo to become something like an anthem for the post-World War II baby boomer generation which was in many ways trying to break out of the many-sided box they had been raised in from sex to patriotism. After that it was more a question of refining his music to ride with the times for a while as long as rock and roll had some energy left. Subsequently he moved on to become, well, the Godfather of Soul, the precursor of funk that had its heyday before hip hop nation emerged in the 1980s, No question James Brown on a professional musical basis deserved all the awards and honors he received all the way up to induction in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

To show how the contradictions worked James Brown also created many songs headed by I’m Black and Proud which became something of an anthem itself although he disclaimed the publicly accepted militant sense of the song. He also went against the black stream politically hanging out with weirdo Republicans like Nixon and Reagan. He fired band members for using drugs yet he had his own drug jones, was practically a junkie. The list of number of allegations of domestic violence is staggering and in the end would do him in. His claim to fame that he chilled the crowd at a concert in Boston when Doctor Martin Luther King was assassinated seems rather an exception to his life although no question he did keep violence epidemic elsewhere down in that town. Maybe it is best to say today in 2018 that like a lot of other men whose cultural talents are unquestioned James Brown carries the sins of his times heavily on his back. That is the best I can do here since he will be among the exhibits of how primitive we were when societies evolve beyond sexism, sexual abuse, domestic abuse, racism, classism and all the other oppressions which hold back humankind.