Track Listing

1. Like It Is Like It Was
2. Don't Cry Baby
3. Caldonia
4. Somebody Done Changed The Lock On My Door
5. Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens
6. Good Rockin' Tonight
7. I Love You Yes I Do
8. Messing With The Blues
9. Waiting In Vain
10. For You My Love
11. Blues For My Baby
12. Everyday I Have The Blues
13. Love Don't Love Nobody
14. Going Home
15. Have Mercy Baby
16. Bells
17. Don't Deceive Me
18. Things That I Used To Do
19. Need Your Love So Bad
20. Like A Baby
21. Honky Tonk
22. Suffering With The Blues
23. Further On Up The Road
24. Radio Spot
25. Talk To Me
26. Kansas City
27. Wonder When You're Coming Home

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #247722 in Music
• Released on: 1996-09-02
• Number of discs: 2

Customer Reviews

James Brown pays his dues
During his lengthy career, James Brown has often paid tribute to his own musical inspirations, jump blues shouters like Wynonie Harris, Bullmoose Jackson and Roy Brown, doo-wop and rhythm and blues groups like Billy Ward and the Dominoes, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters and the Five Royales, blues performers like Memphis Slim; and above all, Louis Jordan and his Tympani Five. He also recorded a tribute album to Little Willie John immediately following his death in prison.
These and other items of homage are collected together on these two CDs and are presented in the chronological order in which James Brown would have first experienced the songs. Sandwiched between two chunks of Like It Is, Like It Was, which has James Brown rapping about the blues, the set starts with Erskine Hawkins' 1942 hit Don't Cry Baby, and ends with his own answer record to the Five Royales' Wonder Where Your Love Has Gone from 1959.
Two versions of the much covered Little Willie Littlefield classic Kansas City (originally called KC Lovin'), one from 1967 and one from 1975, clearly show the evolution of the James Brown sound.
Although entirely comprising back catalogue, it would be a mistake for any James Brown aficionado to imagine there could be nothing of interest for them as all but eight of the thirty tracks are previously unissued in the form found here. Two are in true stereo for the first time - 1961's I Love You Yes I Do and Ivory Joe Hunter's Waiting In Vain from the following year (only four of the songs on the 2CD are mono). Some are alternative takes, some are full version debuts of songs previously released in edited form or, in the case of Honky Tonk, chopped into two for both sides of a single, by the "James Brown Soul Train".
Eight tracks with a big band arranged and conducted by Sammy Lowe were recorded in a single New York day in 1964, all included here, including three Louis Jordan covers. Some of these came out on an album called Showtime, on which a fake over-excited audience had been overdubbed, and are presented for the first time in their pristine studio form. 
The notes by compiler Cliff White and Harry Weinger are detailed and clear, with recording dates and line-ups and a history of each song