“Hell” by James Brown

The best of post-Watergate Mr. Dynamite.

Hello! 😊👋

Welcome to a new edition of the Best Music of All Time newsletter!

Today’s music pick is the Godfather of Soul’s best pre-disco album, which turns 50 this month.

Genre: R&B, Soul, Funk

Label: Polydor

Release Date: June 28, 1974

Vibe: 🕺🕺🕺

Despite releasing 56 (!) studio LPs during his illustrious career, the Godfather of Soul isn’t really thought of as much of an album artist. From the mid-60s onwards, beginning with hits like “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” and “I Got You (I Feel Good),” he was primarily known for his R&B singles chart dominance. In all, 17 of his songs, including five credited to both Brown and the Famous Flames, topped that chart. Conversely, and I thought this was an error when I first read it, Brown only has three Gold-certified studio albums to his name. According to Douglas Wolk’s book Live at the Apollo, this phenomenon is partly due to Brown’s label not wanting to pay the associated costs.

Still, three Gold records. His only Platinum record is a greatest hits compilation. In short, people gravitate to Brown’s hits and little else. While I can understand why that is, especially in a streaming world where playlists are in far greater demand than albums, fans of retro funk and soul are missing out by not diving deeper into Brown’s studio catalog. It’s messy and, at times, downright strange, but there are far more hits than misses when examined as a whole.

Hell, which turns 50 this month, is the high-water mark of the most fascinating creative period of Brown’s career. This post-Watergate, pre-disco Godfather released four classics in 24 months: There It Is, Get on the Good Foot, The Payback, and this record. Across all of them, he tempers compositional ambition with pop sensibilities. Catchy choruses and airtight grooves were often stretched to their breaking points, sometimes surpassing 11 or 12 minutes in length. Along the way, Brown and his band (which, on Hell, still included veterans Fred Thomas and Jabo Starks) experimented with Latin rhythms that, looking back, could’ve easily been a more significant part of his repertoire. Even in the face of a 70-minute runtime, nearly everything here works.

The list of highlights must start with “My Thang,” one of the most devastating funk instrumentals in Brown’s oeuvre. Jimmy Madison and Gordon Edwards, on drums and bass, respectively, are so deep in the pocket that you’d need a professional diving team to extract them. Two trumpets and four saxophones make up that glorious brass section, which parts the groove like the Red Sea, giving Brown plenty of room to belt out, “Give me, give me your thing.” Beyond aging like a fine wine against some of the singer’s other A-tier cuts, this track has also been sampled in hip-hop so many times that it’s one of the in-points through which new generations of music fans have discovered his music.

At the other end of the spectrum regarding construction, you have the epic closer, “Papa Don’t Take No Mess.” Clocking in at just shy of 14 minutes and recorded initially (and rejected) for the 1973 film Hell Up in Harlem, it’s the ultimate funk jam session. Alongside Thomas and Starks, there are other James Brown universe mainstays, like Fred Wesley on the trombone and Maceo Parker on the alto sax, who throws it down to jaw-dropping effect. Nothing feels forced or showy, yet it never lets your attention wander for one second of its sprawling runtime. Its boundary-pushing experimentation has more in common with jazz fusion masterpieces like Herbie Hancock’s “Chameleon” than with his soul contemporaries. You have to wonder what Brown could’ve accomplished had he stayed on this path instead of resorting to mediocre, microwaved disco tropes to close out the decade.

Besides those two best-of standbys, Hell truly gives you a bit of everything. Opener “Coldblooded” sprinkles a little social commentary over its deeply funky arrangement (” Paying bills from the day you’re born, little brother/’ Til your body starts getting old”). He revisits previous hits like “Please, Please, Please” and “Can’t Stand It,” turning the former into a salsa-flavored percussive gem. He also takes his third crack at” These Foolish Things Remind Me Of You,” eschewing typical ballad treatments for lush, sweeping strings and glittering guitars, not unlike what Love Unlimited Orchestra became known for that same year. Even the weepers, like “A Man Has to Go Back to the Crossroads,” find Brown hitting on all cylinders vocally, reminding the listener of what a mercurial talent he was behind the mic when he wanted to be.

You must be an all-world performer to earn a nickname like Mr. Dynamite. But, in Brown’s case, it was more than the shrieks, dance moves, and call-and-response with his band. On Hell, he provides the finest example of how there wasn’t much he couldn’t do musically. Though the quality of his studio output faded as he got older, his peak period is nearly untouchable, save for maybe a handful of other names like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder. If there’s any version of Brown fans can hold up historically and say, this man had “it,” Hell would be Exhibit A.

👉 Don’t forget to click the album image to stream the album on your favorite platform 👈