James Brown

But on top of that, just he's so original, like 100% original.

But even though you could say he's pulling from like James Brown, he's pulling from Jimmy Hendrix.

Sly the Family Stone.

Certainly Sly Stone.

Machine.

James Brown.

It's James Brown.

Like James Brown.

James Brown.

James Brown?

Today's dead celebrity is James Brown.

Hit me.

What else you got? That's all I got on my list.

There was a song that was played, Get Up, parentheses, I Feel Like Being a, in parentheses, sex machine by the one Mr. James Brown.

This was released in 1970.

It hit number two in the R&B and number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100.

It's just,

I just keeps going.

That's how that's the most James Brown shit ever.

It's like, here's my B side.

So if you take, for example, Eat It...

in many ways and it's not just that weird al's voice is lower that does not sound like the original production of beat it like in by any stretch of the imagination and that's off of his second record um but then when you move to his fourth record polka party like if you listen to living with a hernia the uh the james brown cover and again at the same point i just went at length of making His fourth album opens up with him and his band doing a parody of James Brown and their band, and

it sounds great.

Pretty damn faithful version as well.

Huge, big 80s pop with horns production.

And it sounds exactly like the original.

because weird al and his band did it but the album opens with them parodying james brown it sounds exactly like that too

yeah

Your drum tech wrapped you in some sort of a garment or something.

I'm like James Brown.

This is

like the

After he came off stage, he swaddled him in some sort

of a

James Brown-ish

type thing.

And so that was kind of where he came from.

Um, but there's always, when you're from a town, you, you just, um, you just kind of, the stuff just kind of gets into you, you know? And so that funky stuff, and especially coming from a hip hop background, you know, the, the funk is, is, is the fuel for that, you know, all those old James Brown records where they get all the samples from where it's, it's all funky stuff, you know? So, right.

And then you've got guys coming from jazz backgrounds.

Royce, he was originally a guitar player, but in school started taking more upright bass as a major.

Now he's older.

He's one of the OGs, statesmen, to where he played with everybody from Earl Garner, James Brown, Isaac Hayes.

Lauryn Hill to current so he's one of those guys to where he's the glue he understand music he understand composition he understands improvisation from a point to where when we were just building and we were playing so we had our Myself and Chip Crawford, we had other gigs other than the Harlem Jazz Machine.

We would do a gospel brunch at this historic place called Copeland's.

I don't know if they were in the studio or his house or whatever, but they had all these photographs.

And Tom Petty's just like, oh, yeah, this is when I met James Brown.

And this is when I recorded this song.

And I'm just thinking that could be a whole documentary in its own

Yeah.

Imagine if he came out and all of a sudden he sounded like James Brown or something.

You're like, what is this? You know, that's the great thing about it is it's Elvis.

So we try to stay in our wheelhouse and keep that going, but keep it fresh.