Saturday morning (02 February 2008), I was watching my recordings of The Late Show with David Letterman for the past week. During the commercial break before the start of Friday’s show, Steve Baskerville did a Black History Month segment featuring Soul Brother No. 1, James Brown. I sat up from my reclined position because over the past seven years, Terry and I spent a lot of time from late January through late February, writing and recording our version of Black History Month Segments. Our segment was titled The Black Pages of American History, and was created in 2001, to air as a Black History Month Segment for The Steve Dahl Show.

I thought about the way every year Terry and I swore “next year we’re not going to wait until the last minute to start writing.” But I really got lost in the memories of how much fun we had recording them. I wish I had the audio of the recording session out takes. As you might imagine, they were peppered with language guaranteed to lose the stations’ FCC License. I also wish I had saved the hard copies of the scripts we used during the recording sessions. Again as you might imagine, we didn’t always stick to the script, hand-writing improvements in the margins. For those who have asked the name of the song we used as a music bed for the segment, the song is “Baby, I Love You” by the group Cold Blood. I have to give a huge thanks to Joe Kraslen, Pete Zimmerman, Mike Pentz, and Chris Cwiak, who each engineered and produced at least a months worth of segment over its’ seven year life span. This year, Terry and I had planned to add photographs, re-work the script, and re-frame the featured song, so the segment could be used on the WGN Morning News (thanks to Jeff Hoover).

Here’s the script from our 2005 James Brown segment, the second of three James Brown Black Pages segments.

Holler :-0
Stan Lawrence

Stan: He’s Terry Armour

Terry: He’s Stan Lawrence

Stan & Terry: Join us as we look at the Black pages of American history.

Stan: “Mr. Dynamite” “The Hardest Working Man In Show Business” “Soul Brother No. 1” “The Godfather of Soul” You have to be a legend in music when you’ve referred to by 4-titles.

Terry: James Brown is nothing short of a legend. If you can sit still while a James Brown song is playing, you don’t have a pulse! James Brown is the definition of funky music.

Stan: James Brown was born on May 3rd, 1933, in Barnwell, South Carolina. He grew up in poverty about 40 miles away in Augusta, Georgia. In 1953, after completing a four-year stretch in prison for robbery, he joined the Gospel Starlighters. Soon, the group changes its focus from gospel to R&B, and changes its name to the Famous Flames. James Brown becomes the focal point of their act.

Terry: On January 23rd, 1956, producer and talent scout Ralph Bass signs James Brown to the King/Federal record label in Macon, Georgia (beating Leonard Chess of Chess Records to the punch). On February 4th, 1956, James Brown and the Famous Flames record "Please Please Please" at King/Federal studios in Cincinnati. After Little Richard abruptly quits rock and roll for religion in October 1957, James Brown honors Little Richard’s pending tour dates. On October 1st, 1958, James Brown's first #1 hit, "Try Me," is released, becoming the best-selling R&B single of 1958.

Stan: James Brown's boyhood dream of escaping poverty was not immediate. Although he and the Flames continued to make records for Federal, it would be nearly three years before they hit the national charts again. "Try Me" hit big during the winter of 1958-59. Through grueling rehearsals and one nighter gigs, Brown developed the band into the hottest R&B act. The bands precision timing accented every holler, and trademark move.

Terry: During the early 1960's, James Brown continued putting out hit singles. Recording on the King record label, he put up his own money, to record his live performance at New York’s Apollo Theater, on October 24th, 1962. When the album was released, “Live At The Apollo” went to Number 2 on Billboard's album chart.
Stan On February 1st, 1965, James Brown records "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag". The song marked a new era for soul music. Released that summer, it tops the R&B chart for eight weeks and even cracks the pop Top 10. And for the next 10-years, the hit keep on coming.

Terry: We’d be here all afternoon listing The Godfather’s string of hits, and it’s tough to pick one song to use as an example of the origin of funk and soul music. So, I flipped a coin and decided to play “I Can’t Stand Myself (When You Touch Me) Part-1.

Stan: James Brown gradually phased out the Flames, and the gospel and blues structure of his early records gave way to open-ended vamps and complex funk syncopations. His innovations during this period had a major influence on popular music styles around the world, including funk, rock, Afro-pop, disco and eventually rap.

Terry: On June 1st, 1980, James Brown cameo role as a Baptist preacher in the Blues Brother movie revives his popularity. On January 11th, 1986, "Living in America," the theme song from the movie Rocky IV, hits number 4 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart, becoming his biggest pop hit since "I Got You (I Feel Good)" went to number 3 in 1965. And on January 23rd, 1986, The Godfather is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at the first induction dinner, held in New York City.

Stan & Terry: Bottom line, Black history is America’s history