Singing it for you too

At about the 6 minute mark, during a moment of relative silence in “Lost Someone,” a woman in the audience let’s out a great cry, letting James Brown and the world know that she too has lost someone. Or maybe just got loose enough to let everybody know that she needed to be heard. “Lost Someone,” the centerpiece to Brown’s immortal 1963 Apollo show, is composed of many such moments. Clocking in at over 10 minutes, the song moves at a slow pace, with a crisp horn arrangement for punctuation. The song gives Brown time to employ all those tricks of the showbiz trade he mastered night after night on the circuit. Here he pleads with a lost love to “come on home to me,” allowing, through his own imploring words and gestures, his audience a space to let their pleas be heard as well, if only for a moment.

“Now I want you to know that I’m not singing this song for myself now,
I’m not singing this song only for myself now,
I’m singing it for you too.”

Yeah, it does sound like the churchhouse. But if it is, then this one’s got a bit more Saturday night in it than usual. Ribald laughter, calling people (men) out, and letting Saturday night feel the full weight of your desire and freedom. And James Brown just happens to be the minister.

And then James caps the performance with a comment about the weather.

“I said it’s gettin’ a little cold outside.”

A simple line and the entire building is as one. Where once you mainly heard the foreground of the audience, after that line you can practically hear the doorman of the Apollo sigh and nod in assent. The whole building is present in that moment, in a way that I’ve rarely encountered on any live recording. No wonder he could stop a riot in Boston.

James Brown - Lost Someone [buy]

One more item. Reading about this song on the wiki, I discovered that "Lost Someone" was cut in two and put on the A and B side of the album. Talk about the cruelest cut! One of the greatest live performances ever, with the pinnacle song in some fundamental way, and the damned thing is cut in two! Apparently, DJs would either drop the needle as fast as they could on the B side to finish the concert, or they would, horror of horrors, play a commercial, and then come back to the show. But no matter what the DJs did the folks would call in for more. The album had a long run, 66 weeks, on the pop charts. And in some way marked the real beginning of the James Brown empire. It's as fresh today as it was back then.