Home > Author > R.J. Smith
1 " James Brown had many guises, many names: Crip, Music Box, The Hardest Working Man In Show Business, Mr. Please Please Please, Butane James, Soul Brother Number One, Skates, The Godfather of Soul...He was His Own Bad Bad Self, the Sex Machine, Black Elvis, the Minister of the New New Super Heavy Funk, The Original Disco Man, Universal James. But before any of them, he was simply a dancer doing the James Brown. "
― R.J. Smith , The One: The Life and Music of James Brown
2 " Meanwhile, blacks observed how German prisoners housed at Camp Gordon were getting paid to work the grounds of the Augusta National Golf Club, and to pick peanuts, corn, and potatoes across the Savannah River. “They sing and whistle, seem to enjoy work,” enthused the Augusta Chronicle. “Farmers are delighted.” Such news stories left a bitter taste in the mouths of black Augustans, who felt the government was doing more for the enemy than it was willing to do for them. "
3 " The shows taught Brown what it felt like to play with a great band and an ass-kicking drummer. For if Connor wasn’t in the league of Earl Palmer, the drummer Richard recorded with, he was mighty fine all the same. (And Connor did play the indelible drum part on Richard’s “Keep A Knockin’.”) He had turned "
