Being James Brown : Rolling Stone

Being James Brown : Rolling Stone

Behind the scenes with the Hardest Working Man in Show Business: "When James Brown enters the recording studio, the recording studio becomes a stage. It is not merely that attention quickens in any room this human being inhabits. The phenomenon is more akin to a kind of grade-school physics experiment: Lines of force are suddenly visible in the air, rearranged, oriented. The band, the hangers-on, the very oxygen, every trace particle is charged in its relation to the gravitational field of James Brown." From a James Brown improvisation: "Shake your boo-tay. Shake you boo-boo-boo-boo-tay. Plenty tuchis. Plenty tuchis. Mucho. Mucho grande. Shake your big booty. Mucho grande. Big booty. Cool-a. TUCHIS!" (Via, indirectly, this Roadside America item about the James Brown statue in Augusta, Ga.)