James Brown or Jimi Hendrix?

[naughty boy]

Some terrible, terrible shite here fellas. Just awful.

[clive gash]

Some terrible, terrible shite here fellas. Just awful.

Just wait until the funky bunch turn up.

[sloopjohnc]

T.Rexes had texting. That’s how their arms got all stubby.

Makes sense.

They never saw that meteor coming because they were all on their phones.

[Diamond Dog]

I think it's interesting when you ask people to judge different genres and see which wins out.

I really like alot of James Brown - and I tip my hat to the fact that he invented funk (unless anyone wants to illustrate who did). I think his live shows were absolutely extraordinary - bands drilled to the very limit of tightness, and hugely talented too. One must also appreciate his role in the furtherment of the Afro-American cause (though not all of his behaviour was exemplary......).

But Jimi burned incandescently for only three years really - but he absolutely and completely changed modern music in that time. What had gone before was no longer acceptable in terms of experimentation technically, sonically and in terms of showmanship. As I understand it there are still things he did in the studio that still hasn't been ''worked out' which is utterly remarkable 50 years on...

I admire James greatly. I love Jimi's music like it's part of my DNA (even though he died when I was 8).

[clive gash]

The thing about Brown is the tyranny of The One, martial, warlike, rolling on, with ol’ James barking out his orders like a drill sergeant. There’s no space for improvisational self-expression, in fact there’s no space at all. Predictable.

Brown is pulling himself, his group, Black America, up by their bootstraps, shouting out his manifesto for self-improvement and survival. It’s impressive stuff...for a while, then interminable.

He was an important figure, he’s certainly got a couple of dozen scintillating tracks.

[Muskrat]

T.Rexes had texting. That’s how their arms got all stubby.

Not their preferred means of communication, though.




(Oh -- James)

[Quaco]

I get more enjoyment out of Jimi and his music.

[Diamond Dog]

Well I certainly don't think funk is all he played.
Anymore than I believe Jimi only made riff based rock.

[naughty boy]

Jimi's iridescent frotillage quite clearly suttands the deeply norine britang advirated by James. Moreover town councils e andropod ve James antremaform birts never by 1968 machew exhaust willy willy hands over Hendrix oh! suprachloroform takings. By.

[Muskrat]

From most posts you'd think that funk was the only music JB played. He was a titan of RnB and soul for over ten years before Papa's Got a Brand New Bag. And even then his funk songs are very different. Compare Hot Pants to Sex Machine to Say It Loud.

I base my selection of Mr. Brown on his pre-funk stuff. While I recognize the importance of his later work, it's not the JB I listen to.

[Sneelock]

Jimi's iridescent frotillage quite clearly suttands the deeply norine britang advirated by James. Moreover town councils e andropod ve James antremaform birts never by 1968 machew exhaust willy willy hands over Hendrix oh! suprachloroform takings. By.

finally, somebody is talking some sense!

[Matt Wilson]

I think Clapton was the first to use a Les Paul through Marshal stacks with Cream.

And snee, guys were showing off with guitars long before Jimi Hendrix.

[Sneelock]

But did they make doody-faces???
Look, I think he single handedly changed the way people in bands play guitars. You dont? Fine. I fly the White flag.
Maybe Johnny Cochran could convince me I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure you can’t.

[toomanyhatz]

If you been to college, you must acknowledge...

Personally, I could go either way with this, but some of the reasoning here is a bit odd. Not sure either of them are so easily compartmentalized.

[fange]

James Brown. He pretty much invented a genre of music.

This is not strictly true, though his mid-60's songs and bands generally codified what has now become known as 'funk' to our ears. There were many others in the US playing this kind of music leading up to that era and contemporaneously, though JB had the star power, the drive and the band to become the King of it all, pardon the pun.

I love both of these guys' music very, very much, and play them about as often as each other as well, which is regularly. So a 3-3 draw for me.

[Hightea]

James Brown - Hiphop?
Jimi- Metal?

Don't see either but I guess if you follow the influences you could get there.
Although both took showboating to a new high.

Like James but prefer Jimi

[The Write Profile]

This is a tough one, not least because they're two of my favourite artists, but also because they were great for such different reasons. Hendrix was a sonic explorer, even on Are You Experienced, the explosiveness of "Foxy Lady" feels like it belongs as much as something as spacey as "Third Stone from the Sun", to say nothing of the looping, cataclysmic title track. He could also be very direct when he wanted to, much of Axis Bold As Love succeeds because there was a soulfulness to lots of the material, particularly "Little Wing" and the title track. It's the record he turned down the pyrotechnics and followed his band, and it's all the better for it.

Electric Ladyland is just, well, it's everything, from the machinegun-like throttling of "Crosstown Traffic" to the jazzy, exploratory "1983..." to the woozy "Rainy Day..." and then the way it all collides into the chaos of "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)". It's exhausting at times, but it's worth it. I must admit though- I can't be doing with the Band of Gypsys stuff. It's so formless. But never mind, those three years (!) with the Experience do represent something totemic. As for influence, well, that's a tricky one. No doubt a lot of guitarists aspire to be Hendrix, but I don't know of many who sound like him.

James Brown's soul ballads immediately before he launched into the foundations of funk are incredible in their sheer intensity. And the original Live at the Apollo is ebullient in a way he didn't allow himself to be in his late-1960s recordings. Indeed, there's something almost monomaniacal about the way he lead those singles ("Licking Stick", "Cold Sweat", "Give It Up or Turn It Loose" etc), as if he decided to declare war on the chord change. It's skeletal and gets to the gut of something. No wonder he was sampled so much: this was music distilled to its raw essence. His early 70s stuff is hotter and impressive for sure, but that late 60s period carries a shedload of baggage. I mean, it's just violent.

They're both very immersive artists, it's just that one spreads its wings, the other has lazer-like focus on the destination.

[Diamond Dog]

James Brown. He pretty much invented a genre of music.

This is not strictly true, though his mid-60's songs and bands generally codified what has now become known as 'funk' to our ears. There were many others in the US playing this kind of music leading up to that era and contemporaneously, though JB had the star power, the drive and the band to become the King of it all, pardon the pun

As I understand it though, it's a bit more than that, isn't it Fange?

Wasn';t it "Cold Sweat" where JB made a conscious effort to play on the downbeat ("On the one") and that's where that genre pretty much sprang from?

I may well be wrong (it has happened, you know) but I'd like to hear actual examples prior to this.

[fange]

Well, i'm not a music historian or a musician, so I can only really go on what I hear from that period, and it's always seemed to me that JB and his amazing musicians really took the funky music that was around at that time and distilled it down to its funkiest essense.


Stuff like Professor Longhair's 'Big Chief', say, came before JB's funk period...



And a LOT of New Orleans and Delta jazz and R&B combos used funk rhythms, like Mac "Dr John" Rebennack...



But as i said, my take on it is that JB and his bands basically boiled these things down and codified them as 'Funk' forever afterwards.

[Diamond Dog]

But the emphasis isn't on the first beat, is it? That's what 'funk' is - as opposed to swing.....

I could of course be talking bollocks... let's see what any musicians have to say Fange (great tunes by the way).