LITTLE WILLIE JOHN / JAMES BROWN ~

 

JAMES BROWN (HOME AT LAST) ~

 

Little Willie John

JAMES BROWN SINGS LITTLE WILLIE JOHN ~

It gets no better when you have James Brown 

& 

Little Willie John together

WITH ME ~

It doesn't get much better than this — James Brown ratcheting it up through a Little Willie John tune, complete with lazy horns which sometimes pop like flashbulbs or downtown traffic horns, the maestro's voice deep in the groove. The ultimate song to discover as you start to settle into a music store's bins and this beauty comes on. It could change your life's direction. As Emily Dickinson was said to have said when she heard this song in a leafy Amherst, Massachusetts used music store: "It took off the top of my head."

I first heard this song years ago on a King LP I covet (own) titled Thinking About Little Willie John and A Few Nice Things — to die-for covers by JB.

The hardest working man in show business was born in South Carolina in 1933. An African American with Apache descent and Asian ancestry. Brown had a rough childhood: very poor, his mother hightailed it off with another man by the time he was ten, that left him with his father who taught him how to play harmonica and an aunt running a house of prostitution. In that house came Tampa Red who gave JB his first guitar lessons. Otherwise, he was hustling friends, survival on the streets, and answering life's messages — locked-up at age sixteen for armed robbery being one. While in lock-up he met another servant of gospel and rhythm & blues: Bobby Byrd, and really the rest is music history. Both men would pass away at age 73.

James Brown & Bobby Byrd in the groove

photo JB : emiliogrossi.com

WITH ME ~

Sweet looking Little Willie John (5 ft tall) was actually known for his short temper, drinking problems and would end up on a manslaughter conviction after a fatal knifing at a Seattle show in the mid60s. He served two years in Walla Walla at the Washington State Penitentiary where he died at age 30 of a heart attack. To this day it's in dispute just how the great one died. While on appeal in 1966 for the conviction, and momentarily out of prison, John recorded his last album Nineteen Sixty-Six which wasn't released until 2008. One more Bermuda Triangle moment in the music industry. Forty years didn't dim a thing ~ the album is pure gold. Born in Arkansas and raised in the Motor City on auto culture and gospel, Little Willie John cut his first record for the King label in 1955. Peggy Lee made his song "Fever" even more famous in 1958. James Brown would open shows for Little Willie John, known to his mother as William Edward John.