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    The One: The Life and Music of James Brown
    The One: The Life and Music of James Brown
    The One: The Life and Music of James Brown
    Audiobook14 hours

    The One: The Life and Music of James Brown

    Written by R.J. Smith

    Narrated by Kevin R. Free

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Senior editor at L.A. Magazine, RJ Smith saw his first book, The Great Black Way, win the coveted California Book Award. With The One, Smith profiles one of the 20th century's most innovative musical icons, the Godfather of Soul himself, James Brown. Drawing on extensive research and captivating interviews, Smith chronicles Brown's rise from abject poverty to the pinnacle of fame, while also detailing Brown's work as a civil rights activist and entrepreneur.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 15, 2012
    ISBN9781464008313
    The One: The Life and Music of James Brown

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    Reviews for The One

    4.5/5

    29 ratings10 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This is the best rock and roll biography I've read in the last 10 years. The writing is amazing, the scholarship impeccable; there is warmth and tone and voice and the writer is on his subject's side, but does not let him check out or get a pass in some of the more questionable areas of his life. This book was incredible; I could not put it down. It was sad and uplifting and sad and real. And in writing about the music, the knowledge, the true in depth down to the ground knowledge of every song, every note, every member of every band - you think you know James Brown's catalog but I assure you right now that you do not. I bought the ebook but am getting hard cover because I will always want this in my library. Just stunning.
    • 5/5
      With the current release of the film "Get on Up" starring Chadwick Boseman as James Brown directed by Tate Taylor, RJ Smith's richly researched volume on the life and times of the consummate showman and singer James Brown should gain new readers. Smith delves into the pith of James Brown's difficult and enchanted life and provides us a cautionary tale for our 21st century reality. Throughout his life, James Brown overcame immense poverty while at the same time fighting his own personal demons. The music and memories he left us are a gift that forces us to move beyond considerations of good and evil into a realm of mystery and redemption. RJ Smith in his richly detailed biography - "The One: The Life and Music of James Brown" - takes on a journey through James Brown's life that ultimately leads us to the question of what it means to be an American. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      This is an amazing overview of the Hardest Working Man in Show Business. After reading about his beginnings, I'm truly surprised at the heights he reached, his incredible business savvy, and his personal dysfunction. My recommendation? Get up offa that thing and read this incredibly well-researched and well-written biography!
    • 5/5
      A thorough biography of James Brown, his world, and his music, R.J Smith combines the history of The Warmth of Other Suns with the rise of Rhythm and Blues. At its center is a man that is very difficult to capture. James Brown was a man who had to hustle all of his life. Smith shows his drive and how that push to be The One set him apart from other performers. He had to fight and scrape until “blood ran from his shoes”. To write a great biography of Brown, you have to love the music, and Smith does. Each song creation is quite carefully detailed by Smith, as well as its impact on the music scene. He understands the era, the impact of Brown’s music, the players, and most important Brown’s relationship with the music itself. Smart enough businessman, he could come up with a concept song or sound, quickly record it, and hustle it, putting him at the top of his competitors. Since he was the only big star at King Records gave him the run of the place. I think that’s what contributes to the great sound he creates, it is spontaneous, raw, but the band is always very tight and controlled. His constant fining, firing, and penalizing those who broke his rules contributed to that. Always creative in finding control, he never knew how to read music or to lead a band, but he was always tight with the drummer. That was the key to his success and to his sound, finding the beat, and the carefully controlled environment in which he performed his music and his business. Smith also documents his multiple run-ins with the law and his criminal life. He is a man who wouldn’t have trouble settling an argument with a shotgun or paying off a DJ to play his record. That attitude gets him far in his early career, but things catch up. The Payola scandal puts him in hot water for his past actions as well as puts the IRS on his trail. Later when his drug use (PCP) leaves him paranoid, he threatens a room with a shotgun and leads the police on a car chase. Smith captures all aspects of the man and his times. He acknowledges that it would be difficult to really capture a man like James Brown. There were aspects of himself he would never reveal and his ability to act and parrot others created more of a mystery as to who he really was. The man never seemed to quit. Even in his 70s he was doing 81 shows a year, going until his last days. Smith really loves his subject, the music, and his times and he captures it all in an entertaining and insightful way, very engaging.
    • 5/5
      This is a good biography of an American music legend. What would make it even better would be a soundtrack. After all, that's the epitome of James Brown. His life story is told completely from beginning to end in well-written and vivid language. This is fine work!
    • 3/5
      I must admit overall I was disappointed with this book. I was hoping for a good insight to James Brown, not so much as the performer we know, but more in terms of his influences and the early days of his career. And it was in that area that I found this biography lacking.I realise that there is little documentary evidence of Brown's early life and many stories about him are contradictory, and not helped by his own versions of events told and retold with different spins for different audiences and reporters over the years; but I didn't feel that this work developed any central narative theme around those early years. I'll be honest that this disppointment in the early sections of the book probably influnced my feelings towards the rest of the story which covered more familiar territory. On a personal level I found the narrative to be somewhat rambling and distracting makimg the book more of a chore, than a pleasure, to read.
    • 5/5
      Because I have been an on-again-off-again fan of James Brown’s music since the mid-sixties, to me it feels like the man has always been there. I remember him best as the ultimate showman, an impression that is easily confirmed by watching some of the many James Brown videos that are readily found on YouTube today. Brown, because of the controversy surrounding his death and his multiple funerals, was a performer even in death, and I think he would have enjoyed and been pleased by that. I thought I knew James Brown – or, at least, everything I needed to know about him, but R.J. Smith’s new James Brown biography, The One: The Life and Music of James Brown, showed me just how wrong I was.The One (which actually refers to the way that he emphasized the upbeat rather than the downbeat in his music) focuses on Brown’s career path, as it should, but manages to get inside the man’s head in a way that helps explain where much of his chronic reckless behavior originated. James Brown, like all of us, was the product of his environment, his deeper culture, and his upbringing. Unfortunately for those around him, he often embraced the worst elements of all three, making life for his several wives, his children, and his employees miserable, at best – and unsustainable, at worst. Smith documents Brown’s troubled life in great detail. The failed marriages, the thousands of women who kept him company on the road, the children (most of whom he hardly knew), the drug abuse of his later years, the susceptibility to physical violence he could not always control, his mental abuse of band members – it is all there. James Brown was an extreme control freak; band members did not work for him – he owned them – but few would argue with the results of his musical vision or his impact on popular music and culture.One important part of Brown’s legacy is seldom spoken of today. Largely because his music would eventually find a passionate white audience, he became an important figure in the civil rights movement of the sixties, often rubbing shoulders with the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr. and other leaders of the era. Brown saw himself as someone capable of unifying the races and he did his best to make it happen - even to the point of offending those of his own race who did not believe in the nonviolent tactics of Dr. King. National politicians of the day, although they sometimes abused his trust, recognized the importance of having his support – support that would eventually trigger a financially crippling boycott of Brown’s music led by vocal elements of the black community. The One is for anyone interested in music history, pop culture, the civil rights movement, or simply what makes all of us tick. It is easy to forget (if we ever even realized the extent to which it was true) that James Brown was a real player in his prime, one of those important, but tragically flawed people, who comes around only every so often. The One will go a long way in setting the record straight. Rated at: 5.0
    • 4/5
      When I first thumbed through The One I noticed immediately the lack of any photographic illustrations, unusual in a book of this genre. By the time I finished reading the well-composed narrative of James Brown's life, I discovered that what was missing, at least for me, was not a visual accompaniment, what The One needed was a soundtrack.In The One, RJ Smith attempts to define James Brown. Trying to explain the success of the man is as much of a puzzle as trying to explain the success of his music; both are far more than what can be explained by the basic formula: the right man, with the right sound, in the right place, at the right time.If asked what single thing I took away after reading The One, it would be that music and man were inseparable; the music defined James Brown just as much as James Brown defined the music.
    • 5/5
      When you get schooled during the great depression, grow up in a brothel and your dad ties you in a sack and beats you up with a belt; when you spend part of your youth in a juvenile institution, you scream and don't stop, continuing to do it 300 days a year for the rest of your life becoming James Brown, a fighter, a singer and hard working man. This saga is more than a biography, it is an hymn to the Rythm and Blues genra given to the crowds through the shamanism of "The One". Mystic, at times religiously inspired, Smith shows how Brown develops his unique musical narrative by being observant of what's going on on the music stages and backstages. From the inner mechanics of Show business, music creation and diffusion, one can but admire Brown's keen observations, his tenacity and obstination. It is a biography which can be therefore read on many levels. Race relations is its constant background and if Brown is second to the Freedom riders he does come at the forefront of emancipation and like a chameleon embodies musically Black Power in the mid 60s. Smith describes this background very well and how Brown succeeds in transcending racial divides. If Brown became the hardest working man in Show Business, Smith is the hardest working biographer in the literary world as to write "The One" he pushed hundreds of back doors to gain access and do his interviews of people who played, lived and suffered with or under "The One".It also reads as a Southern regional novel as so much of Brown's life is fasconed by his Georgialinan and Affrilachian roots with ups and downs and a character depiction reminiscent of Steinbeck . It reads as a legend because it is so much over the top.
    • 4/5
      "The One" was a detailed and fair recounting of James Brown and his influence on the music of his time. Having read other Brown biographys I did not learn a lot I did not previously know however I felt that RJ Smith did an outstanding job writing an interesting story of a very complex man. Brown's life does not make it easy to present him in a heroic fashion however the result of this presentation for me is a confirmation of James Brown's legacy as an musical innovator and preserves Brown's place as a man who stood on principle to preserve his legacy as a Soul legend, and shows Brown as the real and flawed human being he was. The flaws add much of the texture to his music from my perspective. At 15 years old I heard "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" for the first time on the radio. I still listen to that song 47 years later because it moves me like few other songs I've ever heard. That song and the rest of James Brown's body of work stands on it's own. In "The One" RJ Smith puts the man and the music in the context of Brown's life and times. I really appreciated the context. Reading this book has allowed me another opportunity to listen to "Papa.." with a new perspective and a new appreciation for the life behind the song.