Live at the Apollo (1963)

[2010 review here]

I see via Wikipedia this is still considered one of the greatest live albums of all time. I don’t hear it that way—although I was more in thrall to it in 2010, I remember it still as one of my great disappointments when I finally got to it, finding it one day in the 1980s in a cutout bin. There’s definitely a “you had to be there” case to be made here, and I say that as someone who saw James Brown over 15 years later, in 1979, and count it as one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. It did not matter that Brown was actually on stage no more than 40 minutes. But the brevity of this album—31 and a half minutes all up—made me suspect at the time that I must have bought some defective product being moved through the cutout networks. But no, it’s actually little more than half an hour. There’s a long introduction and a few instrumental vamps between songs. Due to the excitement of the moment, I presume, most songs have rushed tempos and last little more than two minutes apiece, including a medley of eight songs that goes six minutes. “Lost Someone” kind of saves the set, with a groove that runs to more than 10 minutes, a harbinger of things to come beyond 1963. Brown would get pretty good with grooves that went 10 minutes or longer. I understand the historical importance here. The album sold like crazy and DJs reportedly played it like a double-sided 45, playing one side then flipping it and playing the other—in response to requests from listeners. Then there’s the weirdly haunting date of the show, October 24, 1962, at approximately the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, when nuclear anxiety was reaching one of its highest and most intense points. I’ll tell you what: I like a book Douglas Wolk wrote about this album for the 33-1/3 series more than I like the album. And as fine as that book is, breaking down the show minute by minute, second by second, I like even more the later prizes of James Brown’s work and career (Roots of a Revolution, Foundations of Funk: A Brand New Bag, Make It Funky: The Big Payback, and the Star Time box). At this point, Live at the Apollo exists mostly as historical artifact with only modest levels of interest.