Джеймс Браун: Выступление в Аполло

the James Brown album

Live at the Apollo is the first live album by James Brown and the Famous Flames, recorded at the Apollo Theater in Harlem in October 1962 and released in May 1963 by King Records. Capturing Brown's popular stage show for the first time on record, the album was a major commercial and critical success and cemented his status as a leading R&B star. The album is included in Robert Christgau's "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings, published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981). In 2000 it was voted number 248 in Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums. In 2003, the album was ranked number 24 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, then was re ranked at number 25 in 2012, and then re ranked at number 65 in a 2020 reboot of the list. In 2004, it was one of 50 recordings chosen that year by the Library of Congress to be added to the National Recording Registry. In 1998, the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

The album was recorded on the night of October 24, 1962, at Brown's own expense. King Records owner Syd Nathan refused to fund the recording, thinking it would not be commercially profitable. Although not credited on the album cover or label, Brown's vocal group, The Famous Flames (Bobby Byrd, Bobby Bennett, and Lloyd Stallworth), played an important co starring role in Live at the Apollo, and are included with Brown by MC Fats Gonder in the album's intro. It wasn't until the CD release of this album, decades later, that The Flames were finally credited for their work on this album. While Brown's record label, King Records, originally opposed releasing the album, believing that a live album featuring no new songs would not be profitable, the label finally relented under pressure from both Brown's manager Bud Hobgood and Brown himself.

Live at the Apollo was an amazingly rapid seller. It spent 66 weeks on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart, peaking at #2. Many record stores, especially in the southeast US, found themselves unable to keep up with the demand for the product, eventually ordering several cases at a time. R&B DJs often would play side1 in its entirety, pausing only to insert commercials and to flip the record to side2, which was often played in full as well.

Despite its renowned and historical significance, Live at the Apollo was not reissued on CD until 1990 because the original master recordings had been misplaced and the available copies were not of a high enough quality for a satisfactory CD release. The master tapes were recovered in late 1989. As Harry Weinger writes in the booklet of the reissued Deluxe Edition (featuring remastered sound and several alternate mixes) in 2004: "Finding the primary master, not the readily available copy, became a mission. It was tough to find, since the original LP didn't index individual tracks, meaning its song titles would not be properly listed in a database. The tape vault was 100,000 reels strong, and growing. As JB would say Good gawd. I shared this tale of woe with Phil Schaap, the noted jazz historian. One day, [as] Philip was searching the vault for a Max Roach tape, his hand landed on what he thought was Max's master. Pulling the tape off the shelf, he realized he had instead an anonymous looking audiotape box that said: 'Second Show James Brown'. It was initialed, in grease pencil, 'GR CLS King Records' (Gene Redd and Chuck L. Speitz). Phil handed it to me, saying with urgent economy, 'I think you need to hear this."

The track listing is as it appears on the 2004 remaster. The original 1963 issue of the album is unindexed.