anyone with an e-mail address like yrs deserves my (non-valuable) time:
i wanted to let others know also that james had two genius back-up singers, vicki anderson (more later) and the great great Marva Whitney, a voice that burns through speakers, unable, in the late 1960's, to be controlled by conventional recording equipment. Soul Brother Recordings put out her It's My Thing from 69 and it features the JB's ands it's hot. It's like a melodic version of the noise made when Pat Hingle puts his cigar out on A. Huston's palm in the Grifters. OUCH, BABY!
as for the greatest entertainer since Bathsheba:
PBS had a corny American Masters that traces--it's PBS, after all-- his hometown, his addictions, his importance, but, as with EVERYTHING re JB, it could have tried not to cut away from so many musical moments.
Best just get concert footage.
1.. After Rev MLK Jr's assasination, jb calmed (a funny ironical word for such a smoking dude) down racist boston [Pumpsie Green, 1959!]. I have seen bits of this and it cooks: dark, raw, herky jerky, just like the man himself. DVD? i dunno.
2. Same era: Live in Apollo, 1968. I have seen the VHS and I have the music, and it testifies to this outfit as the tightest band in rock history: it features a corny couple of ballads (i wanna be around?) and a duet with aforementioned Marva: It's her fucking THANG by now. the band includes bobby byrd, pee wee ellis, and maceo, with chank nolen and country kellum on psychotic guitars, and the greatest double drummer scenario ever: jabo and stubblefield. Is it on DVD? Who cares?????!!!!!! There's a version of there was a time that limp dicks me to death. (the choreography is credited to honi coles, a great hoofer who taught greg hines and savion glover everything they knew/know which wasn't/isn't half of what HE knew.)
3. there is the Olympia Paris Show of 1971 that features, of course, THE band, catfish and bootsy collins, fred wesley as CEO, and the great great vicki anderson, 654 times the singer and entertainer that was the skinny rude diana ross. Well...also unsure whether it's on DVD--How does this computer thing work exactly?--but I also don't care. it' s all just about the greatest funk ever slapped onto anyone anywhere by anyone. get healed and funk you very much.