Star Time

James Brown

between 1956 and 1984, James Brown placed an astounding 103 singles on the R&B charts. Every phase of his career is well represented here: the pleading R&B of “Please, Please, Please”; his reinvention of R&B with “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” where melody is subsumed within the groove; his founding document of Seventies funk, “Sex Machine”; and his blueprint for hip-hop in “Funky Drummer.”