James Brown – It’s A Mother (1969) (KSD-1063)

James Brown – It’s A Mother
Vinyl rip in 24bit 192 khz |FLAC |Artwork at 300 dpi
901 MB (96khz 24bit) 292 MB (44.1khz 16bit) 149 MB (320kbs) |  Soul, Funk, R&B| 1969
King Records – KSD 1063 / KS- 1063| Distributed by Starday-King

01 Mother Popcorn (Part 1) 2:55
Written-By – A. Ellis, J. Brown

02 Mother Popcorn (Part 2) 2:33

03 Mashed Potato Popcorn (Part 1) (3:00)
Written-By – James Brown

04 Mashed Potato Popcorn (Part 2) (3:20)

05 I’m Shook (2:50)
Written-By – James Brown

06 Popcorn With A Feeling (Instrumental) (2:55)
Written-By – A. Kellum, C. Stubblefield, J. Brown, J. Nolan, S. Pickney

07 The Little Groove Maker Me (Part 1) (3:00)
Written-By – B. Hobgood, J. Brown

07 The Little Groove Maker Me (Part 2) (2:25)

08 Any Day Now (3:30)
Written-By – H. Hilliard-B. Bacharach

09 If I Ruled The World (2:50)
Written-By – Ornadel, Bricusse

10 You’re Still Out Of Sight (3:05)
Written-By – James Brown

11 Top Of The Stack (Instrumental) (2:47)
Written-By – A. Ellis, J. Brown

12 – BONUS TRACK – Mother Popcorn (Parts 1 & 2) (Edit)

Recorded At – King Studios
Published By – Dynatone, Golo, Plan Two Music, Chappell,  Starday-King Records, Inc.

Production coordinator – Bud Hobgood
Audio Engineer – Dave Harrison
Liner Notes – Hal Neely
Photography – Dan Quest Studio
Producer – James Brown

 

Ripping specs:  King Records (KS- 1063 in runout wax) vinyl; Pro-Ject RM-5SE with Audio Tecnica AT440-MLa cartridge; Speedbox power supply); Creek Audio OBH-15; Audioquest King Cobra cables; M-Audio Audiophile 192 Soundcard ; Adobe Audition at 32-bit float 192khz; clicks and pops removed with Click Repair on light settings, manually auditioning the output; further clicks removed with Adobe Audition 3.0; dithered and resampled using iZotope RX Advanced. Converted to FLAC in either Trader’s Little Helper or dBPoweramp. Tags done with Foobar 2000 and Tag and Rename

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Hey this blog turned 9 years old on Friday!  I was going to post, but so many people kept buying me drinks of congratulations that I didn’t get around to it.  Actually that didn’t happen, nobody even mentioned Flabbergasted Vibes birthday and no toasts were made.  But let’s not sulk.

A while back, A friend asked if I could give a 24-bit ‘hi res’ treatment to the Godfather of Soul, as said friend was unable to find much of anything of the sort either officially or unofficially. Only available in digital as a very expensive Japanese CD pressing for a short time, It’s A Mother will hopefully make your ears, feet, and ass happy. The tracks on this seem to be recorded  during a time span covering the disbanding of the Famous Flames and the new configuration of the J.B.’s, so anyone who wants to help me out with precise info on the musician lineup, feel free to leave comments.  We don’t get enough comments on this blog but let’s not sulk. What, am I supposed to act like its 2008 when music blogs were still a thing, and expect people to leave comments?

Besides the classic single of Mother Popcorn, this album has the sleeper cut “I’m Shook,” which was apparently released as a single in a different mix and quickly withdrawn for some reason.  I first heard some of the instrumentals on this album, like Top Of The Stack, from a 2-CD compilation released by Rhino of just Brown’s instrumental stuff in the early 90’s, which was mind-opening for me.  It was called “Soul Pride: The Instrumentals 1960-69” by the way, and it was on heavy rotation at my apartment for a long time.  Other people seemed fascinated with some horribly dull, testosterone-angst genre called “grunge” at the time, but nearly everyone still wanted to know who the heck recorded these smoking instrumentals when they heard them, and many were surprised at the revelation.

I took the liberty of editing together Parts 1 & 2 of Mother Popcorn and including the result as a bonus track. They were, of course, split onto different sides of a 45 RPM and it has always perplexed me why some LP’s didn’t include the uninterrupted full version. Even in 69, Soul and R&B was still a singles-driven market, but it still seems like laziness. I could not do the same for Mashed Potato Popcorn because the two parts are either from different takes, or the fadeout / fadein actually skips a measure or two, leaving no overlap where I could splice. Interestingly, The Little Groove Maker (Parts 1 and 2) does not have a track split and is one continuous jam on the LP.

No real substantive commentary in this post but the blog shouldn’t have to work on its birthday, so enjoy It’s A Mother and while you are at it, let James give you some dance lessons.

 

 

 

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