6000 Songs: James Brown - Cold Sweat

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Rob
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6000 Songs: James Brown - Cold Sweat

Post by Rob »

This topic is part of the weekly 6000 songs, 6000 opinions. In this, every week another song from the Acclaimed Music song top 6000 is selected for discussion. The song is chosen completely at random, through random.org, making the selections hopefully very varied. The only other rule in this is that after an artist has had a turn, he can’t appear for another ten weeks. The idea for this topic came to me because I wanted to think of a way to engage more actively with the very large top 6000 songs that Henrik has compiled for us, while still keeping it accessible and free of any game elements. Yes, that’s right, no game elements. You are free to rate the song each week, but I’ll do nothing with this rating. I want it to be about people’s personal reviews and hopefully discussions. So in reverse to other topics on this site I say: “Please comment on this song, rating is optional”.
Earlier entries of this series can be found here: http://www.acclaimedmusic.net/forums/vi ... ive#p45337

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“I don’t care, darlin', about your faults/ I just want to satisfy your pulse”

Image

72. James Brown – Cold Sweat

The facts:
Year: 1967.
Genre: Funk.
Country: United States of America.
Album: Cold Sweat.
Acclaimed Music ranking: #1072.
Song ranking on Acclaimed Music in the artist’s discography: 7th.
Ranks higher than Can’t Help Falling in Love by Elvis Presley, but lower than Int’l Player’s Anthem (I Choose You) by UGK, featuring Outkast.
Place in the Acclaimed Music Song Poll 2015: Not ranked.

The people:
Written by James Brown & Alfred Ellis.
Produced by James Brown.
Vocals by James Brown.
Guitar by Jimmy Nolen & Alphonso “Country” Kellum.
Drums by Clyde Stubblefield.
Trumpets by Waymon Reed & Joe Dupars.
Bass by Bernard Odum.
Saxophone by Alfred Ellis, Maceo Parker, Eldee Williams & St. Clair Pinckney.
Trombone by Levi Rasbury.

The opinion:
It is said that Cold Sweat by James Brown is the first true funk song. That makes me a little more ashamed to say that I don’t care for it at all. If there might be bigger disparity between a song’s importance and my appreciation, I have not heard it yet.

Cold Sweat suffers for me from a problem that more James Brown studio recordings have: they feel underplayed by the backing band. I know all these guys are well-respected musicians, but am I the only one who finds the instrumental parts here oddly subdued? I like my funk very spirited, but here everything sounds quiet in an unusual way, as if the life was drained out of the artists.

This feeling is only highlighted by the vocals of James Brown himself, which are the polar opposite: they sound loud, abrasive and full of passion. Indeed, he sounds like he must be sweating deeply by the end of the seven minute song. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the only thing I like about Cold Sweat is the last minute or so, when you get the feeling all Brown’s passion gets too much even for him. It is not only tonally that Brown sounds on a different plain as his band though: the interplay between him and them seems off. There is something off-kilter about this song that makes it sound unfinished to my ears.

But not to other ears, as is obvious by this songs reputation and influence. A lot of what puts me off about this is part of the reason it made such an impression at the time. The simplicity of the playing basically created the idea of the funk-groove. I’m not too fond of the repetition of funk in general, but perhaps because of the length and the particular sparseness of this track it grates on me here especially. It’s a tedious listen for me, but it got others to pay attention.

The shouts of James Brown are famous too. He had never been averse to passionate screams of course, but here he utilized them in a sort of call-and-response that wasn’t really new (not for him either), but was used in an innovative way. Bobby Owsinski, who wrote a far more appreciative review of the song than me (see link below), likened Brown to a traffic director, a nice comparison. He instructs his players in the middle of the song to change things up. It’s something he would do more frequently in the future, in particular the famous call to “take them to the bridge” in Sex Machine (a song that sounds to me like a sexier remake of Cold Sweat).

Cold Sweat and its innovations are basically a logical result of what Brown had been building up to. It is loosely based around his earlier song called I Don’t Care, whose lyrics are the starting point of the newer track. Brown cowrote the song with saxophone player Alfred Ellis who was very much into Miles Davis. He took the main bass and saxophone line from Davis’ classic So What and indeed, once you compare the two tracks you can easily spot the similarity.

The basic sound of Cold Sweat can also be found in earlier Brown hits like Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag, Night Train and Out of Sight. These also contrast the repetitions of the band with the shouts of brown. What makes the difference this time around is that it is all based on one chord change, something that was very unlikely in soul and R&B of the time. It’s what made funk, even if apparently not all Brown’s players immediately got why Brown went for it.

I can’t say for sure, but perhaps Brown liked this approach because it freed him. It made it more easier to improvise vocally now that he had such a basic groove as a backbone. The lyrics of Cold Sweat are close to meaningless and sound like Brown made them up as they came along. In later live versions he changed many of the lyrics frequently. He added to them or even used lines of other songs in it. Brown always had something wild in him, like he could recklessly fly in any direction he felt like. A song like Cold Sweat made this possible.

The playlist below contains a rather large selection of live versions where Brown performs the song. Notice how different they are. I like Brown generally more live than in the studio, because it seems as if the confines of a recording booth suffocated him, and Cold Sweat is a good showcase for this. The repetition is still there live, but it is mixed with improvised touches by both Brown and his backing band that make it more exciting and perhaps more like jazz. It feels electric, whereas the studio single sounds lifeless to me. Suddenly the horn section feels as passionate as Brown. The live performances completed the song.

Perhaps it is of interest to note that the version you hear on the original album was the first take. They did apparently at least two more takes, but Brown must have thought the first was the best. Interestingly, the parent album isn’t all that similar to the title track. It seems that with each new song on it, it becomes less funky and more like traditional soul. All these other songs are less innovative than Cold Sweat, but I like them more, especially the truly feverish Fever.

So I’m sorry if I don’t like this song more, but at least I like the live versions. And besides, Brown didn’t need me to recognize Cold Sweat as a song that would come to define a complete genre.
4/10

Other versions:
James Brown’s Cold Sweat has several covers. So has Thin Lizzy’s Cold Sweat, but I have removed those from the playlist below for your convenience. Also, the apparently endless amount of electronic dance songs named Cold Sweat have been removed. Jeez, not many people seemed to know that already a classic with that title existed.

The actual covers take a similar approach as Brown had in his live versions, meaning that the simple one chord line is improvised around. The basics remain very basic, but each artists finds another song to build around it. This means there is hardly any straightforward cover of Cold Sweat, so everything is at least of some interest, even if the end results aren’t always worthwhile. The best is ridiculously funky and very sweaty sounding take by Mongo Santamaria, that omits the lyrics. Maceo Parker, who played tenor sax on the original, also reinvented the song for his solo career and made a very good 9 minute version. Hard Bargain’s rock take is fun too. The remaining covers are less interesting.

The song has also been sampled a lot, as is usual with Brown. The website Who Sampled mentions no less than 141 samplers. I have only added the first page to the playlist. I might update it later, but I had a hard time just getting through the songs we already have. Not just because of the length, but mostly because it was difficult actually spotting Cold Sweat in quite a few of them. It’s a basic song for sure, but damn, they keep it well hidden. It’s interesting, though, that Public Enemy used it three times. Then again, that they loved to sample James Brown is no secret.

The playlist:


Further reading:
Bobby Owsinsky’s article on Cold Sweat: http://bobbyowsinski.blogspot.nl/2012/0 ... z4eJWzUMmG
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babydoll
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Re: 6000 Songs: James Brown - Cold Sweat

Post by babydoll »

Rob wrote:4/10
:( Is it really not worthy of at least a 50%?
User avatar
Rob
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Posts: 7350
Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 3:53 pm
Location: Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Re: 6000 Songs: James Brown - Cold Sweat

Post by Rob »

babydoll wrote:
Rob wrote:4/10
:( Is it really not worthy of at least a 50%?
I'm afraid the final score reflects how I feel about the song, regardless of influence, and Cold Sweat just isn't doing it for me.
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