If Count Basie had hired James Brown to replace Joe Williams as his featured male vocalist, what would the results have sounded like? Brown offers some suggestions on Soul on Top, which finds the Godfather of Soul making an intriguing detour into jazz-minded big-band territory.

In an era when Brown went on to make three studio doubles, Get on the Good Foot was the first. This 1972 album finds Brown having great chemistry with both his newer J.B.'s and the New York session players. The title track is particularly stunning. "Get on the Good Foot" was so off-the-cuff and nonpareil, he couldn't have replicated the formula even if he wanted to. "I Got a Bag of My Own," on the other hand, sounds forced and synthetic. Although Brown was known for his new product, this album has him recycling some of his King singles. Doing so-so remakes of "Cold Sweat" and "Ain't It a Groove" could be taken as an attempt to ease some of his old catalog into his new label. Not surprisingly, Get on the Good Foot does have its share of throwaway cuts. "Recitation by Hank Ballard" is a spoken-word effort with Ballard extolling his buddy's virtues, as well as giving unsolicited advice about the perils of show biz. "Dirty Harri," a lukewarm instrumental, goes nowhere fast for all of its six-plus minutes. Although Get on the Good Foot only managed to yield two hits, the album is one of his more varied and fun efforts.

Needless to say it wasn't a stretch for the late James Brown to play at Studio 54, the storied palace of decadence and dance. The funk he laid down from the beginning dug the foundation for the good-time sounds and musical sophistication of the genre. It's also true that in 1980 when this was recorded, disco music itself was way on the wind down, giving way to a much more urbane form of dancefloor soul. But this performance is as hot, sweaty, and full of backbone slip groove as anything else, despite rather dodgy sound quality (sounds like a worn board tape). The Godfather lays down his hits as professionally as ever with some interesting textures in the arrangements and horn charts to accent the disc's reliance on circular rhythm, repetitive basslines, and hopped up dynamics. Brown could truly run the spectrum, but only does so on "Please, Please, Please," and the medley of "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" and "Lost Someone" (and you can feel the restlessness of a crowd who wants to do more lines and dance). He gives them plenty more of that as the speeds of his up-tempo numbers are furious, revved but deeper in the pocket to encourage the free-form aspects of the disco for the serious dancers. The band is spot on and never played better, so utterly tight, focused and "on" that the groove never suffers and in fact transcends the Godfather himself at times.

20 All-Time Greatest Hits! features 20 songs from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, 16 of which had previously topped the US R&B charts. The album itself reached #99 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart when it was first released in 1991, and has been ranked #414 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, dancer, musician, record producer, and bandleader. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th century music, he is often referred to by the honorific nicknames "Godfather of Soul", "Mr. Dynamite", and "Soul Brother No. 1". In a career that lasted more than 50 years, he influenced the development of several music genres…

Originally released in 1973 as a sprawling two-LP set, The Payback was one of James Brown's most ambitious albums of the 1970s, and also one of his best, with Brown and his band (which in 1974 still included Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker, St. Clair Pinckney, Jimmy Nolen, and Jabo Starks) relentlessly exploring the outer possibilities of the James Brown groove…

By this point Brown's insane schedule was catching up to him. He seemingly had singles or albums coming out on a weekly basis, and Reality finds him at an artistic impasse. Released in late 1974, Reality was one of the few of his '70s albums recorded entirely in N.Y., with and without the J.B.'s…

This live outing from Brown's seminal 1970 J.B.'s lineup features Bootsy Collins, Clyde Stubblefield, Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker, Bobby Byrd, and many more. While it's a cut below Love Power Peace in documenting this lineup live, Brown and his band still smoke, tearing into extended versions of funk classics like "Sex Machine" (nearly 11 minutes), "Brother Rapp," "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose," and "Mother Popcorn," plus a healthy quotient of earlier soul material sprinkled in between.