Tribute band keeps James Brown legend alive

By Dan Emerson
Special to the Pioneer Press
Article Last Updated: 08/25/2008 11:48:47 PM CDT

One of the hits of the 2008 summer musical festival season both in Europe and North America stopped in the Twin Cities for a one-night stand Monday at the Dakota: the cross-cultural James Brown tribute band "Still Black, Still Proud."
The eight-piece band, with several vocalists, just fit on the Dakota's stage. Most of its performances have been in much larger venues such as New York's Lincoln Center and next week's Chicago Jazz Festival.
But the powerful funk machine didn't let the lack of space cramp its style or energy.
Still recovering from the bus ride from Washington, D.C., the group started off with two inimitable trademark instrumentals of the Brown band's 1970s-'80s repertoire. Over the driving rhythm provided by drummer John Mader and Senegalese conga player Assane Mbaye, Malian star Vieux Farka Toure — son of the legendary Ali Farka Toure — delivered a punchy guitar solo that cleverly blended African rhythms with American blues licks.
The horn section featured longtime James Brown veterans Fred Wesley (trombone) and Pee Wee Ellis (tenor sax), who arranged many of Brown's hits and assembled this tribute band to honor his former boss, who died on Christmas Day 2006. Alto saxophonist Charles McNeil ably filled out the front line.
One of the show's energy peaks came on the next tune, when longtime Brown backup vocalist Martha High applied her soaring gospel-drenched voice to one of Brown's early hits, "Try Me." High, who has been spending time in the Twin Cities at Prince's Paisley Park studio, may have sung the tune better than Brown did himself. The horn section provided soulful call-and-response backing vocals on the doo-wop-influenced tune.
One of the band's African members, Senegalese vocalist Cheikh Lo, then took the stage and sang one of his own compositions in his native language. The song's funky beat served to illustrate Brown's indelible influence on the modern pop music of Africa.
Then Wesley led the band through his own "House Party," leading the normally sedate Dakota crowd in a sing-along on the chorus. The tune referenced George Clinton's Parliament-Funkadelic groups of which Wesley was a charter member.
The real star of Monday's show was Lo, who brought down the house with his heartfelt Brown-like rendition of the 1966 hit ballad "It's A Man's Man's Man's World." The West African pop star screamed, grunted and writhed like a JB doppelganger, even doing a verse or two in his native tongue. He also fattened the already-fat rhythm section at various points in the show when he chimed in on timbales.
Later, Lo and one of the band's other vocalists, Fred Ross, belted out an equally arresting version of Brown's "Cold Sweat." That segued into Brown's 1968 anthem, "Say It Loud — I'm Black and I'm Proud." He led the audience in an (attempted) sing-along of the chorus, this time in his native language.

Dan Emerson is a freelance writer and musician in Minneapolis