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player ready...Tensions were high in the summer of 1968. The Vietnam War was escalating, the civil rights movement was peaking, and the Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King assassinations were still painfully fresh. Into the midst of this turmoil stepped James Brown. Calming city riots and performing for U.S. troops, the Godfather of Soul used his music to salve a racially separated, politically divided America. Here is what the singer had to say before launching into his new hit, “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud,” at a Dallas concert:
“One way of solving a lot of problems that we’ve got in this country is letting a person feel that they’re important – feel that they’re somebody – and a man can’t get himself together until he knows who he is – and be proud of what and who he is – and where he comes from.
“Now I just recorded a tune called `Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud.’ Now if a man is not proud of who he is or where he comes from he is not a man, so I want each and everyone to understand, this tune is for the good of what it means, what it can do for a man’s self-pride.
“Now, the blacks and whites that’s in the audience, I want you to do this for me. I want the blacks to sing the song, and at the end of the song where the blacks say, `I’m black,’ I want everybody to say, `I’m proud,’ all right?
Because this way, there’s nobody can talk, there’s no communication that can ever come between two people that they can’t talk to each other in a conversation, so remember that. A little love won’t hurt.”
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“Say It Live and Loud” (Polydor/Chronicles), a 78-minute CD documenting Brown’s concert in Dallas, will hit stores Tuesday.