Fame/Hot( I Need To Be Loved.....)

batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
edited August 2010 in Strut Central
This lady at my job says...."James Brown ripped off David Bowie"

I interpreted this as - "As great as JB is, he ripped off the great Bowie".

After a little investigating I found that Carlos Alomar, the guitarist, was a w/ JB for minute.

So I asked who really ripped who?

Bowie's first US hit was a JB-ish groove provided by a JB ex-band member, yet JB is the "thief".






Race-Strut???

She counters after i give her some info that she heard that JB ripped off Bowie from spome WGBO DJ, just to back up her claim. She's was adamant about it but I read it as Bowie > Brown. That's not the real crux, but I smelled some misinformation.

SS Clarification pleez.

  Comments


  • CosmoCosmo 9,768 Posts
    I dunno man like I knew about the Alomar steez but I always thought it was a case of JB saying to his crew like Yo this Isley Brothers / BT Express / David Bowie shit is hot let's do our flavor in the mix.

  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    Cosmo said:
    I dunno man like I knew about the Alomar steez but I always thought it was a case of JB saying to his crew like Yo this Isley Brothers / BT Express / David Bowie shit is hot let's do our flavor in the mix.

    How can u bite what was bitten from you?

  • staxwaxstaxwax 1,474 Posts
    I've wondered about this too - I always took it as JB gently ribbing DB on some - you do me and I'll do you.
    Greatest compliment ever if JB decides to copy your groove imo.

  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
    batmon said:
    This lady at my job says...."James Brown ripped off David Bowie"

    I interpreted this as - "As great as JB is, he ripped off the great Bowie".

    After a little investigating I found that Carlos Alomar, the guitarist, was a w/ JB for minute.

    So I asked who really ripped who?

    Bowie's first US hit was a JB-ish groove provided by a JB ex-band member, yet JB is the "thief".




    Race-Strut???

    She counters after i give her some info that she heard that JB ripped off Bowie from spome WGBO DJ, just to back up her claim. She's was adamant about it but I read it as Bowie > Brown. That's not the real crux, but I smelled some misinformation.

    SS Clarification pleez.

    I always understood that JB bit Bowie. Certainly, Fame was released before Hot.

    I take your point about the irony of JB supposedly being the offending party, but the fundamental difference in this case is that Hot is clearly a straight jack of Fame. Leaving aside how it's widely believed that James often took credit for the work of his musicians (although that's another thread altogether), the fact that Carlos Alomar was a JB in the late 60s isn't really an issue here. If he'd taken a bunch of familiar JB licks and adapted them into a generic JB-ish groove which Bowie and John Lennon then turned into Fame, then there'd be a more compelling argument for pointing the finger in the other direction. Otherwise, what/where's the specific JB record that Fame is derivative of? As it stands, Fame is no more or less JB-ish than any other funk groove, whereas you can point out precisely what James lifted from Fame for Hot.

    This wasn't the only time in the mid-70s when James reacted in an unusual way to what he possibly perceived as Whitey trying to muscle in on his territory - remember the Above Average Black Band? - but it's telling that there was never any legal action on either side. As I always understood it, both Bowie and Alomar took Hot as a huge compliment, whether it was intended or not. What you might particularly find interesting is that Fame was supposedly inspired by the Jackson 5's live version of Walk On By from the Goin' Back To Indiana album, which was of course derived from the Isaac Hayes version.

  • JuniorJunior 4,853 Posts
    So was Fame really Bowie's first major hit in the US? Must confess I'd always assumed he made it big there pretty soon after he hit the big time in the UK. New thing learnt for the day.

  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
    Junior said:
    So was Fame really Bowie's first major hit in the US? Must confess I'd always assumed he made it big there pretty soon after he hit the big time in the UK. New thing learnt for the day.

    Nah, apart from his mid-70s r&b period, he remained a kind of cult figure in the US until Let's Dance which, oddly enough, marked a return to a more r&b-ish sound.

  • pickwick33pickwick33 8,946 Posts
    DocMcCoy said:
    Junior said:
    So was Fame really Bowie's first major hit in the US? Must confess I'd always assumed he made it big there pretty soon after he hit the big time in the UK. New thing learnt for the day.

    Nah, apart from his mid-70s r&b period, he remained a kind of cult figure in the US until Let's Dance which, oddly enough, marked a return to a more r&b-ish sound.

    Not quite true..."Space Oddity" was an American hit in '73, and several Bowie albums charted in Billboard's Top 20 long before "Let's Dance." Bowie was already a star by that point. I doubt if the Midnight Special TV show would have let an obscure cult hero host an entire episode.

    This wasn???t the only time in the mid-70s when James reacted in an unusual way to what he possibly perceived as Whitey trying to muscle in on his territory - remember the Above Average Black Band?

    He reacted that way to Blackey stealing his stuff as well. When B.T. Express swept the nation with "Express," James Brown (through the JB's) released "(It's Not The Express) It's The JB's Monaurail." And I forget which track it was ("Get Up Off Of Me"??), but there was at least one selection on the Sex Machine Today album which had JB rambling on about how certain artists had been trying to get over with his style.

  • LaserWolfLaserWolf Portland Oregon 11,517 Posts
    pickwick33 said:
    DocMcCoy said:
    Junior said:
    So was Fame really Bowie's first major hit in the US? Must confess I'd always assumed he made it big there pretty soon after he hit the big time in the UK. New thing learnt for the day.

    Nah, apart from his mid-70s r&b period, he remained a kind of cult figure in the US until Let's Dance which, oddly enough, marked a return to a more r&b-ish sound.

    Not quite true..."Space Oddity" was an American hit in '73, and several Bowie albums charted in Billboard's Top 20 long before "Let's Dance." Bowie was already a star by that point. I doubt if the Midnight Special TV show would have let an obscure cult hero host an entire episode.

    This wasn???t the only time in the mid-70s when James reacted in an unusual way to what he possibly perceived as Whitey trying to muscle in on his territory - remember the Above Average Black Band?

    He reacted that way to Blackey stealing his stuff as well. When B.T. Express swept the nation with "Express," James Brown (through the JB's) released "(It's Not The Express) It's The JB's Monaurail." And I forget which track it was ("Get Up Off Of Me"??), but there was at least one selection on the Sex Machine Today album which had JB rambling on about how certain artists had been trying to get over with his style.

    Totally.

    In his bio (not recommended) he says that when he heard Fame he said, that's my groove. So to prove the point he did a rip off of Fame. Or something like that.

    Bowie hits in USA:
    Space Oddity #13 73
    Young Americans 28 75

    Fame #1 for 2 weeks 75.

    And as an album rock guy he was selling lps back in 73. Before then I don't think he was too well known.

  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
    pickwick33 said:
    DocMcCoy said:
    Junior said:
    So was Fame really Bowie's first major hit in the US? Must confess I'd always assumed he made it big there pretty soon after he hit the big time in the UK. New thing learnt for the day.

    Nah, apart from his mid-70s r&b period, he remained a kind of cult figure in the US until Let's Dance which, oddly enough, marked a return to a more r&b-ish sound.

    Not quite true..."Space Oddity" was an American hit in '73, and several Bowie albums charted in Billboard's Top 20 long before "Let's Dance." Bowie was already a star by that point. I doubt if the Midnight Special TV show would have let an obscure cult hero host an entire episode.

    This wasn???t the only time in the mid-70s when James reacted in an unusual way to what he possibly perceived as Whitey trying to muscle in on his territory - remember the Above Average Black Band?

    He reacted that way to Blackey stealing his stuff as well. When B.T. Express swept the nation with "Express," James Brown (through the JB's) released "(It's Not The Express) It's The JB's Monaurail." And I forget which track it was ("Get Up Off Of Me"??), but there was at least one selection on the Sex Machine Today album which had JB rambling on about how certain artists had been trying to get over with his style.



    b/w

    I Stand Corrected

  • pickwick33pickwick33 8,946 Posts
    JB also ripped off the Isley Brothers'"Shout" with this early-sixties hit. Hope he wasn't claiming that THIS was his groove as well:

  • the "hell" version of "sayin' it and doin' it" is a partial bite of the bohannon tune "stop and go".

  • CosmoCosmo 9,768 Posts
    Yeah yeah, that being said, James > everyone else (including Bowie & The Brothers Isley.)

  • I heard that the guitarist wrote the lick and brought it to JB and Bowie around the same time and they both used it, just released it at different times (but not that far apart).

  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts


    Carlos Alomar created this RIFF outside if JB's Infuence?

    "the fact that Carlos Alomar was a JB in the late 60s isn???t really an issue here"

  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
    batmon said:


    Carlos Alomar created this RIFF outside if JB's Infuence?

    "the fact that Carlos Alomar was a JB in the late 60s isn???t really an issue here"

    As it stands, Fame is no more or less JB-ish than any other funk groove, whereas you can point out precisely what James lifted from Fame for Hot.

    The above applies to that clip as well. This is from 1975 too. Sounds a bit like James, a bit like Fame.



    I mean, at what point do we concede that Bootsy and Catfish Collins, Fred Wesley, Maceo Parker, Pee Wee Ellis or indeed Carlos Alomar have done enough as musicians in their own right to transcend the fact that they were once in James Brown's band? Or do they remain perennial ex-JBs whose entire body of work owes a direct debt to their former employer, rather than being the sum of all their musical influences as well as their own talent and creativity?

    "Stylistically, this song shares common elements with any number of others" (see above)

    vs.

    "That part of [song A] is all but identical to this part of [song B]"

    What exactly are we talking about here? That just because Alomar played in the JBs six or seven years prior to meeting Bowie, he wasn't a talented enough musician to come up with a lick his former employee might want to lift? Or that the latter notion is inconceivable in any case?

  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    In my private mind garden scenario - JB could have attacked a gang of cats for lifting his shit.

    But it smells to me that dude went at Bowie/Alomar knowing the specific guitar riif comes out of his camp/technique/band language.

    If shit didnt hit that close to home or didnt become a major hit JB would have let shit slide.(PMG).

    Private Mind Garden - Bowie " oh yeah give me that JB stuff you know....that why I hired your ass"
    Alomar - "Check out this JB riff i know"......Bowie - "Oh dip lets work around that!"

  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
    batmon said:
    In my private mind garden scenario - JB could have attacked a gang of cats for lifting his shit.


    Agreed.

    But it smells to me that dude went at Bowie/Alomar knowing the specific guitar riif comes out of his camp/technique/band language.

    I don't know that it's anything that specific, though. Sure, the vibe of Fame can be said to loosely owe something to then-current James like The Payback, My Thang or Papa Don't Take No Mess, but, like I said upthread, that would have been true of any number of funk grooves of the time. Undeniably, it would have been tough to play funk in the mid-70s and not exhibit at least some James influence, but even if you concede that Fame is, broadly speaking, in a contemporary JB style, Hot nonetheless consists almost entirely of a direct lift from Fame - not just the riff, but the rhythm arrangement, the fills, the syncopation, everything.

    If shit didnt hit that close to home or didnt become a major hit JB would have let shit slide.(PMG).

    "You steal my vibe, I'll steal your song".

    Private Mind Garden - Bowie " oh yeah give me that JB stuff you know....that why I hired your ass"
    Alomar - "Check out this JB riff i know"......Bowie - "Oh dip lets work around that!"

    Which begs the following questions; if it was that hot a riff (no pun intended), how come James waited at least seven years to cut a song on it? And if its provenance does indeed date from Alomar's time as a JB, isn't it at least possible, if not likely, that Alomar wrote it anyway? I'm sure he wouldn't be the first musician to get gypped out of a credit by James. At the risk of repeating myself, we're not seriously trying to suggest, are we, that any and every ex-JB who ever wrote a piece of music that stylistically resembled a James Brown song is ripping off James rather than simply exhibiting a JB influence?

    Here's something else Alomar wrote with Bowie. JB-influenced? JB rip-off? Neither?


  • pickwick33pickwick33 8,946 Posts
    if it was that hot a riff (no pun intended), how come James waited at least seven years to cut a song on it?

    Because, in 1969-73, JB probably had about a thousand other hot ideas that had to wait their turn.

    That was a golden era for JB. As prolific as he was, and as many albums as he recorded and released (and reused) in a year, I'm quite sure he thought of these things a lot quicker than he could record them.

  • staxwaxstaxwax 1,474 Posts
    It probably had more to do with JB's ego than anything else. You didnt register on the radar unless you were a big star (and an english white boy at that) - or had a big hit with something that sounded like it could have been James -
    then the JB ego could get tickled into a response.

  • DocMcCoyDocMcCoy "Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
    pickwick33 said:
    if it was that hot a riff (no pun intended), how come James waited at least seven years to cut a song on it?

    Because, in 1969-73, JB probably had about a thousand other hot ideas that had to wait their turn.

    That was a golden era for JB. As prolific as he was, and as many albums as he recorded and released (and reused) in a year, I'm quite sure he thought of these things a lot quicker than he could record them.

    Oh, no doubt. IIRC, he was putting out something like a new single every month at one point during that period. It's certainly conceivable that he might have held it back on some "heads ain't ready" shit. Or at least, it would be, if an album like Hell wasn't padded out with covers of These Foolish Things and When The Saints Go Marchin' In, or reworks of his 60s hits. For seven years, he sat on something hot enough for someone else to supposedly jack it and get a smash with it, in favour of stuff like that? No room for it on Everybody's Doin' the Hustle & Dead on the Double Bump?

    *shrugs* Fair enough.

  • batmonbatmon 27,574 Posts
    Alomar " Fuck JB, he fined me 500 dollars for missing the ONE!"

    Bowie "How do i crack the American charts?"

    Agent " Do something Funky?"

    Bowie " Lets book Sigma Sounds in Philly and get some Funky session players"

    Agent " We got Luther Vandross on board"

    Bowie " Great, shouldnt we do an all out Funky album?"

    Agent " No that would be too Black to your new American fans, just let them know u can get funky"

    Bowie " Cool, im busy right now writing Changes"

  • DrWuDrWu 4,021 Posts
    Next Batmon discusses the conspiracy behind the formation of the Dap-Kings:

    Gabe: hey neil, I know how we can make a ton of money

    Neil: whay you wanna put together that 70s cover band finally?

    Gabe: no. We should find a black lady soul singer who grew up near James Brown. We'll do the whole review bit minus the cape. White people will love it.

    Neil:I am in.

    The truth is james covers this all clearly in his autobiogepahy as Dan said.

  • pickwick33pickwick33 8,946 Posts
    DocMcCoy said:
    pickwick33 said:
    if it was that hot a riff (no pun intended), how come James waited at least seven years to cut a song on it?

    Because, in 1969-73, JB probably had about a thousand other hot ideas that had to wait their turn.

    That was a golden era for JB. As prolific as he was, and as many albums as he recorded and released (and reused) in a year, I'm quite sure he thought of these things a lot quicker than he could record them.

    Oh, no doubt. IIRC, he was putting out something like a new single every month at one point during that period. It's certainly conceivable that he might have held it back on some "heads ain't ready" shit. Or at least, it would be, if an album like Hell wasn't padded out with covers of These Foolish Things and When The Saints Go Marchin' In, or reworks of his 60s hits. For seven years, he sat on something hot enough for someone else to supposedly jack it and get a smash with it, in favour of stuff like that? No room for it on Everybody's Doin' the Hustle & Dead on the Double Bump?

    *shrugs* Fair enough.

    I never said he was RIGHT, I just said that's the way it WAS.

    Just the other week I was listening to the JB album with the salsa version of "Please Please Please" and laughing - out loud - at what a half-assed idea that was.
Sign In or Register to comment.