No. 430: Soul One (James Brown)

"Are you ready for Star Time?"

"We gonna do something funky right here … Wait a minute … Stop!"

I am perhaps the whitest person you'll ever know.
And yet I know my music, and I am colorblind to it.
Always loved a tight beat, thanks to my early years as a drummer, and from all of the music time I have logged behind my own studio equipment.

The king of tight was James Brown, Soul Brother No. 1, The Godfather of Soul, The Hardest Working Man in Show Business, Mr. Please, Please, Please.

No. 320, "Soul One" by Tom Wills, graphite, December 2018.

Original JB records in good condition are hard to find, because they were basically party records and have been played to death. There are hundreds of them and they're not all stellar, mostly because King Records of Cincinnati really knew how to exploit its artists. There are plenty of low-fi ("Vivid Sound") live recordings, half-assed compilations and instrumentals that simply are hit songs with the vocals stripped off. JB was an egomaniac too, also releasing all sorts of James Brown Productions annually across other labels (Smash, Polydor).

But the grooves are so deep (actually) that heavily tracking these platters on a good turntable still brings the funk, and sometimes the surface noise adds a little icing. JB's banter is self-centered, politically incorrect, outdated in 2018 --  and funny.

"You can't tell me how to use my mess."

I'm at the point now where I actively have to think out and search for musicians to draw. I've gone through most of the genres: rock, jazz, soul and country. I thought about doing JB for a long time but kept moving him to the end of the list, which now seems misguided. Correcting that took one weekend.

Black.

I drew JB's face first, knowing that nothing else would work if the face and hair were off.  And it was tough: There were problems at first with the mouth, cheeks and chin. Erasing and shading took care of that, the most difficult phase of the piece.

Next came the overcoat, the white shirt and the pants.  I started on the black background to add some contrast, then did the microphone.

The dark background was problematic and exhausting, completely wearing down my last three Wallace Special Dispatch 251 pencils from 1940-50 -- the blackest lead I have ever seen (They were made for newspaper editing).  I then dabbed over the black markings with an eraser and smudged it all to create the illusion of background, fog, audience, spotlights ,,,  wherever your imagination takes you.

Because this picture is so dark, you can really see the deep pencil lines if you look at it in the right light.
The groove is so great.

This illustration is available for $180 locally. Contact willstom01@gmail.com

Grooves. And the death of a pencil.

Video: Writer(s): JAMES BROWN, BOBBY BYRD