Live at the Apollo is an incredible album. I’d never listened to it before, but now I would rank it in the top 5 or 10 live albums ever. The energy is over the top and infectious. The Hardest Working Man In Show Business sounds amazing. Powerful and assertive in his singing. It’s easy to understand why James Brown captivated so many music fans. My Rating:
James Brown is a legend and influenced countless musicians. One such band influenced by this particular album was The MC5 out of Detroit:
“Our whole thing was based on James Brown,” says MC5 guitarist Kramer. “We listened to Live at the Apollo endlessly on acid. We would listen to that in the van in the early days of 8-tracks on the way to the gigs to get us up for the gig. If you played in a band in Detroit in the days before The MC5, everybody did ‘Please, Please, Please’ and ‘I Go Crazy.’ These were standards. We modeled The MC5's performance on those records. Everything we did was on a gut level about sweat and energy. It was anti-refinement. That's what we were consciously going for.”1
Rob Bowman for AllMusic:
An astonishing record of James and the Flames tearing the roof off the sucker at the mecca of R&B theatres, New York's Apollo. When King Records owner Syd Nathan refused to fund the recording, thinking it commercial folly, Brown single-mindedly proceeded anyway, paying for it out of his own pocket. He had been out on the road night after night for a while, and he knew that the magic that was part and parcel of a James Brown show was something no record had ever caught. Hit follows hit without a pause -- "I'll Go Crazy," "Try Me," "Think," "Please Please Please," "I Don't Mind," "Night Train," and more. The affirmative screams and cries of the audience are something you've never experienced unless you've seen the Brown Revue in a Black theater. If you have, I need not say more; if you haven't, suffice to say that this should be one of the very first records you ever own.2
Rolling Stone placed it in the 65th position on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time:
This may be the greatest live album ever recorded: from the breathless buildup of the spoken intro through terse, sweat-soaked early hits such as “Try Me” and “Think” into 11 minutes of the raw ballad “Lost Someone.” It climaxes with a frenzied nine-song medley, and ends with “Night Train.” Live at the Apollo is pure, uncut soul — and it almost didn’t happen. James Brown defied King Records boss Syd Nathan’s opposition to a live album by arranging to record a show himself — on October 24th, 1962, the last date of a run at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. His intuition proved correct; Live at the Apollo, the first of four albums Brown recorded there, charted for 66 weeks.3
In 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, Will Fulford-Jones wrote:
There is no fat here. Brown and musical director Lewis Hamlin had drilled their band to an immaculate, fiery precision; there is barely room for the eight-strong horn section to catch its collective breath.
Live At The Apollo was a phenomenon, reaching No. 2 on the Billboard charts.4
Enjoy and listen without prejudice. Cheers!
For the playlist, let’s just enjoy this remarkable recording in its entirety.
Charts
• Peak on Billboard 200 album chart: #65 • Singles on Billboard Hot 100 chart: n/a • RIAA certification: n/a
Recorded on October 24, 1962. Here’s what else was happening:
Pop Culture
• Number one song: “Monster Mash” by Bobby "Boris" Pickett And The Crypt-Kickers6 • Number one album: Mono - Peter, Paul and Mary by Peter, Paul and Mary; Sterio - West Side Story soundtrack7 • Number one movie: The Longest Day by Ken Annakin8 • Most watched TV programs: The Beverly Hillbillies, Candid Camera, The Red Skelton Show, Bonanza, The Lucy Show, The Andy Griffith Show, The Danny Thomas Show, Ben Casey, The Dick Van Dycke Show, Gunsmoke9 • NYT bestseller, fiction: Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter10 • NYT bestseller, non-fiction: Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck11
Sport
• Oct 4 Willie Mays scores in the 2nd inning for the Giants ending Whitey Ford's record Baseball World Series consecutive scoreless inning streak at 33 2⁄3. • Oct 6 16th NHL All-Star Game, Maple Leaf Garden, Toronto, ON: Toronto Maple Leafs beat All-Stars, 4-1; MVP: Eddie Shack, Toronto, LW. • Oct 7 LPGA Championship Women's Golf, Stardust CC, LV: Judy Kimball wins her only major title by 4 strokes ahead of runner-up Shirley Spork. • Oct 14 Houston Oiler George Blanda throws for 6 TD passes vs NY Titans 56-17. • Oct 16 World Series: NY Yankees win 20th championship; beat SF Giants, 1-0 for 4 games to 3 series victory; MVP: Yankees pitcher Ralph Terry. • Oct 28 Jo Weatherly in a Pontiac finishes 2nd to Rex White in season-ending Dixie 400 at Atlanta Motor Speedway to clinch his 1st of 2 consecutive NASCAR Sprint Cup Championships. • Oct 28 NY Giant Y. A. Tittle passes for 7 touchdowns vs Wash Redskins (49-34).12
Notable Births
• Oct 17 Mike Judge, American cartoonist (Beavis and Butthead; King of the Hill), and director (Office Space; Idiocracy), born in Guayaquil, Ecuador. • Oct 19 Evander Holyfield, American boxer (Olympic bronze 1988) and world champion (1990-92), born in Atmore, Alabama. • Oct 22 Bob Odenkirk, American actor (Breaking Bad; Better Call Saul), comic, and Emmy Award-winning screenwriter (SNL,1987-91; The Ben Stiller Show; Late Night with Conan O'Brien, 1993-94), born in Berwyn, Illinois. • Oct 23 Doug Flutie, American College Football Hall of Fame quarterback (Heisman Trophy 1984, Boston College; Grey Cup MVP 1992, 96, 97; Pro Bowl 1998, Buffalo Bills), born in Manchester, Maryland. • Oct 26 Cary Elwes, English actor (Glory, Princess Bride), born in London, England. • Oct 26 Roger Kingdom, American 110m hurdler (Olympic gold 1984, 88), born in Vienna, Georgia. • Oct 28 Daphne Zuniga, actress (Jo Reynolds-Melrose Place, Spaceballs), born in San Francisco, California. • Oct 28 Scotty Nguyen, professional poker player.13
Historical Events
• Oct 14 US U-2 espionage planes locate missile launchers in Cuba. • Oct 15 Byron R. White appointed to the US Supreme Court. • Oct 16 Cuban Missile Crisis begins as JFK is shown photos confirming the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. • Oct 18 James Watson (US), Francis Crick (UK) and Maurice Wilkins (UK) win the Nobel Prize for Medicine for their work in determining the structure of DNA. • Oct 18 US President John F. Kennedy meets Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko. • Oct 20 Chinese army lands in India. • Oct 22 Cuban Missile Crisis: US President John F. Kennedy addresses TV about Russian missile bases in Cuba and imposes a naval blockade on Cuba. • Oct 23 Adlai Stevenson speaks at the United Nations about the Cuba crisis. • Oct 24 Cuban Missile Crisis: Soviet ships approach but stop short of the US blockade of Cuba. • Oct 25 American author John Steinbeck awarded Nobel Prize for Literature. • Oct 25 US Ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson demands USSR UN rep Valerian Zorin answer regarding Cuban missile bases saying "I am prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over". • Oct 26 Nikita Khrushchev sends note to JFK offering to withdraw his missiles from Cuba if US closes its bases in Turkey. Offer is rejected and JFK warns Russia that the USA will not allow Soviet missiles to remain in Cuba. • Oct 27 Black Saturday during the Cuban Missile Crisis: An American spy plane is shot down over Cuba and the navy drops warning depth charges on Soviet submarines. • Oct 27 Everybody in the world born before October 27, 1962 probably owes their life to Vasili Alexandrovich Arkhipov. He was the Russian naval officer who, on this day, refused to fire a nuclear torpedo at an American aircraft carrier, thus averting the probability of a third world war and thermo-nuclear destruction across the planet. • Oct 28 Cuban Missile Crisis: US President JFK receives letter from Soviet leader Khrushchev suggesting agreement. • Oct 28 Radio Moscow reports nuclear missiles in Cuba deactivated.
• Oct 4 John Lowry, NYC builder (Radio City Music Hall), dies at 79. • Oct 2 Frank Lovejoy, American actor (Man Against Crime, Meet McGraw), dies from a heart attack at 50. • Oct 6 Tod Browning, American film director (Dracula), dies at 82. • Oct 9 Lulu McConnell, American vaudeville, radio, and television comedienne (It Pays To Be Ignorant), dies at 80. • Oct 17 (Henry) "Rubberlegs" Williams, American vaudeville dancer, and blues and jazz singer, dies at 55. • Oct 27 Fatso Marco, American actor and comedian (Milton Berle Show), dies at 56. • Oct 27 Rudolph Anderson, U-2 pilot, shot down over Cuba.15
