Mike Parker: Chitlin’ Circuit: Papa got his brand-new bag – in Kinston
This story begins with James Brown, a South Carolina-native whose group performed under the name James Brown and the Famous Flames. His group started in 1955, a year after the landmark desegregation case “Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas” that overturned laws creating segregated schools.
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, music produced and performed by African American artists bore the label “race” music and included high-energy, rhythmic dancing. This musical style reached a crescendo in 1962 when James Brown recorded the album “Pure Dynamite” live at the famous Royal Theater in Baltimore, Maryland.
In 1964, Brown affiliated with Kinston native Nat Jones. “Papa’s got a brand-new bag!” Jones exclaimed when he joined James Brown in 1964, according to Earl Ijames of the North Carolina Museum of History.
Funk was born.
At 5 p.m. on Thursday, May 11, the Chitlin’ Circuit program will host the “Future of Funk.” The program will begin with an observance at the K-TOWN Birth of Funk History Marker, which recognizes Kinston as the birthplace of Funk. Then the program will move to 129 N. Queen St. in Kinston.
“Future of Funk” is a tribute both to Nathaniel “Nat” Jones and to Kinston as the birthplace of Funk. Featured performers include the sweet sounds of Falakie, future Funk legend Leonard Palmer, and 2018 North Carolina Heritage Award Winner Robert “Dick” Knight, better known as The Captain. Clement “Fig” Jones will also appear as a special guest.
D. Choci Gray of the 1901 Building Group produces The Chitlin Circuit Improved. Authentic Southern Cuisine by the Jim Gray Family, Caterers of Craven, Lenoir, and Wayne Counties, will provide food for the event.
According to Ijames, the Museum of History is developing an exhibit focusing on Funk music. Scheduled to open in early June, the exhibition is titled “Hey, America,” a title based on a Christmas song written by Nat Jones. The case exhibit will display artifacts belonging to James Brown, the Godfather of Soul; the saxophone of Nat Jones, the songwriter and musical genius behind Brown’s transformation; and drums belonging to Melvin Parker, one of Jones’s Kinston protégés.
The exhibit also will highlight the African American Music Trails of Eastern North Carolina initiative.
The group James Brown and the Flames was stylistically similar to Little Richard until the pivotal civil rights year of 1963 when the famous March on Washington occurred in August. President John F. Kennedy’s assassination took place in November of that year. These events prompted Brown to bolt from his contract and seek a more profound way to impact the Civil Rights movement.
In 1964 he hired Nat Jones as band director and renamed his act The James Brown Orchestra. Jones, a 1960 cum laude graduate from North Carolina College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University), would eventually merge his classically trained jazz influence with Brown’s showmanship, mixing jazz and rhythm, with all the musicians rhythmically on higher pitched chords. The product was a new sound called “Funk.”
The 1964 album “Grits and Soul” embodied the spirit of that year’s Civil Rights Act and gave African Americans and whites the impetus to integrate willfully - for instance, to get “funky” and put on “high-heeled sneakers,” as musicians Maceo and Melvin Parker pointed out during a November 2014 interview.
The album featured Jones’s songwriting prowess and the skills of other college-educated musicians from Kinston, such as Dick Knight, Levi Raspberry, and Melvin and Maceo Parker - but the album included no lyrics from James Brown to avoid a contract violation.
Dick Knight described the genius of the late Nat Jones: “He took the root of the chord – the third, fifth, and the seventh – and made a new chord that James Brown had not been doing. Nat called it a B-flat seventh chord that James had never heard.” As a result, this fresh sound, an original genre of music called Funk, came into being. Nat Jones and James Brown came together to “make it funky.” The rest of the story is musical history.
Mike Parker is a columnist for the Neuse News. You can reach him at mparker16@gmail.com.
Neuse News is a locally-owned small business startup in downtown Kinston. Our goal is to provide free, hyper-local news to Lenoir, Greene and Jones counties. The kind of news our grandparents read in a format fit for today's times.
We provide this by having supportive advertisers and we encourage you to click on their ads, shop with them, and eat with them. Every bit of financial support is important to help us sustain free, hyper-local news.
Please consider supporting Neuse News with as little as $5 one-time or via a monthly option. Every little bit helps us, help you.
