Point Seen, Money Gone

James Brown has a new record coming out, a 35 year-old jazz recording Soul On Top.  Best believe that I will be copping it.  Anyway, in the article, James says something that I plan to give some major consideration to in the coming weeks:"

When people talk about soul music, they only talk about gospel and R&B coming together. That's accurate about a lot of soul, but if you are going to talk about mine, you have to remember the jazz in it. That's what made my music so different and allowed it to change and grow."

  He's right.  There's a tendency treat jazz and R&B/soul as separate entities, like they had no influence on each other, but that's oh-so not the case.  Especially considering the background of James' musicians.  Not just James, though, the influence of jazz was everywhere in Soul music.  Like I said, I'll be getting into that in more detail a little later on, though.  Once, a reader asked me what happened to the Funk, or something like that.  When I scratch this up, hopefully I'll be able to answer that fully and see whether Funk as we know it is on its death bed.