James Brown brilliantly combined music, image and physical performance to create one of the most mesmerizing and electric stage shows in history. Take his first-ever hit, "Please, Please, Please," as an example. The lyrics are hilariously sketchy when printed on paper, but agonizingly expressive when Brown performs them. Not a song so much as a platform for Brown's exhibition of pleading and despair, it was so unorthodox that Syd Nathan, the head of King and Federal Records, exploded in a ...
