1965- "Santa's Got A Brand New Bag"

.....Five years ago this Christmas, the world lost James Brown. I couldn't let the first year of this blog go by without giving some mention to the man who released three Christmas albums (plus singles) in a five year period. "Hardest Working Man In Show Business" wasn't just some kind of press release hype. In the next post I'll begin covering the wealth of original holiday music he left us, but before I can do that I need to set up a little chronology to introduce it. Because the first James Brown Christmas single wasn't by James Brown.

.....At this time sixty years ago Brown was completing a prison sentence. He left determined to change his life and began performing with Bobby Byrd's Gospel Starlighters. Brown's personal charisma and powerful confessional style soon drew the lion's share of attention and Byrd's outfit increasingly gravitated towards secular gigs, renaming themselves The Famous Flames. They began recording as the Flames at about the same time as a gulf area band of young white musicians calling themselves the Boogie Kings made a notch for themselves in history by deciding to devote themselves to playing music recorded by black artists. Being a cover band normally isn't remarkable, but in 1955 that was thought to be a first. In 1958 they racked up another first by appearing on the first release by Louisiana based Jin Records, a single on which they backed Doug Ardoin.

.....A decade later, James Brown releases "PAPA'S GOT A BRAND NEW BAG" (backed with Part 2) on King Records 5999 (US) 07/65. Brown had long been a star on the R&B charts, but had only once previously entered the Top 20 on Billboard's Pop charts (with "PRISONER OF LOVE" in 1963 at #18). The success of "PAPA'S... " was palpable; it reached #8 on Billboard's Hot 100. In England, it's reported that the Who had completed recording their first album, including covers of Brown's "PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE", "I DON'T MIND" and "SHOUT AND SHIMMY". Daltrey had been a Brown fan for a while and his songs had been a part of the Who's live set since the beginning. In fact, the total number of covers concerned their management, who delayed the release of the album until December (April 1966 in the U.S.) while they recorded more originals to replace some of the covers. In October, "SHOUT AND SHIMMY" became a B-side and the other two made it to the final cut of the album. Meanwhile, back in the states both sides of Brown's "PAPA'S... " single opened a new album of the same name in September 1965 on King 938 (US) 09/65. He also used an instrumental version as the B-side of the instrumental version of "TRY ME" (an earlier hit) on Smash 2008 (US) 12/65. None of this was lost gulf area soul singer Gary Walker. That fall he went to Jin Records with a holiday song based on Brown's recent hit.

• -N/A- "LOSING MY MIND OVER YOU" (-N/A-)
• 03:08 b/w "SANTA'S GOT A BRAND NEW BAG" (James Brown)
• performed by Gary Walker
• original source: 7" Jin Records 45-195 (US) 1965
• and my source: VACD THE BEST OF COOL YULE Rhino Records R2 75767 (US?) 1988

.....'Answer' records were very common in the 1950's and still kicking around in the 1960's. In fact, one of the earlier posts on this blog was for "X-MAS TWIST". However, those songs are usually original songs with new lyrics and music about the same subject matter as an existing hit. What Walker did was set new lyrics to Brown's song and went one step further by doing a straight faced imitation of Brown while singing it. There was no attempt to sell the record as a James Brown recording-- Walker's name clearly appears in larger, bolder type as the performer than Brown's name does, parenthetically as the composer. But complicating matters is the fact that there was no separate credit for the new lyrics, however minimally they were changed. Also, listening to the song today on a properly mastered and balanced compact disc with headphones, it may be difficult to imagine anyone being fooled into believing that this was James Brown. But in 1965, listening to a vinyl copy played on AM radio over your car's speakers? Welll... we're not all audiophiles. As I mentioned above, Walker copped Brown's style of delivery if not his exact voice. It starts with a 'single-finger-on-piano' quote from "JINGLE BELLS" and a chorus singing the title before launching into the familiar horn blast. Then Walker delivers a credible take on "PAPA'S GOT A BRAND NEW BAG" with a few strategic lyric changes. He didn't go for a broad, farcical imitation (probably for reasons of good taste; at that time the often mercenary Brown was instead passing up paying engagements to do benefit concerts for civil rights interests and the SCLC). To this day it turns up on Christmas compilations routinely. It sounds like something Brown might have recorded, except that despite his gospel origins he had never marketed any explicitly holiday-oriented material. Yet.

.....James Brown began recording his own Christmas songs the following year and continued through 1970, after which that material continued to be occasionally pressed and sold every year to date. He did one more album in 1999, but never recorded (or at least never released) a version of "SANTA'S GOT A BRAND NEW BAG", contrary to the popularly held misconception. Despite this, when Rhino records got the go ahead to license his old King recordings from PolyGram Special Products, they called their compilation "SANTA'S GOT A BRAND NEW BAG", hopelessly confusing people still looking for that song. I hope to clear up a bit of that confusion with a James Brown Christmas discography over the next few days. While preparing this post I began getting error messages when I tried to save it. Unlike past experiences in which several paragraphs of original writing disappeared into the ether, I didn't lose anything except the time it took to copy the upper half of this post by hand, fearing it would also be lost. Cross your fingers and we'll all see it by the weekend if not sooner.

.....Oh, and one last note about Gary Walker. You may find it difficult to find much more by searching online. Too many websites take a research-by-robot approach instead of employing musicologists. They don't seem to realize or care that this is not the same Gary Walker as Gary Leeds, the Seattle area musician who joined some fellow expatriate Americans who were working in England under the name The Walker Brothers. About a year before the gulf area Gary released his Christmas single, the northwest Gary joined The Walker Brothers and changed his name to Gary Walker. When they hit big they eventually all released solo material under their Walker pseudonyms. From what I've been able to disambiguate, Gulf Gary had already released three singles for MGM Records in the late 1950's. In 1966 he released one more single for Jin. I haven't been able to track down all of Jin's various artists albums, but I was able to confirm that he joined the Boogie Kings in 1967, explaining the lack of visible material under his own name from that point on. There were two more Jin singles circa 1980, but I don't know how old the recordings were. According to the Boogie Kings' website, he has since passed away but they don't offer any details. If anyone living in that area (especially anyone involved in organizing musicians and other artists in the wake of Katrina) has verifiable knowledge, it would be greatly appreciated in the comments section. Thank you.