James Brown - Please Please Please

James Brown - Please Please Please

Originally issued in 1959 to capitalize on the crossover success of "Try Me", James Brown's debut LP Please, Please, Please is a collection of 16 of his A- and B-sides recorded for the Federal label between 1956 and 1958. It was also the debut studio album for the Famous Flames, and was released as "James Brown and His Famous Flames". Evenly split between ballads (such as the raw, gospel-inflected title track and "That's When I Lost My Heart") and uptempo shouters ("I Don't Know" and "Baby Cries Over the Ocean"), the songs here all fall into the same sax-driven, gospel-influenced style that you could hear in any Southern chicken shack or nightclub during the late 1950s. Other highlights include the Wynonie Harris-like, jump-blues romp, "Chonnie-On-Chon," and "Let's Make It".