Got plans tonight? Cancel them. There’s no better way to honor the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. than watching the footage of James Brown’s April 5, 1968, concert at the Boston Garden. It’s screening tonight at the Alamo Drafthouse at the Ritz for a measly $2.
The concert was scheduled to take place less than 24 hours after the assassination of King in Memphis. There were uprisings in Detroit, D.C., and Chicago, but Boston was a powder keg. Mayor Kevin White wanted to cancel the show but aides convinced him nothing would keep more people in their homes and off the streets than allowing Brown to perform and televising it on local station WGBH. Brown was convinced – ever the capitalist – after he was compensated $60,000 to cover potential losses from breaking an exclusive TV deal from a televised New York concert. Yes, Brown was still trying to get paid but nobody else commanded the respect to pull it off. As Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts wrote after Brown’s death on Christmas morning 2006, “How many riots did the Supremes ever head off? If Miami was on the verge of racial warfare, would anyone call Beyonce?”
This is more than a concert video – it’s a time capsule. The incredibly tense climate is best captured in a few excruciatingly long minutes towards the close of the concert. A few kids rush the stage wanting to dance and shake hands with Brown. White police officers move in, ready to stave off the riot they’re sure is coming. Acutely aware of the volatility of the situation, Brown assures the officers he can handle the crowd himself. It takes a few minutes, and things nearly become derailed, but he follows through on his promise.
Brown released his black and beautiful anthem, “Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud),” four months after the assassination, with white and Asian kids singing on the chorus. No pop star today can come close to matching Brown’s stature in the late 1960s. Kanye West certainly articulated what a lot of blacks were thinking when he called out the Bush administration on network TV after the shameful response to Hurricane Katrina. But people weren’t asking, as Look magazine did of Brown on the cover of its Feb. 18, 1969 issue, “Is he the most important black man in America?”
The Boston concert is Brown at his best. There’s the unrivaled dance steps, the wrenching cries of “Please, please, please,” the showmanship and theatrics of the cape ceremony. But unlike most concert films, it serves as a window into an incredibly turbulent time in American history when the nation’s most promising leaders were being gunned down and pop stars did so much more than sing.
This article appears in January 18 • 2008.
