JB40 (40th Anniversary Collection)

iTunes Review

Doubling the count of 20 All Time Greatest Hits and broadening its view of James Brown as a recording artist by much more than twice that, the 40th-anniversary collection JB40 brings together chart-toppers and epochal recordings (often one and the same) in a roll call that few pop artists have ever matched. Scrambling chronology like the earlier set, JB40 is simply James Brown as we’ve come to know him — deep-soul balladeer; convulsed, strutting shouter; the Man Who Invented Funk by making the music simpler and more complex at once. His worldview, that of a street fella touched with more than a bit of Southern poetry, is summed up for all to hear in everything from the political pride of “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud” and pragmatism of “Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Nothing” to the these-are-the-good-times uber-party jams of “There It Is” and “Get on the Good Foot.” Little or nothing in American music is as great as this.