MORE THAN A HANDFUL OF SOUL… James Brown Classics Now Available Worldwide for Digital Purchase and Streaming

Universal Music Enterprises (UMe) has fans of the Godfather of Soul covered for digital audio immersion. Seventeen remastered James Brown albums and a digital box set, James Brown Live At The Apollo, Vols. I-IV, featuring the previously unreleased fourth volume, are now available for the first time for digital download purchase from all major digital service providers worldwide. In addition, a playlist of James Brown songs featured in ‘Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown,’ a new documentary about the soul superstar directed by Oscar® winner Alex Gibney, has launched exclusively on Spotify ahead of the film’s October 27 premiere on HBO.

The previously out-of-print James Brown titles, including rare, influential instrumental albums long sought after by fans, have never before been available for download purchase and streaming. These vaulted treasures from Soul Brother No. 1 include the 1962 timepiece Good, Good Twistin' with James Brown (later re-released as Shout and Shimmy); his 1964 releases for Smash Records, Showtime and Grits and Soul, experiments in big-band and soul-jazz sounds that James Brown favored; additional rare Smash albums Handful of Soul and James Brown Plays James Brown Today and Yesterday; and the 1960s King sets Mighty Instrumentals, Plays Nothing But Soul, the tribute album Thinking About Little Willie John and A Few Nice Things and the sample-friendly Sho Is Funky Down Here. James Brown’s latter-day albums from the late 1970s and early 1980s are also now available digitally, including Hot, Everybody’s Doin’ The Hustle and Dead on the Double Bump, Take A Look At Those Cakes, The Original Disco Man, Jam 1980s, People and Nonstop!

Also available is a digital box set, James Brown Live At The Apollo Vols. 1-IV. The newly-compiled digital set features Brown’s three best-selling live albums – Live At The Apollo 1962, Live At The Apollo Vol. II, Revolution Of The Mind: Live At The Apollo Vol. III – as well as a previously unreleased fourth Apollo recording, Get Down With James Brown Live at the Apollo Vol. IV, featuring two performances from Brown plus unreleased tracks by his band The J.B.’s and Revue members Lyn Collins and Bobby Byrd. Vol. IV makes its worldwide debut within the set.

UMe has also released several James Brown albums on vinyl: GET ON UP: The James Brown Story (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), featuring songs heard in the Universal Pictures feature film, including two previously unreleased, scorching live performances, and the best-seller 20 All-Time Greatest Hits!, each making their vinyl debuts as newly mastered 2-LP sets. The Payback, a classic double-LP from 1974 featuring the No. 1 hit title song; In The Jungle Groove, the original 2-LP compilation from 1986 featuring extended versions of the foundations of hip-hop, including “Soul Power,” “Talkin’ Loud And Sayin’ Nothing,” “Funky Drummer” and more; and Motherlode, a 1988 collection of rarities and unreleased sides, have been newly reissued on vinyl.

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