MLK'S MURDER EVE: HOW JAMES BROWN SAVED THE NIGHT IN BEANTOWN

A ORIGINAL PIECE BY JONATHAN STORM

ROCK DOCS: THE NIGHT JAMES BROWN SAVED BOSTON

By Jonathan Storm

Philadelphia Inquirer Television Critic
All the longhairs watching and listening to Boston public broadcasting, WGBH, 40 years ago tonight got quite a surprise:

"We invite you to stay tuned now for a live memorial concert from the Boston Garden," intoned the announcer with those mellifluous modulations that were de rigueur on stations like WGBH, "featuring Negro singer Jimmy Brown and his group."

Quite a departure from the Godfather of Soul's usual introduction: "the hardest-working man in show business . . . Mr. Dynamite . . . the amazing Mr. Please, Please."

And his show April 5, 1968, was a departure, too. There's not enough of it there on The Night James Brown Saved Boston, a rock doc telecast tonight at 9 on VH1, because you can never get enough James Brown.

But the film encapsulates a key moment in U.S. history and the history of Boston, in which a wet-behind-the-ears mayor, assisted by his city's only black councilman, who was still a student, made a bold decision that preserved relative peace in one city while many others across the nation were ablaze the day after the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination.

"I never met anything like James Brown," says former Mayor Kevin White. "Man, he was a piece of work."

Rather than cancel a planned concert by Soul Brother No. 1 that would bring thousands of African Americans from what was then called the ghetto into downtown, White decided to televise it.

The people came downtown anyway, but many more stayed home to watch TV, and the city remained quiet.

Brown's show itself proved more electrifying than most events on the street, as fans, with emotions inflamed by James and his Famous Flames, rushed the stage, and white policemen roughly threw them off.

John Jab'o Starks, Brown's drummer, envisioned real fire. "I thought we were going to have to leave in a ball of flame," he says.

But instead, Brown waved the cops off. "I think I can get some respect from my own people," he told the crowd. And he did, finishing the show with his usual hand-slapping with the audience, him on the stage, them in the orchestra.

If you weren't there, it's almost impossible to imagine how raw things were around the country that April. Night sums it up nicely, as African Americans such as Cornel West and the Rev. Al Sharpton, who was a good friend of Brown's, provide some context.

There's footage of Brown from other shows, but it just wets your whistle for a long performance video from the man whom mothers of both races tsk-tsked as a Screaming Mimi.

We always knew he was more than that, and on April 5, 1968, his screams and shouts and crazy feet were a bridge over troubled waters.

On a person thoughtful note:

I could not think of it as a real and true story when i first heard its announcement on NPR the other day. That PBS/WGBH were going to feature the concert and documentary of the night James Brown, Soul Brother #1 played in Boston right after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. I was thinking to myself, wow really? Did that actually happen here amidst racial tensions and the good ole political nastiness fuming the place as it already was. Then it hit me. Yeah! That would be exactly why, someone like James Brown would sacrifice his safety, his name, his popularity, his time to be here. I know that around those days, the tension between the city high ranking officials in general and the black community was still iffy to say the least.

For an entertainer and great performer like him, a big shot in his milieu and for his milieu,someone with the passion and historical perspective as James Brown had to put it together; he had to save Boston from the mess that it could have been. No one wanted to even imagine it for a second, the plannings of riots and overthrows of things and individuals were being put in place and organized by individuals and social justice groups alike. That night people were not about to follow in the peace movement rhetoric of MLK, jr. They were rather ready to take action and say enough is enough. Now that our King is dead, murdered and taken away from us and our generation overall, and viewed also that we have literally nothing to live for or be peaceful about, we going to show ém white oppressors we don't care and we can die too here right now if needs be. These were mainly most of the unconsolable voices at the time, the reality had not completely and finally synched yet was still a real shock, a real and true abomination and a devastation that was bound for sure to wage uncivil and terrorizing discourse; not to mention unleashed a serious rage and some huge and lasting acts of dissatisfaction.
Yes indeed, putting it all in that frame of mind, for myself, and from the general angry consensus then, it must have been "Heaven sent in the footsteps of the darling warrior MLK Jr through Soul Brother #1 James Brown. Indeed that night he saved Boston from a significantly devastating and uncontrollable TURMOIL to say the least.

Koré Van Baldwin