Throwback Thursday: Lost Bootsy Collins x The JB's Record 'These Are The JBs'
That's right--James Brown's backing band The JB's with legendary bassist Bootsy Collinsactually recorded an unheard album together in the magical year 1970, according to Now-Again Rec0rds (passion project of the notorious d.i.g. Egon) who will be releasing 3000 vinyl copies of These Are the JB's on November 28 AKA Black Friday. According to legend (and James Brown historian Alan Leeds, who we spoke to recently about Bootsy's role in the evolution of the JB sound--more on that soon!) Brown called Bootsy Collins into the studio to record the tracks for a test-press LP that was never released. 44 years later, Now-Again, Universal Music Group, and Elysian Masters have teamed up to master the original record exclusively for vinyl and can be pre-ordered over at Rappcats today.
A little more backstory on the boogie: young Bootsy Collins formed his first band The Pacesetters with his elder brothers in 1968, and in 1970 the Pacesetters were hired as Brown's backing band "The JB's." Bootsy played bass with the original JB's for some 11 months, playing on some of Brown's most legendary records, before leaving Brown for Detroit. Now-Again calls the record the "epitome of funk" and suggests Collins' time with Brown foreshadowed the P-Funk sound of the future (we're hoping this fertile period will be thoroughly addressed in the upcoming James Brown doc Mr. Dynamite, coming from Alex Gibney and HBO next month).
The commercial issue is limited to 3000 copies, and features a booklet with notes by Leeds and photographs of mythilogical significance to students of funk. Get a taste via the snippets below and then--hopefully the site hasn't crashed yet from way too many hits--reserve your copy. Happy Throwback Thursday.