The other day I was chatting with a friend of mine who’s a vinyl collector and die-hard James Brown fanatic. He mentioned to me a bootleg DVD he had of a long lost talk show called Future Shock that The Godfather of Soul himself, James Brown, hosted in Atlanta in the late 70s.
The show tapes are mostly gone and it has never been released on DVD. But sure enough, my boy was able to dig up some footage from Youtube, and well, it’s amazing in every way.
In 1976, Brown’s production company Third World Enterprises teamed up with Turner Broadcasting to try out their own version of the hugely-successful Soul Train. Future Shock aired Friday nights on the Turner-owned WTBS and featured music and dancing hosted by the funk legend himself.
What resulted is almost surreal. By the late 70s Brown was battling drug addiction and appeared on stage nearly incoherent and drenched in brow sweat. The show was a regional hit but according to Brown’s biographers, they couldn’t find any national sponsors for the show and it was cancelled after three years. A couple years later, Eddie Murphy of course did his own similar skit on SNL called James Brown’s Celebrity Hot Tub Party.
Here’s his hilariously cringe-worthy interview with a Tuskegee Institute professor. They talk about George Washington Carver. I love when he tells her she has her own mic. This is smack dab in the middle of a music show, by the way.
If you don’t enjoy this next video, please just leave America. It features some amazing special effects. Plus JB’s curl is glorious and he’s wearing it with a huge mustache and no shirt. Also he still has his classic dance moves. The man is a legend. The crowd is ahead of its time, too. Check out some of the popping and locking and proto-break dancing moves late in the clip.
The late 70s must have been a helluva time.
These t-shirts should be highly collectible now.
Here’s JB wearing an ascot and vest with no shirt and rambling about his love for Don Cornelius. The man knew what was fresh.
