Cold Sweat

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"Cold Sweat"
"Cold Sweat" cover
Cover of the Cold Sweat album
Single by James Brown
from the album Cold Sweat
A-side(s) Cold Sweat - Pt. 1
B-side(s) Cold Sweat - Pt. 2
Released July 1967
Format 45 rpm (stereo)
Recorded May 1967 at King Studios, Cincinnati, OH
Genre Funk/Soul
Length 7:30
Label King Records (K6110)
Writer(s) James Brown-Alfred Ellis
Producer(s) James Brown
Chart positions
For the 1970 film starring Charles Bronson see Cold Sweat (1970 film)

"Cold Sweat" is a song performed by James Brown and written by his bandleader Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis. Brown recorded it in May 1967. An edited version of "Cold Sweat" released as a two-part single on King Records was a #1 R&B hit. A complete version of the song, over 7 minutes long, was included on the album Cold Sweat.

In the song's lyrics Brown protests that he doesn't care about his woman's past or faults, and testifies that with even her slightest display of affection toward him "I break out - In a cold sweat."

Contents

[edit] Creation

In an interview with Down Beat magazine, Ellis described the circumstances of the song's creation:

After one of the shows, one night somewhere, James called me into the dressing room and grunted a bass line of a rhythmic thing (demonstrates), which turned out to be "Cold Sweat." I was very much influenced by Miles Davis and had been listening to "So What" six or seven years earlier and that crept into the making of "Cold Sweat." You could call it subliminal, but the horn line is based on Miles Davis' "So What." I wrote that on the bus between New York and Cincinnati. The next day we pulled up in front of King Records studio, got off the bus, got in the studio, set up, and I went over the rhythm with the band. By the time we got the groove going, James showed up, added a few touches--changed the guitar part, which made it real funky--had the drummer do something different. He was a genius at it. Between the two of us, we put it together one afternoon. He put the lyrics on it. The band set up in a semicircle in the studio with one microphone. It was recorded live in the studio. One take. It was like a performance. We didn't do overdubbing.[1]

[edit] Characteristics

Like "Out of Sight" (1964) and "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" (1965), "Cold Sweat" was a watershed event in the evolution of funk music. As in the earlier songs, all the band's instruments (horns, guitars, etc.) are used percussively in "Cold Sweat," and overwhelming emphasis is put on the first beat of every measure ("on the one"). But while "Out of Sight" and "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" are based on a conventional twelve bar blues chord progression, "Cold Sweat" has only one definite chord change, a move to the subdominant at the bridge. It is the first recording in which Brown calls for a drum solo ("give the drummer some") from Clyde Stubblefield, beginning the tradition of rhythmic "breaks" that would become important in dance music. It also features a saxophone solo by Maceo Parker.

[edit] Impact

"Cold Sweat" was recognized as a radical departure from conventional songwriting at the time of its release; it is sometimes cited as the first true funk song.[2][3] Jerry Wexler recalled that "'Cold Sweat' deeply affected the musicians I knew. It just freaked them out. No one could get a handle on what to do next."[4] Cliff White described it as "divorced from other forms of popular music."[5] Some musicians criticized it as simplistic. Fred Wesley recalled that before he joined Brown's band he "was very unimpressed with ['Cold Sweat']. . . It only had one change, the words made no sense at all, and the bridge was musically incorrect."[6] Critic Dave Marsh, while acknowledging the song as pivotal, argued that "the post-'Cold Sweat' de-emphasis of melody" was partly responsible for a "decline in the number of genuinely memorable songs" in the years since its release.[7] Nevertheless, Brown would continue to use the rhythmically intense, harmonically static template pioneered on "Cold Sweat" as the basis for a large proportion of his later recordings. Other musicians followed his lead, and by the early 1970s funk had emerged as a full-fledged genre.

Like many of Brown's funk hits, "Cold Sweat" has been extensively sampled by hip hop DJs and producers.

[edit] Other versions

"Cold Sweat" has been covered by various bands and musicians, notably Mongo Santamaria. Brown himself recorded a jazz-inflected version of "Cold Sweat" with the Dee Felice Trio for his 1969 album Gettin' Down to It.

[edit] Personnel

  • James Brown - lead vocal

with the James Brown Orchestra:

Produced by James Brown

[edit] References

  1. ^ James Brown's Musicians Reflect On His Legacy. Down Beat. Retrieved February 15, 2007.
  2. ^ Nelson George, The Death of Rhythm & Blues (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), 101.
  3. ^ Rickey Vincent, Funk: The Music, The People, and The Rhythm of The One (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1996), 123.
  4. ^ Vincent, Funk, 123.
  5. ^ Peter Guralnick, Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom (New York: HarperCollins, 1986), 242.
  6. ^ Fred Wesley Jr., Hit Me, Fred: Recollections of a Sideman (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 80.
  7. ^ Dave Marsh, The Heart of Rock & Soul : The 1001 Greatest Singles Ever Made (New York: New American Library, 1989), 451.

[edit] External links