With 'Live At The Apollo,' James Brown Invented The Live Album

|
Left: The 'Godfather of Soul' James Brown relaxes backstage with his shirt off wearing slippers and a cross at the Apollo Theatre in 1964 in New York, New York. (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images). Right: The cover of the 1963 release 'Live At T

Before James Brown's Live At The Apollo (1963), record labels weren't sold on the idea of live albums. And after? Well, consider everything from Johnny Cash's At Folsom Prison to The Who's Live At Leeds to Peter Frampton's Frampton Comes Alive! a descendant Brown's brief crowd-pleaser. It had everything going against it -- the format, the song selection, the crowd noise -- and just one thing in its favor: James Brown's relentless belief in himself. Playing show after show to hysterical, screaming audiences, Brown knew there was value there for listeners that label honchos couldn't understand and producers in a sterile studio couldn't duplicate. 

For decades afterward, any act that prided itself on its live shows dreamed of proving it on wax with their own equivalent of Live At The Apollo. And remarkably, nobody quite did it. Fifty-five years after its release, James Brown's Live At The Apollo remains the critics' consensus pick for best live album of all time.