Kansas City

James Brown took Leiber and Stoller's rhythm and blues standard and injected it with maximum funk. Backed by the tight James Brown Orchestra, the traditional 12-bar blues structure remains intact, but the rhythm is radically altered. Brown's band emphasizes the "one" beat, replacing the traditional swinging blues shuffle with a hard, syncopated funk groove. It shows how the foundational blues chord progression was sturdy enough to survive the transition into heavy 1960s soul and funk.