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James Brown was such a rigid taskmaster that he was legendary for being able to squeeze killer performances even from pickup bands he’d never worked with before. But with all respect to the Famous Flames, his backing group for the first 15 years, nothing could touch the razor precision with which the J.B.’s supported the Hardest Working Man In Show Business. Part of that was surely due to Brown’s notorious habit of fining his musicians for the slightest mistake on or off the stage. But with Jabo Starks on drums (augmented at times by the funky drummer himself, Clyde Stubblefield), Maceo Parker on saxophone and, for a time, future P-Funkateer Bootsy Collins on bass, the J.B.’s were the tightest (and possibly most terrified) band in the world, carrying out the orders of a ruthless disciplinarian and being rewarded by acting as the machine with which he invented a brand-new genre: funk.
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