James Brown’s Expanded Funk Collection ‘Motherlode’ To Make Vinyl Debut

The 2LP set from Polydor/UMe, first released in 1988, adds three tracks for the first time and other JB collectables.

Published on

January 23, 2019

The complete and expanded Motherlode, the rarities collection by Godfather of Soul James Brown, will make its debut on vinyl on 8 March. The 2LP set from Polydor/UMe adds three tracks for the first time, ‘I Got Ants In My Pants (And I Want To Dance) (Remix),’ ‘You’ve Changed’ and the 12-minute alternate mix of ‘Bodyheat.’

Motherlode was first released in 1988, then featuring 11 rare and previously unreleased tracks on CD and ten on a single vinyl LP. The collection offered some of the most incendiary recordings in Brown’s catalogue and in the history of funk itself, including the live cuts ‘Say It Loud (Say It Live),’ an outtake from the Sex Machine album that was recorded in Brown’s home town of Augusta, Georgia, and, opening the LP, the rare 1972 performance ‘There It Is.’

Also featured is ‘Since You Been Gone,’ Brown’s duet with longtime partner Bobby Byrd and an update of their early ‘Just Won’t Do Right’ track from 1956. This version featured the young J.B.s, featuring Bootsy Collins. Two deep-funk instrumentals were also featured, ‘Funk Bomb’ and another that came from so deep in the Godfather’s vaults that it never received a title.

Bodyheat (Alternate Mix)

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The initial release of Motherlode came during a huge upswing of interest in Brown’s seminal role in music history itself. He was inducted as a charter member of the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in 1986, when he was riding high again with his biggest hit in a decade, the anthemic ‘Living In America.’ Simultaneously, his back catalogue was being rediscovered, sampled and plundered by the new generation of DJs, rappers and the nascent hip-hop community. Polydor observed the rebirth by releasing the collection In The Jungle Groove that year.

Three rarities on the original CD release of Motherlode were new in their own way. ‘She’s the One,’ a cover of a Hank Ballard & the Midnighters single, had just been out as a UK single, entering the pop top 50 there; a newly extended ‘People Get Up and Drive Your Funky Soul’ first appeared in shorter form on the soundtrack to Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off; and ‘I Got Ants In My Pants,’ a two-part single in 1972, was remixed and issued in full for the first time on the Motherlode CD, but didn’t appear on the original vinyl release.

The expanded 13-track edition of the collection debuted on CD in 2003, adding ‘You’ve Changed,’ recorded in Atlanta with the James Brown Orchestra in April 1969 and ‘Bodyheat (Alternate Mix)’ with the latter-day J.B.s in 1976.

The liner notes for Motherlode are by the late journalist Cliff White, recognised as a worldwide authority on the Godfather of Soul, and have been updated for the new 2LP set.

Motherlode will be released as a 2LP set on 8 March. Scroll down for the full tracklisting, and pre-order it here.