ABSTRACT
Brown bore that momentum in his body and carried its thickening weight wherever he went. It kept him company through prison terms, through his several troubled marriages, while he learned to code that momentum as punctuated sound. For all their compulsion, it’s not news that his earliest songs were slight, even derivative. From Little Richard he learned screams, sentiment, and spectacle. From Louis Jordan he learned joy and the jump beat. Through all that development, you can hear his originality grow. He gave us more than one new style of rhythm ’n’ blues, but he also shows how originality can realize and amplify what’s essential in extant moods and ongoing modes. So, I’ll let others laud his middle career when he passed beyond Doo Wop to speak up for rhythm, black pride, staying in school, and the hard work of black capitalism. I want to recall, instead, the late performance of, “How Do You Stop?” That’s where he tamped his experience into song that found its own meaning without heeding any chamber of commerce.
