No...this isn't a comparison topic. I don't know if you guys heard of this, but there was bad blood between James Brown and Joe Tex. I don't remember the exact details, but doing some reading online just before posting this, I see that Joe Tex recorded a song in 1965 called 'You Keep Her' which was a jab at JB who allegedly stole Joe's wife.

I was inspired to write this topic after listening to the Get On The Good Foot album. There's a track on there called 'Funky Side of Town' which is a vocal effort by James, Bobby Byrd and Hank Ballard. In the middle of the song, they're taking turns sending shout outs to various contemporary artists like Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, and John Lennon. It's all quite jovial and light hearted, but then Hank Ballard yells out 'Joe Tex'. You hear James go 'who??' very unemotionally, and Hank Ballard repeats 'Joe Tex' and Bobby Byrd then mutters something quietly to Hank which is hard to hear. I guess James could have punched that part of the vocal out in the final mixdown, but he left it in for the album. I don't think I would have noticed that if I hadn't known about the history between Joe and James.

James did get annoyed quite a bit with artists who stole his sound, like Average White Band for 'stealing' Hot Pants Road, but I think the anger for Joe Tex was deeper.

Has anyone else heard this story? Was the 'wife-stealing' incident the reason for the animosity?

Disco Funk