Growing up in the Georgia meant that Deborah Riley Draper’s family loved James Brown and his music, which makes it appropriate that she would direct the docuseries, “James Brown: Say it Loud.” “He was this man that they wanted to be like, wanted to dress like, they loved the music. But he also represented a sense of freedom and liberation for the Black men in my family that there was no other model for,” she tells Gold Derby during our recent webchat (watch the exclusive video interview above).
She found his power to be further captured from an article in Look Magazine from 1969 titled “Is James Brown the Most Important Black Man in America?” “That was a crazy question to have on a cover of a mainstream general market magazine, but when I thought about it and I thoguht about how my family and the folks in my neighborhood looked at him, I thought about how his presence changed the way people of color thought about themselves.”
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“James Brown: Say it Loud,” which aired on A&E, is a four-part series that explores the life of the man who was known as both the “Godfather of Soul” and “the hardest working man in show business.” The program chronicles Brown’s traumatic childhood, his rise to superstardom in the late 1950s and 1960s, how he factored into the fight for racial equality and his personal challenges including his drug addiciton. It features many notable people giving their thoughts on Brown including Mick Jagger, LL Cool J, Questlove, Chuck D, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis and Bootsy Collins.
The response from Brown’s adult children regarding the series has been very positive. Both his daughters were very taken with it. “[They] felt that in the telling of the story through my perspective and my lens, I made their father human. I did not make him perfect. I unpacked his flaws.” One of the most flattering comments came at the series’ premiere at the Apollo Theater from Brown’s “son that wasn’t his son,” the Rev. Al Sharpton. “He said this was the most honest, comprehensive docuseries or documentary about James Brown that he had ever seen.”
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