With Mr. Dynamite: The Rise Of James Brown, fans have a documentary befitting the “Godfather of Soul.”
Directed by Oscar and Emmy winner Alex Gibney, and co-produced by the singular Mick Jagger, Mr. Dynamite: The Rise Of James Brown digs into the career of one of music and culture’s towering figures, using fresh interviews with band members and contemporaries, extraordinary historical interview footage, and rare archival performances of such JB classics as “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag,” “I Got You (I Feel Good),” “Out Of Sight,” “Please Please Please,” “Soul Power,” “Sex Machine,” “It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s World,” “Cold Sweat,” and more. The feature-length documentary was made with the cooperation of the Brown Estate, which opened its archives for the first time.
Delving into politics, race relations during the explosive civil rights movement, and the raw power behind several of his most famous tunes, Mr. Dynamite was honored with a 2014 Peabody Award, for what the Peabody panel called “its admiring but clear-eyed appraisal of a truly revolutionary musical figure and his legacies, his relationship to America and American culture, to funk, to hip hop, to racial politics, to American history and music history… It’s a documentary you could almost dance to, so sure and steady is its pulse.”