20. The Amazing James Brown (1961)
If you want a roll call of James Brown’s formative influences, just check the covers on this album: Hank Ballard, Roy “Good Rockin’ Tonight” Brown, dirty blues supremo Bull Moose Jackson and Billy Ward’s impressively morbid The Bells, which – never knowingly understated – Brown used to perform on stage with a doll representing his lover’s corpse.
