Give It Up or Turnit a Loose

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose" arrived in 1969 as a James Brown single, and it went straight to number one on the R&B charts. It also cracked the top twenty on the pop singles chart, reaching number fifteen on the Billboard Hot 100. What makes this song's story unusual is how many lives it has lived: as a vocal hit, as an instrumental on one album, as a radically reworked live recording on another, as a synthesizer curiosity, as a cover version, and as one of the most sampled tracks in the funk catalog. Each of those versions has its own cast of musicians, its own creative decisions, and its own place in the broader arc of James Brown's restless productivity.

• 2. The 1969 Original

  ›

  James Brown fronted the James Brown Orchestra for the original 1969 recording, and the band assembled for that session was formidable. The horn section alone drew on Waymon Reed and Richard Griffith on trumpets, Fred Wesley on trombone, Alfred Ellis on alto saxophone, Maceo Parker on tenor saxophone, and St. Clair Pinckney on baritone saxophone. The rhythm section placed Jimmy Nolen and Alphonso Kellum on guitar, Charles Sherrell on bass, and Nate Jones on drums. Chuck Kirkpatrick served as recording engineer. When the song was issued again on the 1970 album It's a New Day, Brown's lead vocals remained intact. A parallel release that same year on Ain't It Funky stripped out those vocals entirely and added guitar overdubs, turning the single into a different kind of listening experience without changing a note of the underlying performance.

• 3. The Sex Machine Recording

  ›

  Brown returned to the song with The J.B.'s for his 1970 live double album Sex Machine, and the result bore little resemblance to the original. Running over five minutes, the new recording substituted a substantially different instrumental arrangement: an organ riff that was absent from the 1969 version, a florid bassline, and entirely different lyrics. Clyde Stubblefield played drum kit in tandem with congas, a rhythmic texture that gave the track a different pulse from the original. That version of the song sat largely within the album context until 1986, when a remix by Tim Rogers appeared on the compilation In the Jungle Groove. The remixed version proved to be the one that later producers and artists reached for most often, and it has been extensively sampled across subsequent decades.

• 4. Other Versions

  ›

  Lyn Collins recorded "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose" in 1974, with Brown himself producing the session. A genuine live version, distinct from the Sex Machine recording, appeared on Live at Chastain Park, which was recorded in 1985 and released in 1988. Dick Hyman had already approached the song from a completely different direction: his 1969 album The Age of Electronicus included a synthesizer version of the track, capturing it in the same year Brown's original was released.