Please Please Please Album Reviews

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AMG Review

Though James Brown and His Famous Flames had scored an R&B Top Ten hit in 1956 with "Please, Please, Please," and Brown's next nine singles for Federal Records flopped but the next, "Try Me," his third single of 1958, scored. That was when King Records (Federal's parent label) assembled this, Brown's debut album, out of some of those singles sessions. You can hear the sound of a group and its enthusiastic singer looking for a hit, sometimes in the rock & roll of "Chonnie-On-Chon" (1957) or the 1956 B-side "I Feel That Old Feeling Coming On," sometimes by remaking "Please, Please, Please" under another name, such as "I Don't Know" (1956), sometimes by tackling Coasters-like novelty material such as "That Dood It" (1958), sometimes by aping the smooth Sam Cooke, as on the 1958 B-side "That's When I Lost My Heart," and once by rewriting "My Bonnie (Lies over the Ocean)" as the 1958 B-side "Baby Cries over the Ocean." Only the two hits were really memorable, but the album presented the sound of a major star-to-be in search of his sound. [Originally released in 1959. Please Please Please was reissued on a Japanese import CD in 2003.] ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide