Papa’s Got a New Sound : Music: Godfather of Soul James Brown has used prison time to rev up a ‘more spiritual’ rhythm. But he’s still bitter about being jailed.

Wait a minute.

Yeah, he looks like the same James Brown, hardest working man in show business, king of rhythm and blues, Godfather of Soul, but he’s talking about coming out of a brand-new bag.

James Brown, who could sweat up a storm dancing on electric legs, who put the word funk in the musical lexicon, made “Please, Please, Please” a lover’s rap and whose foot-stomping grit makes today’s performers seem pale and pudgy, is going to sing songs that are “more spiritual?”

Wait a minute.

Brown, in one of several conversations last Friday and Saturday--this one during a ride through town in a silver Lincoln Continental--assured a visitor that he didn’t plan to start preaching.

“I’ll do things that’ll relate to people’s culture, what your life has been about, where you got to go,” Brown said. “I don’t want to take the time to sing a song and lead people on just for a dollar.”

Brown, who talked during time off from his work-release program, hinted at a bold new musical form that he has been working on while serving a six-year prison sentence. But he would not divulge specifics because he said that would help other performers beat him to the punch.

“I got a universal sound,” he said, “but it is going to be James Brown.” He said his new sound will “hit ‘em as clean as I hit ‘em with ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,’ a million-seller from the 1960s with a syncopated beat that ran counter to musical trends of the day.

Getting wound up, Brown, who speaks in raspy, rapid patterns that contrasted strangely with the elevator music on the car radio, said that “if you’re living in Australia, you’re gonna say, ‘That sounds like something we do.’ If you live in Brazil, you’ll be saying, ‘That sounds Latin,’ and if you’re living in Germany, you’ll say, ‘Something’s very European here.’ That’s the way I’m going.” Since going to jail 21 months ago, he said, he has written eight songs, or as he put it, “I got eight new things ready.”

Whether he leads a musical revolution or winds up performing old hits in golden oldie concerts, James Brown is coming back. He will be eligible for parole next March, but he makes an appearance--via video--this weekend at the American Film Institute in Washington in the premiere of “James Brown: the Man, the Music & the Message,” a one-hour special about his life and career. Brown would like to be there in person, but the terms of his work-release program confine him to a two-county area.

While Brown seems to relish the forum that prison has given for his views on improving the prison system and promoting education, he clearly remains bitter about being jailed.

He complained that he should have gotten into the work-release program earlier and that he is “past due for parole.”

Asked what response prison officials make to his assertions, Brown said: “What did they say a long time ago when they had two water fountains?”

After climbing to a mountaintop of riches and adulation, then plummeting to a pit of drugs and violence, Brown at age 57 is now raring to return.

Thomas Hart, president of On the Potomac Productions and executive producer of the special, said, “The novelty of the rest period is over for him. He realizes he’s in his September years. He wants to get back to work.”

Oddly, by slowing him down, prison seems also to have diminished Brown’s paunch. His gray pin-striped suit--that he designed--fit well. His straightened hair recalls his old glory days. Nevertheless, Brown clearly relishes the future. That seems to make the present more bearable, and, he says, over and over, he has learned from the past.

In 1988 Brown had a series of run-ins with the law, including a conviction and suspended sentence on assault and battery charges involving a police officer. He pleaded no-contest to charges of carrying a pistol and possession of the drug PCP. Finally, there was the highly publicized incident in which Brown waved a shotgun at a roomful of people in an insurance seminar, then was chased at high speeds until police captured him by shooting out his truck tires. That put him in jail in December, 1988. The charges: failure to stop for a police car and aggravated assault. Police said he tried to run over two officers, a charge Brown denied.

Last April, after serving 15 months of his term at State Park Correctional Institute in Columbia, S.C., Brown was placed in the work-release program at the Aiken-Barnwell Counties Community Action Commission, counseling students to stay in school and off drugs and calling attention to the plight of the poor. Brown said recent appearances ranged from a talk to poor pre-schoolers to a picnic for foster grandmothers.

“I do things across the board,” he said, “I’m about that.”

After work, Brown must return nightly to the minimum-security Lower Savannah Work Center here. He is given a weekend pass every other week, allowing him to spend time with his wife, Adrienne.

Some Brown supporters have said that comparable convictions for white defendants resulted in far shorter sentences, but state officials rejected such charges.

Around the nation, Brown’s supporters would like to see him pardoned, not paroled, because a pardon would restore rights that a convicted felon loses. The efforts take a two-pronged approach: asserting that Brown should be released because he has has a positive national impact and that his punishment was too harsh for the crime.

Reginald Simmons, an attorney here, was planning to file a petition as early as today seeking Brown’s pardon, but he concedes the difficulty of the effort, saying Brown is such a “high-profile inmate” that officials “want to do everything by the book.”

More immediately, Brown and his supporters are hoping to create a splash in Washington with the premiere screenings of the special, which includes appearances by other entertainers. Hart said he is negotiating with television officials to syndicate the production.

Brown is hoping to attend the screenings, which will be Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the American Film Institute, but that seems unlikely.

Francis Archibald, director of public affairs for the South Carolina Department of Corrections, said Brown is forbidden to cross the state line, let alone go Washington, adding that if he is unhappy about that, then “17,000 other inmates are not happy that they can’t go somewhere either. Unhappiness is a part of this business.”

Meanwhile, Brown is preparing to get back into the business he knows best. As he does, he rides a roller coaster of emotions.

During the drive around town, an occasional wave or clenched fist brought a flash of pleasure to his face. At another time he said that since his incarceration, he has seen conditions worsen for the impoverished and the uneducated. For many, he said, selling dope is the most attractive profession. Being in prison has made him focus on that. “I wish I didn’t know what I know,” he said.

Later, during a photograph session on the manicured lawn at the home of friends, Brown was his old self, the man who loves to take credit for his creations, whether in music or clothes.

“I designed this,” he said, showing the inside of his jacket, where “James Brown” was stitched on the pocket. His outfit was vintage JB--bold gray pin-stripe suit, flared jacket with tucks in the back, emerald-green shirt and matching tie, gold and emerald-colored watch, burgundy boots with silver-tipped toes under pants sporting 3-inch cuffs.

Brown talked energetically about his re-entry, his new spiritualism and “message music,” and underlying it all was a rhythm from somewhere in the ‘60s, pulsating under squeals, grunts, moans--and a raspy voice shouting, “Good God!”