“Mr. Dynamite, the amazing Mr. Please Please himself, the star of the show — James Brown and The Famous Flames,” went the infamous sparkling introduction from MC Fats Gonder on this day at the Apollo Theater in 1962.

Regarded as one of the finest live albums of all time, if not THE finest, Live at the Apollo, from steam-train nine-song medleys to Harlem cat-calls, captured a definition of pure golden soul just not possible again.

Of course Brown’s record label didn’t want it to happen, setting up the conflict jump of this beautiful stretch of 31:33.

Brown was all business in the magic he knew he had that night, opening with the revelatory “I’ll Go Crazy.

Trailing a heavenly brass punch from the Flames howling “If you leave me, I’ll go crazy,” Brown rolled into a chorus that rivals Bob Dylan‘s “Like a Rolling Stone” which was a kind of ‘Judas‘ middle-rock-finger as far as landmark moments of rockness go:

You’ve got to live for yourself

Yourself and nobody else

You’ve got to live for yourself

Yourself and nobody else