A UK first pressing of James Brown’s 1964 album Showtime, from the legendary collection of Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman.  This album has Wyman’s handwritten notations on the back cover.

Bill Wyman is legendary as a musician, a blues historian, an author and for his world-class collection of Rolling Stones memorabilia.  This album was sold by him in the Bill Wyman and his Rolling Stones Archive sale at Julien’s Auctions (if you haven’t already seen the Wyman documentary The Quiet One, we enthusiastically recommend it.)

Brown and the Stones are inextricably linked, not just because of the former’s massive influence on Mick Jagger.  They both performed as part of the 1964 concert and theatrical feature film the T.A.M.I. Show, which Wikipedia notes is particularly well known for James Brown and the Famous Flames’ performance, which features his legendary dance moves and explosive energy. In interviews, Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones has claimed that choosing to follow Brown and the Famous Flames was the worst mistake of their careers, because no matter how well they performed, they could not top him.

This album was released in 1964, the same year as the T.A.M.I. Show.

Cover: EX, Disc NM/EX+

With a copy of the original Julien’s Auctions descriptive card for Wyman’s group of James Brown albums, which included this, and Recordmecca’s written lifetime guarantee of authenticity, signed by Jeff Gold, who has done consulting for Bill Wyman.

Read Recordmecca owner Jeff Gold’s blog post on collecting artist-owned records google: “Why I collect beat-up records owned by Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, and members of The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Velvet Underground and Grateful Dead”.