Though he’ll doubtless be best remembered for the rhythmic inventions that changed American music, some of James Brown’s touchstones came when he slowed things down. Aside from “Please Please Please,” Ballads collects many of those moments. Focusing on two periods — the late ’50s and early ’60s era leading to and surrounding Live At the Apollo, and the later funk years when Brown would place “Georgia On My Mind” on the B-side of “It’s a New Day” and his civil rights-conscious reading of “If I Ruled the World” on the flip of “I Got the Feelin’” — the disc is a fine showcase for what often comes down to a rough croon. To hear him screaming against the massed orchestral attack of “Prisoner of Love” is to recognize the sound of a man determined to recast all music in his own outsized image.

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