To New York Senator Jacob Javits, trying to praise him, James Brown was “Jamie Brown.” To Boston mayor Kevin White, whom the singer introduced at Boston Garden that fateful night, James Brown was “James Washington” (mixed up, perhaps, with Walter Washington, first black Mayor-Commissioner of the nation’s capital) until “Brown” stuck in Mr. Mayor’s mind just in time for his crucial speech. And to a few other white commentators (with the best of intentions), James Brown was “Jim Brown”—who cut quite a figure of his own. To audiences around the globe, he was Mr. Dynamite, Soul Brother Number One, and of course, The Hardest Working Man In Show Business.

On the evening of April 5, 1968, however, the singer/showman/force of nature fulfilled probably the most crucial role of his life: keeping Boston from exploding. Dr. King had been dead barely 24 hours. Some people in and around Boston’s City Hall felt Brown’s show should not go on, but cooler and broader-thinking heads prevailed, so Butane James took the stage with Mayor Kevin White (looking a bit like actor Paul Dooley) in tow. City Councilor Tom Atkins, the first black Bostonian city-wide elected official, got an introduction, too. As well he should—saving the show was mostly, though not entirely, Atkins’ idea. Brown knew all eyes were on him, but knew just as well how his phenomenal ego and bluster made him the right man to cool people down by fixing them on his spotlight.

Boston Globe scribe Sullivan admirably nails down the backstage sweating from all angles, through all major players. The only thing he can’t quite catch—the one thing that’s always defied prose—is the Working Man himself in action, and that’s available now on a number of DVDs and YouTube. Watch Brown defy physics with his feet. And watch him calming, finally turning, a mob invasion of the stage—knowing, with each tick of his heart, that a misstep might produce a flash point, and that that flash point just might rush along American fissures to explode past rioting, into race war.