24) Live at the Apollo

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This document of brown's prowess onstage may be the greatest live album ever recorded. From the breathless buildup of the spoken intro through terse, sweat-soaked early hits such as "Try Me" and "Think" into eleven epic minutes of the raw ballad "Lost Someone," climaxing with a frenzied nine-song medley and ending with "Night Train," Live at the Apollo is pure, uncut soul. And it almost didn't happen. Brown defied King Records label boss Syd Nathan's opposition to a live album by arranging to record a show himself -- on October 24th, 1962, the last date in a run at Harlem's Apollo Theater. His intuition proved correct; Live at the Apollo -- the first of four albums Brown recorded there -- charted for sixty-six weeks.

Total album sales: 1 million

Peak chart position: 2

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