'Godfather of Soul' James Brown dies
Brown influenced generations of musicians, including Prince, Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson, David Bowie, Public Enemy and Ice-T
Brown was hospitalized with pneumonia and congestive heart failure at Emory Crawford Long Hospital on Sunday. Hedied from a heart attack around 1:45 a.m. Monday. Longtime friend Charles Bobbit was by his side,Brown's agent, Frank Copsidas of Intrigue Musiche, said. Brownwas 73.
Brown initially seemed fine at the hospital, Copsidas said. Three days before his death, he had participated in his annual toy giveaway in Augusta, and he was looking forward to his New Year's Eve show.
"Last night, he said, 'I'm going to be there. I'm the hardest working man in show business,"' Copsidas said Monday.
He said Brown planned to perform during a two-week tour in Canada after hitting Times Square.
Brown was himself to the end, at one point saying, "I'm going away tonight," Bobbit said at a news conference later Monday.
"I didn't want to believe him,"Bobbit said.
A short time later, Brown sighed quietly three times, closed his eyes and died, Bobbit said.
Along with Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and a handful of others, Brown was one of the major musical influences of the past 50 years.
At least one generation idolized him, and sometimes openly copied him. His rapid-footed dancing inspired Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson among others.
'To this day, there has been no one near as funky. No one's coming even close.' -Chuck D of Public Enemy
Songs such as David Bowie's Fame, Prince's Kiss, George Clinton's Atomic Dog and Sly and the Family Stone's Sing a Simple Song' were clearly based on Brown's rhythms and vocal style.
If Brown's claim to the invention of soul can be challenged by fans of Ray Charles and Sam Cooke, then his rights to the genres of rap, disco and funk are beyond question. He was to rhythm and dance music what Dylan was to lyrics: the unchallenged popular innovator.
| GOT TO BE FUNKY | |
|---|---|
| I Got You (I Feel Good) | This 1965 tune may be Brown's most famous; it's certainlyone of the all-time greatest songs in rock's canon. A buoyant, joyful jam that is an instant party starter. |
| Get Up (I Feel Like Being Like A) Sex Machine | Despite its somewhat risqué title, this frenetic 1970 groove is anothercall to move your feet. Perhaps known second-bast of all of Brown's songs, its signature is its slamming rhythm section. |
| Say it Loud— I'm Black and I'm Proud | Released in 1968 at the height of the civil rights movement, this anthem boldly asserted pride in being black at a time when African-Americans were still fighting for basic rights. |
| Cold Sweat | A smoking, sultry mid-tempo jam from 1967 that features Brown singing about a woman that makes him weak-kneed. It was sampled by dozens, perhaps hundreds of 1980s rap songs. |
| It's a Man's Man's Man's World | Though the title may suggest a chauvinistic ode, this passionate, downbeat track from 1966 really pays homage to a man's eternal need for a woman by his side. |
| Papa's Got a Brand New Bag | This 1965 isanother classic dance track about— what else? — dancing. |
| Night Train | This 1962 track was oneof the first songs to feature the tight, jumping horn section that would become a cornerstone of most of his major hits. Brown's rough-edged voice shouts out cities nationwide on the Night Train route. |
| Living in America | This rousing, patriotic song from the fourth installment of the Rocky movie franchise in 1985 re-established Brown as a hitmaker in his fifth decade. |
| Please, Please, Please | His first R&B hit, from 1956, was thisbegging ballad about a man trying to keep his woman. Ittook on a raw, sensual tone as Brown growled and yelped through the burning track. |
| Make It Funky | This 1971 track could be the theme song of Brown's entire career. It begins with Brown saying what would become his motto: 'Whatever I play, it's got to be funky!' |
| Source: The Associated Press | |
''James presented obviously the best grooves,'' rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy once told the Associated Press. ''To this day, there has been no one near as funky. No one's coming even close.''
His hit singles include such classics as Out of Sight, (Get Up I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine, I Got You (I Feel Good) and Say It Loud — I'm Black and I'm Proud, a landmark 1968 statement of racial pride.
Grammy for lifetime achievement
''I clearly remember we were calling ourselves coloured, and after the song, we were calling ourselves black,'' Brown said in a 2003 Associated Press interview.
''The song showed even people to that day that lyrics and music and a song can change society.''
He won a Grammy award for lifetime achievement in 1992, as well as Grammys in 1965 for Papa's Got a Brand New Bag (best R&B recording) and for Living In America in 1987 (best R&B vocal performance, male.)
He was one of the initial artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, along with Presley, Chuck Berry and other founding fathers.
He triumphed despite an often unhappy personal life.
Brown, who lived in Beech Island near the Georgia line, spent more than two years in a South Carolina prison for aggravated assault and failing to stop for a police officer. After his release on in 1991, Brown said he wanted to ''try to straighten out'' rock music.
He earned the nickname ''The Hardest Working Man in Show Business,'' and often tried to prove it to his fans, said Jay Ross, his lawyer of 15 years.
Brown would routinely lose two or three pounds each time he performed and kept his furious concert schedule in his later years even as he fought prostate cancer, Ross said.
''He'd always give it his all to give his fans the type of show they expected,'' he said.
With his tight pants, shimmering feet, eye makeup and outrageous hair, Brown set the stage for younger stars such as Michael Jackson and Prince.
Inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
In 1986, he was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And rap stars of recent years overwhelmingly have borrowed his lyrics with a digital technique called sampling.
'I clearly remember we were calling ourselves coloured, and after the song, we were calling ourselves black.' -James Brown on Say It Loud — I'm Black and I'm Proud
Brown's work has been replayed by the Fat Boys, Ice-T, Public Enemy and a host of other rappers.
''The music out there is only as good as my last record,'' Brown joked in a 1989 interview with Rolling Stone magazine.
''Disco is James Brown, hip hop is James Brown, rap is James Brown; you know what I'm saying? You hear all the rappers, 90 per cent of their music is me,'' he told the Associated Press in 2003.
Born in poverty in Barnwell, S.C., in 1933, he was abandoned as a four-year-old to the care of relatives and friends and grew up on the streets of Augusta, Ga., in an ''ill-repute area,'' as he once called it. There he learned to wheel and deal.
''I wanted to be somebody,'' Brown said.
'Disco is James Brown, hip hop is James Brown, rap is James Brown; you know what I'm saying? You hear all the rappers, 90 per cent of their music is me.' -James Brown
By the eighth grade in 1949, Brown had served 3½ years in Alto Reform School near Toccoa, Ga., for breaking into cars.
While there, he met Bobby Byrd, whose family took Brown into their home. Byrd also took Brown into his group, the Gospel Starlighters. Soon they changed their name to the Famous Flames and their style to hard R&B.
In January 1956, King Records of Cincinnati signed the group, and four months later Please, Please, Please was in the R&B Top Ten.
'Hardest working man in show business'
Pete Allman, a radio personality in Las Vegas who had been friends with Brown for 15 years, credited Brown with jump-starting his career and motivating him personally and professionally.
''He was a very positive person. There was no question he was the hardest working man in show business,'' Allman said. ''I remember Mr. Brown as someone who always motivated me, got me reading the Bible.''
While most of Brown's life was glitz and glitter, he was plagued with charges of abusing drugs and alcohol and of hitting his third wife, Adrienne.
In September 1988, Brown, high on PCP and carrying a shotgun, entered an insurance seminar next to his Augusta office. Police said he asked seminar participants if they were using his private restroom.
Police chased Brown for a half-hour from Augusta into South Carolina and back to Georgia. The chase ended when police shot out the tires of his truck.
Brown received a six-year prison sentence. He spent 15 months in a South Carolina prison and 10 months in a work release program before being paroled in February 1991. In 2003, the South Carolina parole board granted him a pardon for his crimes in that state.
Soon after his release, Brown was on stage again with an audience that included millions of cable television viewers nationwide who watched the three-hour, pay-per-view concert at Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles.
Adrienne Brown died in 1996 in Los Angeles at age 47. She took PCP and several prescription drugs while she had a bad heart and was weak from cosmetic surgery two days earlier, the coroner said.
More recently, he married his fourth wife, Tomi Raye Hynie, one of his backup singers. The couple had a son, James Jr.
Two years later, Brown spent a week in a private Columbia hospital, recovering from what his agent said was dependency on painkillers. Brown's attorney, Albert ''Buddy'' Dallas, said singer was exhausted from six years of road shows.
Mourningthe loss of his colleague, Little Richard said "a great treasure is gone."
"He was an innovator, he was an emancipator, he was an originator. Rap music, all that stuff came from James Brown," Richard told MSNBC.
And Rev. Jesse Jackson, a friend of Brown's since the 1950s,noted thatBrown died just as he had lived. He was"dramatic to the end — dying on Christmas Day," Jackson said.
Widow makes claim
Meanwhile, Tomi Rae Brown, Brown's widow, said she was denied access to the home she shared with the singer and their five-year-old son, claiming the gate was padlocked at the request of Brown's lawyer and accountant.
Brown said she was at a retreat when her husband died.
"The last thing he said to me was, 'I love you baby and I'll see you soon,"' she told The Augusta Chronicle.
But when she returned to their home hours after her husband died, security guards told her James Brown's lawyer, Buddy Dallas, and accountant, David Cannon, said she was not allowed inside, she claimed.
She said she does not own the deed to the home, but claimed she had a legal right to live there.
Cannon would not comment on the situation, the newspaper said.
The couple has had a tumultuous relationship since they married in December 2001.
James Brown pleaded guilty in 2004 to a domestic violence charge stemming from an argument with his wife and wasgiven a $1,087 fine.
He was accused of pushing his wife to the floor and threatening to kill her at their home.