James Brown

[ManicQueen]

Legendary Singer James Brown Dies at 73

Monday, December 25, 2006 8:37 AM EST

The Associated Press

By GREG BLUESTEIN

ATLANTA (AP) — James Brown, the dynamic, pompadoured "Godfather of Soul," whose rasping vocals and revolutionary rhythms made him a founder of rap, funk and disco as well, died early Monday, his agent said. He was 73.

Brown was hospitalized with pneumonia at Emory Crawford Long Hospital on Sunday and died around 1:45 a.m. Monday, said his agent, Frank Copsidas of Intrigue Music. Longtime friend Charles Bobbit was by his side, he said.

Copsidas said the cause of death was uncertain. "We really don't know at this point what he died of," he 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. 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.

"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.

"I clearly remember we were calling ourselves colored, 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.

From the 1950s, when Brown had his first R&B hit, "Please, Please, Please" in 1956, through the mid-1970s, Brown went on a frenzy of cross-country tours, concerts and new songs. 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.

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.

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 percent of their music is me," he told the AP in 2003.

Born in poverty in Barnwell, S.C., in 1933, he was abandoned as a 4-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.

By the eighth grade in 1949, Brown had served 3 1/2 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.

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 the singing preacher in 1980's "The Blues Brothers" — 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 the singer was exhausted from six years of road shows.

Brown was performing to the end, and giving back to his community.

Three days before his death, he joined volunteers at his annual toy giveaway in Augusta, and he planned to perform on New Year's Eve at B.B. King Blues Club in New York.

"He was dramatic to the end — dying on Christmas Day," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a friend of Brown's since 1955. "Almost a dramatic, poetic moment. He'll be all over the news all over the world today. He would have it no other way."

[Brenda Starrr]

There is just no Christmas.....

R.I.P. you badass mofo.

[Gothmama25]

He will be missed by many!

[Shade Everdark]

It was just time for him to get up offa that thang.

Good Gawd.

[DarkChylde]

It was just time for him to get up offa that thang.

Good Gawd.

Hahaha!

Sorry I just couldnt resist.

[Brenda Starrr]

It was just time for him to get up offa that thang.

Good Gawd.

I shot Diet Coke through my nostrils!!! I swear, I've never seen you do funny.

[saechalyn]

I shot Diet Coke through my nostrils!!! I swear, I've never seen you do funny.

Oh you have NO idea. Shade can be hysterical. He keeps it under wraps most of the time.

[pharoh]

I guess he didn't feel good....

[Homicidalheathen]

Yah Christmas day sucked. Don't laugh. I cried. I loved this man dispite his fuck ups.......drugs....beating women.......he helped shape my vocal style.

[Steven]

Yah Christmas day sucked. Don't laugh. I cried. I loved this man dispite his fuck ups.......drugs....beating women.......he helped shape my vocal style.

for anybody who fronts a rock and roll band.....James Brown is a key ingredient and a true innovator.

[kellygrrrrrl]

This ones for you Mr. Brown

Quote:

"UUUUUuuuuhhhhhn - OW"

[Fierce Critter]

"[brown made an effort] to keep peace in the wake of the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, when riots were breaking out in major U.S. cities.

Brown asked that his concert that night in Boston be broadcast over the television networks “so that it would help curb some of the violence if everybody stayed home that night and watched him” instead of taking their anger to the streets. It worked. Boston was the only major U.S. city that did not have riots that night."

The man had his faults. But he did some good, too.

[Homicidalheathen]

I hate to put this label on anyone, because style varies so much but......as he could very convincing sound like a woman.....and a man, and was a bit better than Steve Perry, I thought he was the greatest male vocalst of all time.

[pharoh]

Ok I'm gonna slap on my serious face for a moment.

One thing people have to understand is that the man had his hangups. Him being in the spotlight the way he was everything negative that happend in his life was amplified by the media, but that was his cross to bare.

Despite the few negative things that had happend during his life here on earth, the man made alot of good happen as well. He had a gift and was blessed with the ability to use it. He was idolized, and cherished my millions. The problem that I am beginning to have is that people in general forget the one thing they shouldn't, that he's human. When set on a pedestal like that, it's alot to live up to and you really have no where to go but down.

Yes he made mistakes, yes he has a darker side (insert soul brotha joke here), but at the same time I think that the good out weighs the bad. Thats my 2 cents.

[pharoh]

[pomba gira]

Ok I'm gonna slap on my serious face for a moment.

One thing people have to understand is that the man had his hangups. Him being in the spotlight the way he was everything negative that happend in his life was amplified by the media, but that was his cross to bare.

Despite the few negative things that had happend during his life here on earth, the man made alot of good happen as well. He had a gift and was blessed with the ability to use it. He was idolized, and cherished my millions. The problem that I am beginning to have is that people in general forget the one thing they shouldn't, that he's human. When set on a pedestal like that, it's alot to live up to and you really have no where to go but down.

Yes he made mistakes, yes he has a darker side (insert soul brotha joke here), but at the same time I think that the good out weighs the bad. Thats my 2 cents.

"Say it Loud- I'm Black & I'm Proud" by itself outweighs all the negatives AFA I'm concerned. It's almost impossible to describe the positive impact that one song had on our collective consciousness... if you weren't there, you just aren't gonna get it.

I just wish his family would quit bickering & bury him, already. So disrespectful IMO.

[BrassFusion]

Ok I'm gonna slap on my serious face for a moment.

One thing people have to understand is that the man had his hangups. Him being in the spotlight the way he was everything negative that happend in his life was amplified by the media, but that was his cross to bare.

Despite the few negative things that had happend during his life here on earth, the man made alot of good happen as well. He had a gift and was blessed with the ability to use it. He was idolized, and cherished my millions. The problem that I am beginning to have is that people in general forget the one thing they shouldn't, that he's human. When set on a pedestal like that, it's alot to live up to and you really have no where to go but down.

Yes he made mistakes, yes he has a darker side (insert soul brotha joke here), but at the same time I think that the good out weighs the bad. Thats my 2 cents.

i missed this post the first time around.

is this the same pharoh who totally ripped steve irwin to shreds when he died, or was that a different pharoh?

[Homicidalheathen]

I just read that they locked his girlfriend who was away at the time, out of the house? And she couldn't even get back in to get her clothes.

Dude rocked.....He was what.....75 and bopping a 31ish yr old....wow.

[pharoh]

i missed this post the first time around.

is this the same pharoh who totally ripped steve irwin to shreds when he died, or was that a different pharoh?

I said good and bad about him hun

[BrassFusion]

I said good and bad about him hun

oh bullllshiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii...

[pharoh]

oh bullllshiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii...

LOL uh huh it's true!

[Homicidalheathen]

Me and Natasha were in a grocery store the other day and a James Brown song came on and I said, 'you know who that is, right?' And she said: 'Yah, James Brown!' And I was like, you better know the answer to that or you have no soul! And we both laughed.