"Godfather,"
"King,"
"Sex Machine"

The World Mourns Death of James Brown 

EDWARD M GOMEZ / San Francisco Chronicle 27dec2006

He was "The Godfather of Soul," "Soul Brother Number One," "The Hardest-working Man in Show Business," "Mr. Dynamite" and "The Original Disco Man" (DPA), but American pop-music icon James Brown, who has died at the age of 73 (or maybe 78; his exact birthdate remains in question), is being recognized unabashedly overseas as pop royalty, too, as "The King of Soul" and as the "creator of a totally original genre, funk." (Granma Internacional, Cuba)

From the flood of obituaries, career analyses and encomiums that have appeared in foreign media:

• The British pop-music sheet New Musical Express reports that Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger has observed: "His passing is a huge loss to music....He was a whirlwind of energy and precision, and he was always very generous and supportive to me in the early days of the Stones. I've always been a huge admirer of him as a performer and a band leader."
• Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung recalls that Brown was born in poverty to a family that lived in a one-room shack in rural South Carolina but went on to become an entrepreneur and one of America's prominent "black capitalists." A major milestone in Brown's career: the release, in 1965, of his record "Papa's Got A Brand-new Bag." "Inside this bag there were another dozen or so hits," the paper notes, "enough to turn Afro-American music and the world's pop music on its head."
• In France, Libération points out that Brown was known "for the quality of his entrances" onto a stage, and that he didn't overlook his exit either, dying, as he did, "on the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ." The paper notes that it's still not known for sure where Brown was born — was it in South Carolina or Georgia? — or when (apparently, it was sometime between 1928 and 1933), and that, as a young man, he first flirted with boxing before turning to music-making. The French daily, whose culture pages are known for the attention they pay to jazz, classic American pop and world music, notes that Brown's earliest recordings fell into the category then known as "race records," since the term "black music" had not yet emerged.

Brown songs like "I'll Go Crazy," "Think" and "Night Train" became known worldwide, the paper adds, and had a special influence on the British Blues Boom of the 1960s. But French rockers of the era's yé-yé movement — Ronnie Bird, for example — were also moved by Brown's rhythm-centered sound. When Brown appeared in concert at the Olympia in Paris in 1966, French rockers Eddy Mitchell and Johnny Hallyday were in the audience and "left demoralized" after watching Brown "burn up the stage."

The paper claims that, after the singer's numerous scrapes with the law in the 1980s, he once allegedly remarked that France's president at that time, the late François Mitterrand, was prepared to intervene and approach then U.S. President George H.W. Bush on Brown's behalf. The funkmaster reportedly said: "He [Mitterrand] has told him [Bush] that if the United States doesn't want me anymore, he's ready to welcome me to Paris."

» The headline of the Times' eloquent-sounding obituary: "Singer, dancer and entertainer supreme who became black music's most influential artist of the 20th century." From the sober British daily: "[T]his tireless, consummate showman with a rasping voice redefined the nature of soul in the 1950s, invented funk in the 1960s, partly inspired the disco revolution of the 1970s and, thanks to the technological miracle of sampling, involuntarily contributed excerpts of his work to an estimated two or three thousand rap recordings of the 1980s and 1990s...."

"[H]is influence in the [black] community was such that his TV appeals for calm after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King in 1968 played a vital part in defusing a potentially explosive situation on the streets of America's inner cities...."

"With his band drilled to perfection — so much so that individual musicians were fined for any wrong notes or missed cues — Brown performed with the energy of an athlete and a zeal that bordered on the hysterical. He would push the microphone stand away, spin himself full circle and catch it on the rebound; he would shimmy frantically across the stage, drop to one knee, then leap up and do the splits. At the end of a performance he would affect to be overcome by emotion, and a personal assistant would lead him off the stage, a cloak wrapped round his shoulder, like a spent boxer at the end of a grueling bout. (It was no coincidence that Muhammad Ali used to train to James Brown records — the two were in much the same business.)...."

"Brown was a performer of colossal and enduring influence. He will be remembered as a dynamic inspiration to those who followed him and as one of the most important popular music entertainers ever."

Edward M. Gomez, a former U.S. diplomat and staff reporter at TIME, has lived and worked in the U.S. and overseas, and speaks several languages. He has written for The New York Times, the Japan Times and the International Herald Tribune.

source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=15&entry_id=12112 28dec2006

Godfather of Soul James Brown Dies

MARK FEENEY / Boston Globe 26dec2006

James Brown, whose hit songs such as "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" and "Cold Sweat" helped make him one of the most influential singers of the second half of the 20th century and an icon of African-American pride, died yesterday in Atlanta. Tagged the "Godfather of Soul," he was 73.

Mr. Brown was hospitalized with pneumonia at Emory Crawford Long Hospital on Sunday and died of heart failure around 1:45 a.m. yesterday , his agent, Frank Copsidas, told the Associated Press. He initially seemed fine at the hospital and even told people that he planned to be on stage in New York on New Year's Eve, Copsidas said.

Only Elvis Presley had more records make the music charts than Mr. Brown . Ninety-four of Mr. Brown's recordings reached the Top 100, and he had more Top 20 singles than any other recording artist.

"He was an innovator, he was an emancipator, he was an originator. Rap music, all that stuff came from James Brown," entertainer Little Richard, a longtime friend of Mr. Brown's, told MSNBC.

Even though Mr. Brown had his last chart single in 1985, his popularity endured. The churning polyrhythms of such songs as "Cold Sweat" and "I Got You (I Feel Good)" imbue them with a freshness that has kept them a mainstay of classic hits radio formats and commercials.

Mr. Brown received numerous formal honors. Cash Box magazine named him best pop male vocalist in 1969 (the first African-American so honored). The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame included him among its inaugural inductees in 1986. He was a Kennedy Center honoree in 2003.

Yet the greatest tributes to Mr. Brown were and are less conventional. The rhythmic intensity and daring of Mr. Brown's music made it uniquely influential.

"JAMES BROWN is a concept, a vibration, a dance," he declared in the liner notes to his 1991 boxed set, "Star Time." "It's not me, the man. JAMES BROWN is a freedom I created for humanity."

He had an enormous impact on rhythm and blues and soul. All but single handedly, he created funk. And through his numerous recordings sampled by rap artists, he provided the rhythmic underpinnings for hip-hop.

"Using Brown's grooves as the mother lode and Brown's staccato lyrics as a starting point," the critic Nelson George has written, "hip-hop embraced his legacy. With the introduction of the sampling machine in the mid-'80s, Brown's actual recordings became the heart of this sound."

His recordings assured Mr. Brown's success and influence; his live performances made him a legend.

"When I played, I gave good value for the dollar," he wrote in his 1986 autobiography, "James Brown: The Godfather of Soul." It was no idle boast. Mr. Brown danced the way he sang, only more so. His voice was a leathery rasp, with a clenched-fist quality. Mr. Brown's dancing unclenched the fist -- and then some. Impressive as were the grunts, screams, yowls, shrieks, and groans his voice made, they were not as spectacular as the gyrations he put his body through, a collection of spins, splits, slides, twists, jumps, and drops.

Dubbed "the hardest-working man in show business," Mr. Brown would lose 7-10 pounds a night and frequently require an IV for rehydration after performing.

"I worked all the time," Mr. Brown wrote in his autobiography, "as many as 350 nights a year, most of them one-night stands."

Mr. Brown's most famous album was a concert recording, "Live at the Apollo," which documents a 1962 performance at Harlem's famed Apollo Theater. It rose to number two on the pop charts. Many rock critics have called it the greatest of all live albums.

"Live at the Apollo" did not only mark a turning point in Mr. Brown's career, taking him to a new level of popularity and renown. It affected the music industry as a whole, demonstrating the potential of live recordings. Previously, they had been seen as having little commercial appeal.

Mr. Brown's flair for showmanship extended beyond his dancing and singing. He spent as much time working on straightening his hair as he did rehearsing. (The photographer Diane Arbus memorably recorded Mr. Brown in curlers.) "Hair is the first thing," he wrote in his autobiography. "And teeth are second. Hair and teeth. A man got those two things he's got it all." Or there was his trademark cape. Mr. Brown would end shows by having an assistant come onstage and drape it over his shoulders. He got the idea from the wrestler Gorgeous George, who would fling his robe off in the ring.

Mr. Brown, who at one time owned several radio stations, united business and politics as a leading proponent of black capitalism. He made several overtly political records, such as "Don't Be a Drop-Out" (1966) and "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud" (1968). Three months earlier, he recorded the explicitly patriotic "America Is My Home." His last major hit, in 1985, was another flag-waving anthem, "Living in America."

In a sometimes - incongruous blend of the radical and conservative, Mr. Brown's politics mirrored his music. His recordings provided much of the soundtrack for the black pride movement, yet he endorsed President Nixon's reelection campaign in 1972.

Mr. Brown's combination of high-profile activism and enormous popularity led Look magazine to ask in a 1969 cover story, "Is this the most important black man in America?"

A demonstration of Mr. Brown's importance came the night after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Mr. Brown was scheduled to perform at Boston Garden. His agreeing to let the concert be televised is widely credited with helping keep much of the city calm.

James Joe Brown Jr. was born on May 3, 1933, in Barnwell, S.C. His father, Joe, was a forest worker. His mother, Susie (Behlings), left her husband and son when Mr. Brown was 4. "More than anything else in my life," he wrote, "I would like to have been raised by both parents."

He and his father moved to Augusta, Ga., where Mr. Brown grew up in a brothel run by his paternal aunt. He helped support his family by shining shoes, picking cotton and peanuts, and delivering groceries. Mr. Brown, who dropped out of school after the seventh grade, also earned money as a street-corner singer.

Mr. Brown was arrested at 15 for trying to steal a car battery. He was sentenced to 8-16 years in reform school. A warden, impressed by his musical talent, got Mr. Brown paroled after three years.

Mr. Brown met with growing success as a performer in Georgia and South Carolina, winning a reputation for his ability to cut, or outdo, any performer.

"Please , Please , Please," Mr. Brown's first recording, was released in 1956. His popularity steadily increased, fueled by the constant touring and a string of hit records, including "Try Me," "Think," "You've Got the Power," "Bewildered," and "Night Train."

In 1965, Mr. Brown released "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag." It proved to be a watershed.

"I was hearing everything, even the guitars, like they were drums," he later wrote of this period. He began stripping away melody and harmony and emphasizing rhythm. Urging a disc jockey to play "Papa's," he said, "Take any record off your stack and put it on your box, even a James Brown record, and you won't find one that sounds like this one. It's a new bag, just like I sang."

Mr. Brown tangled with the Internal Revenue Service in 1968 and 1973, eventually having to pay $6.5 million in back taxes. But a greater problem was musical. Ironically, Mr. Brown's rhythm-driven music had helped pave the way for the disco craze, though its mechanical beat was far different from the fluidity and subtly varied pulse of his music.

Mr. Brown's career rebounded in the 1980s, with his appearance in the 1980 film "The Blues Brothers" and the success of "Living in America." Yet he ran afoul of the law in 1988. After a high-speed car chase, he was convicted of aggravated assault and failing to stop for a police car. "I aggravated them, and they assaulted me," he later remarked. Sentenced to concurrent six-year sentences, he was paroled after serving 2 1/2 years and pardoned in 2003.

Mr. Brown's first two marriages ended in divorce. His third wife, Adrienne, died in 1996.

His fourth wife, Tomi Raye Hynie, was one of his backup singers.

Mr. Brown, who lived in Beech Island, S.C., also leaves at least four children -- two daughters and sons Daryl and James II, his agent said. Funeral arrangements were incomplete.

"He was dramatic to the end -- dying on Christmas Day," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a friend of Mr. 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."

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.

source: http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2006/12/26/godfather_of_soul_james_brown_dies?mode=PF 28dec2006

Official Biography

James Brown passed away December 25, 2006. Our best wishes, thoughts and prayers go out to Mr. Brown's family, friends and loved ones. We feel extremely blessed to have had the opportunity to work with such a loving man, extraordinary musician, cultural icon and world class entertainer. James Brown was and will always be a true legend in every sense of the word. He will be missed by millions but his influence on music, culture and the countless number of lives he touched will carry on for decades to come.

Mr. James Brown's dynamic showmanship remains timeless. His style has been celebrated throughout generations. As one of the most sampled artists to date, he has more honors attached to his name than any other performer in music history.

Mr. Brown is a three-figure hitmaker with 114 total entries on Billboard's R&B singles charts and 94 that made the Hot 100 singles chart. Seventeen of these hits reached number one, a feat topped only by Stevie Wonder and Louis Jordan. Mr. Brown is still putting that "Good Foot" forward with new recordings and protoges such as Derrick Monk, Laurice Monica and Roosevelt Johnson.

Mr. Brown's life history contains many triumphs over adversity.

He was born in South Carolina during the Great Depression. As a child, he picked cotton, danced for spare change and shined shoes. At 16, he landed in reform school for three years where he met Bobby Byrd, leader of a gospel group and life-long friend. Mr. Brown tried semi-pro boxing and baseball, but a leg injury put him on the path to pursue music as a career.

James Brown joined his friend Bobby Byrd in a group that sang gospel in and around Toccoa, Georgia. After seeing Hank Ballard and Fats Domino in a blues revue, Byrd and Brown were lured into the realm of secular music. Naming their band the Flames, they formed a tightly knit ensemble of singers, dancers and multi-instrumentalists.

Over the years, while maintaining a grueling touring schedule, James Brown amassed 800 songs in his repertoire.

Mr. Brown became an icon of the music industry. With his signature one-three beat, James Brown directly influenced the evolutionary beat of soul music in the Sixties, funk music in the Seventies and rap music in the Eighties.

Mr. Brown instilled the essence of R&B with recordings under the King and Federal labels throughout the Sixties. With albums such as "Live at the Apollo", Mr. Brown captured the energy and hysteria generated by his live performances. People who had never seen him in person could hear and feel the excitement of him screaming and hollering until his back was soaking wet. Convinced that such an album would not sell, King Records refused to produce the album.

Mr. Brown put up his own money and recorded the performance at the Apollo Theater in 1962.

Released nearly a year later, "Live At The Apollo" went to Number Two on Billboard's album chart, an unprecedented feat for a live R&B album. Radio stations played it with a frequency formerly reserved for singles, and attendance at Mr. Brown's concerts mushroomed.

As the leader of the James Brown Revue (The J.B.'s), James Brown sweated off up to seven pounds a night through captivating performances. His furious regimen of spins, drops, and shtick such as feigning a heart attack thrilled crowds. The ritual donning of capes and skintight rhythm & blues became part of his personal trademark as a performer.

Mr. Brown's transformation of gospel fervor into the taut, explosive intensity of rhythm & blues, combined with precision choreography and dynamic showmanship, defined the direction of black music from the release of his first R&B hit ("Please Please Please") in 1956. In 1965, Brown scored his first Top 10 pop single with "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag," and the hits kept coming one after another for the next decade.

The gospel and blues structure of his early records gave way to rhythmic vocals and a complex funk sound. His innovations during this period had a profound influence on popular music styles around the world, including funk, rock, Afro-pop, disco and eventually rap.

James Brown's status as "The Godfather of Soul" remains undiminished. He continues to influence new generations of fans who often hear his funk grooves as samples on rap recordings. A charter member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Mr. Brown added to his collection of accolades when he received a lifetime achievement Grammy Award in 1992.

source: http://www.godfatherofsoul.com/man/biography.html 28dec2006