I realize that nobody pays much attention to these canned obit pieces, but I'm gonna post it anyway.
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James Brown was one of the most extraordinary Afro-Americans
of the second half of the 20th century. A raw, emotional
singer, electric performer and tough bandleader, he
instigated a number of dramatic, indeed revolutionary,
shifts on the black musical map. Certainly, he was wholly
responsible for fashioning R&B/soul into funk during the
Sixties. Brown's subsequent recordings, with their unique
screams and squeals, then unwittingly created the very
building blocks of hip-hop, and he became the world's most
sampled artist. Prince, Mick Jagger, Public Enemy and
Michael Carlos*son are all indebted to his manifold creativity.
Brown, though, was more than a highly influential musician.
He became a major black icon at a time of explosive
political and cultural change. The Rev Al Sharpton, a friend
of his, once commented, "James Brown changed the whole
cultural paradigm of black America. He was a way of life."
Indeed, Brown publicly championed the civil rights struggle,
recorded countless message songs like "Say It Loud - I'm
Black and I'm Proud", dined with presidents, cooled down
race riots and performed for US troops across Vietnam.
In 1968, Look magazine splashed him across their cover and
asked, "Is This the Most Important Black Man in America?"
During his artistic halcyon days, from 1962's Live at the
Apollo to his 1974 performance at the boxing match between
Muhammad Ali and George Foreman that became known as the
"Rumble in the Jungle", it seemed that Brown was doing the
boogaloo for the entire black nation.
An outspoken, often contentious figure during this era, he
courted controversy of a different kind in the Eighties and
Nineties. Arrested a number of times, he battled with drug
addiction, was charged with domestic abuse and served jail
time. His poor, eccentric upbringing was instrumental in
shaping the extraordinary, complex adult he became. It
filled him with a spectacular drive to achieve, but also
instilled in him a paranoia that fostered the bizarre,
cartoon-like figure he often degenerated to in later life.
James Joe Brown Jnr was born in 1933 (some sources say 1928)
in a one-room country shack just outside Barnwell, South
Carolina. His parents separated when he was four and Brown
didn't see his mother again until 1959. Just before his
sixth birthday, he and his father moved across the South
Carolina/Georgia state line into Augusta, to live with his
Aunt Honey. She was the madam of a brothel at 944 Twiggs
Street, James Brown's new home. At the whorehouse, he was
frequently beaten by his father and other male tenants. He
was also expected to contribute to the rent by procuring
customers and shining shoes.
In a society rife with overt racism, Brown's childhood was
affected by the poverty that arose from such prejudice. He
was once dismissed from school for wearing "insufficient
clothes". The young James Brown was passionate about
baseball, boxing and music, although his circumstances
compelled him to grow up pretty quickly. He soon realised,
to paraphrase one of his later song titles, that "you've got
to use what you got to get what you want", and admitted,
"Outside of school I was a hustler."
Falling in with a rough crowd, at 16 he was sentenced to
eight to 16 years after breaking into a car. In jail, Brown
flaunted his potential band-leading skills by whipping the
gospel choir into impressive shape. Two years into his
sentence, he met Bobby Byrd, who chatted to Brown through
the perimeter fence at the penitentiary outside Toccoa,
Georgia.
The Byrd family helped him procure parole and Brown was
released in 1952. He became part of Bobby Byrd's group - the
Arons. These musicians evolved into the Flames, performing
across Georgia in the mid-1950s - with Brown out front,
singing and dancing. In 1956, after impressing Ralph Bass,
King Records' A&R man, with their demo, the Flames' very
first single, "Please Please Please", was released,
eventually selling over a million copies. A number of minor
and then more substantial R&B hits, like "Try Me" (1958),
followed.
Like most black acts touring the segregated South, they
experienced racism at hotels, diners, gas stations and
sometimes in the very venues where they were performing. But
their tenacity paid off. In the last year of the decade,
with a healthy national following, the group, now billed as
James Brown and the Famous Flames, made their début at the
Apollo Theatre in Harlem. That night, Brown met his mother
for the first time since she had walked out on the family.
Brown himself was now married, with a wife, Velma, and three
sons.
In the early 1960s, James Brown released his third
million-selling hit, "Think". He also performed on national
television. But this period's biggest triumph was a live
recording, cut two days into the Cuban missile crisis, on 24
October 1962. King Records thought Brown was committing
commercial suicide with his latest ruse, and forced him to
finance it himself. But Live at the Apollo became one of the
greatest live soul albums and a fantastic testament to
Brown's dramatic shows and the emotive power of his voice.
Released in March 1963, Live at the Apollo shifted millions
of copies, climbing to No 2 on the pop album charts, just
behind Andy Williams's Days of Wine and Roses. It catapulted
Brown out of the chitlin' circuit and attracted those
much-coveted white fans.
Throughout the mid-Sixties, his concert schedule didn't
flag. He would perform five or six nights a week, and his
shows were hotly anticipated. The saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis
stated, "When you heard James Brown was coming to town, you
stopped what you were doing and started saving your money."
He also conducted affairs with his female singing protégés,
including Bea Ford and Yvonne Fair, who bore him a son and a
daughter. "When I'm on the road," he once commented, "I
behave just like a teenager - Bang! Bang! Bang!" Brown
fathered another son with a female employee of the James
Brown Fan Club.
One of Brown's most dazzling performances - outside the
bedroom - was in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, at the filmed
Tami Show (Teenage Awards Music International) in 1964. The
bill featured black American acts and new "British invasion"
groups unduly influenced by these very Afro-American
musicians. James Brown was scheduled to perform before the
Rolling Stones. In his dressing room, he guaranteed the
British upstarts would regret ever leaving England. His
subsequent set was, perhaps, a career best, with Brown
executing most contemporary black dances - the mashed
potato, the popcorn, the camel walk - to jaw-dropping
perfection. Following him, the Stones looked embarrassingly
amateurish.
In 1965, James Brown recorded the genre-creating "Papa's Got
a Brand New Bag". He once described this as the "turnaround
song". Indeed, it's now considered funk's year zero.
Bursting with rhythmic tightness, Brown admitted in his
autobiography, "I was hearing everything, even the guitars,
like they were drums." More hits followed, including "I Got
You (I Feel Good)", "Money Won't Change You", "Cold Sweat",
the ballad "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" and "Don't Be a
Drop Out".
The last signalled Brown's entry into the milieu of
socio-political campaigns. With the support of the US Vice-
President Hubert Humphrey, he toured schools, lecturing
children on the benefits of education and donating $500
scholarships. In the same year, 1966, Brown performed a
benefit gig in Tupelo, Mississippi, after racists wounded
the black activist James Meredith during his March Against
Fear.
James Brown was evolving into the prime black cultural icon
of the second half of the 1960s. Selling out stadiums and
Madison Square Garden, he was elected "Soul Brother Number
One" by the Afro-American public. Heavyweight radicals, too,
were in awe of him. Revolutionary left-wing groups like the
Black Panthers, in favour of armed struggle, sought out his
sponsorship. They were unsuccessful, of course, because
Brown championed black capitalism.
Nineteen sixty-eight was probably the most extraordinary
year of his life. He travelled to Africa for the first time,
changed his hairstyle from straight to Afro, and bought
radio stations. But it was the night after Martin Luther
King's assassination, on 5 July, that was historic. Although
Brown had been scheduled to perform at the Boston Garden,
most of the country was aflame with riots. After
contemplating cancelling the gig, he and Boston's mayor
decided to proceed with the show and televise it live. They
guessed correctly that people could not resist watching a
James Brown show.
In May 1968, Brown received an invitation to the White
House. The following month, Brown entertained the troops in
Vietnam. Then, in October, he released "Say It Loud - I'm
Black and I'm Proud". Selling 750,000 copies in two weeks,
the track defined the mood of this racially explosive era,
as the rapper Chuck D later acknowledged: " 'Say It Loud'
prepared me for the third grade, 1969, and the rest of my
life. Black now signified where we was at."
Amazingly, despite all his extra- curricular activities,
Brown was still knocking out hit after hit. From the late
1960s into the early 1970s, he was forging the blueprint of
funk in tracks like "Superbad", "Give It Up or Turn It
Loose", "Mother Popcorn", "Funky Drummer", "Sex Machine" and
"Hot Pants". Of course, his brilliant musicians, like Fred
Wesley, Maceo Parker, Pee Wee Ellis and Clyde Stubblefield,
were a crucial, if often unrecognised ingredient in the
James Brown sound. Wesley later commented, "James was bossy
and paranoid. It was ridiculous that somebody of his
popularity could be so insecure."
Officially separated in 1964, James Brown and Velma finally
divorced in 1969. The following year, he married Dee Dee
Jenkins and moved from New York back to Augusta. The first
half of the 1970s was pretty good for Brown. He signed to
Polydor and, with hits like "Get On the Good Foot", "Papa
Don't Take No Mess", "Funky President", coasted on a very
healthy musical plateau. Now billed as the "Godfather of
Soul", Brown also cut two excellent soundtracks to
complement Blaxploitation movies, Black Caesar (1973) and
Slaughter's Big Rip-Off (1973). In 1974, he performed in
Kinshasa, Zaire, at the music festival prior to the
Ali/Foreman "Rumble in the Jungle".
One of the two low points of this period was his very public
choice to back President Richard Nixon for re-election. His
shows were picketed by signs declaring, "James Brown -
Nixon's Clown". In 1973, Brown's first son, Teddy, died in a
car crash. As the second half of the 1970s unfolded, Brown's
career suffered, a music television show he fronted, Future
Shock, flopped and the IRS was also tailing him for millions
of dollars in taxes. On top of this, he was waist deep in a
payola scandal (pay for record airplay) and his marriage to
Dee Dee collapsed.
In 1980, Brown's appearance in the film The Blues Brothers
helped resuscitate his flagging career. His cameo in the
film Rocky IV (1985), with its accompanying hit, "Living in
America", offered an even greater boost. Then, in 1986,
Brown was venerated as one of the Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame's first 10 inductees. By the late Eighties and early
Nineties, hip-hop acts were sampling his old funk classics
to create their aural collages.
But it was a distinctly ambiguous comeback. In 1982, Brown
had met his third wife, Adrianne Rodriguez, a make-up
artist. They seemed to bond over the highly dangerous,
psychosis-provoking chemical PCP - "angel dust". Their
private drug life became public and all hell broke loose. In
March 1987, Brown was charged with aggravated assault and
intent to murder his wife. Later that year he was chased by
police, guns blazing, from Georgia into South Carolina. He
was jailed, eventually serving less than two years of his
sentence. After his release in 1991, Brown was increasingly
perceived as a rather cranky, unapproachable figure.
Adrianne died following a plastic surgery operation in 1996.
In 1998 Brown was sentenced to 90 days in a drug
rehabilitation centre.
At the Millennium, Brown emerged an emotionally healthier,
drug-free man. He was married again, to Tomi Rae Hynie, and
now very rich, having emulated David Bowie by raising $30m
on Wall Street against future royalties. In 2003, he was
presented with a lifetime achievement award by Michael
Carlos*son at the Black Entertainment Television's bash and
received one of the highly prestigious Kennedy Center
Honors. When Robert Chalmers interviewed a calmer, more
reflective James Brown for the Independent on Sunday last
summer, he said, "If there is ever anybody I'd like to be
like, it is Moses."
James Maycock
James Joe Brown, singer: born Barnwell, South Carolina 3 May
1933; four times married (five sons, three daughters, and
one son deceased); died Atlanta, Georgia 25 December 2006.
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We have this Christmas Eve tradition in our house where we see who is able to endure the most egg-nog and be the last one still awake every year. Anyway yeah, this was my third time being eligible for this since becoming an adult and I really wanted to make a good showing since I was a total weaksauce the first two times. Anyway, I was going upstairs back and forth using the excuse that I was checking up on some sports scores when in actuality, I was really diluting this ultra thick Nog with some water so I wouldn't get KO'ed so quickly by the strong alcohol content and just as I was coming back down with my half Nog/half water drink for like the third time or something, I heard him being eulogized from the radio in my room.
What a ******* bummer, man. This is like the fourth or fifth celeb death that I've come by through some sports station in the middle of the night in like the last year and a half, man. To come down with an illness on Christmas eve is one thing, but to also go the day after is just too depressing, man. I can't think of anyone else who was a more gifted showman than JB, man. He could win over Klansman at a Klans rally and make them all do the boogaloo.....he was that phenomenal a live performer. I can't claim to be a hardcore fan of his, you know? I'd always hear him in the background in our house or see one of his live performances on the television and just be amazed and awed by his Negro Dynanism. You could really see where Jimi got some of his showman chops and fashion flair from.
Anyway, I can't say that this completely destroyed my Christmast, but it really has dampened and made it much less joyous, that's for sure.
leungtl said:
R.I.P.
*Gets out James Brown - 20 All Time Greatest Hits album*
DAMN STRAIGHT, darlin'!!
Dragan T said:
Man, ain't that some weird ****.
http://www.cstv.com/sports/m-footbl/stories/111706adk.html
* It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World*
That's probably my favourite track of his, man.
