Music has lost a giant: James Brown dies...

[timmy84]

The "Godfather of Soul" dies at 73

At approximately 1:45 in the morning on Christmas Day, we lost Soul Brother #1, James Brown. The singer, famed for the hit songs "Please, Please, Please", "Try Me", "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", "I Got You (I Feel Good)", "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud", "Sex Machine" and "Get on the Good Foot", was 73 years old. Brown had entered an Atlanta-area hospital after suffering severe pneumonia. According to his agent, his family was being notified at press time of his passing and the cause of his death was still uncertain.

Born on May 3, 1933 in Barnwell, South Carolina, James Joseph Brown, Jr. was raised in Macon and Augusta, Georgia as a kid and teenager. His first job was shining shoes. Later, after his stint in a juvenile detention center for thievery, he was offered a chance to sing in his friend Bobby Byrd's gospel group upon his release. After a baseball injury, Brown began his music career in 1953 forming the Starlighters with Byrd in the lineup. Brown later changed their name to the Famous Flames and transformed the group from a gospel vocal group to a rhythm and blues vocal group.

In 1955, he signed with King Records and issued his first significant hit, "Please, Please, Please", which rose to number five on the national black singles chart. The song would become part of Brown's performing legend as he often would finish his show with the song dropping to the ground screaming in agony with a cape draped on him. The act later confirmed him as "The Godfather of Soul". In 1958, Brown scored his first of seventeen number-one Billboard R&B singles with the soul ballad "Try Me". Brown then hit ultimate pay dirt when a show at the world famous Apollo Theater in 1962 was released as an album in 1963. Live at the Apollo[/i] officially launched Brown into the national spotlight as it peaked at number two on the albums chart and sold over a million copies. Starting in 1964, Brown began cultivating a sound that would later be coined "funk" with songs like "Outta Sight" and 1965's "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", which became Brown's first top ten pop hit. 1966's "I Got You (I Feel Good)" raised his profile as did the dance numbers "Cold Sweat", "There Was a Time" and "I Got the Feelin'". By 1968, Brown had become the most important black musician in the country. He was so popular when he stopped a crowd at a Boston show from rioting following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., he was given a special award by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson for his courage in handling the unruly crowd. That same year, he issued his finest socially conscious statement with "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud", which ironically would start a 17-year period where Brown wouldn't have a top ten hit though he continued to score top twenty pop hits into the mid-'70s.

In 1970, ditching the Famous Flames and his original James Brown band (members of which included Maceo Parker and brother Melvin), he hired the Housesitters to back him up and renamed them the JB's. Among those who were part of the group were two brothers from Cleveland named Bootsy and Catfish Collins, they eventually left the JB's to join forces with fellow funk pioneer George Clinton in his famed Parliament-Funkadelic band. With the JB's, Brown scored poignant hits such as "Get Up I Feel Like Being a Sex Machine", "Soul Power", "Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved", "Hot Pants" and "Get on the Good Foot".

In 1973, Brown released the soundtrack to the movie "Black Caesar", following in the footsteps of fellow soul legends Isaac Hayes, Curtis Mayfield and Marvin Gaye in releasing soundtracks to blaxplotation films. The following year, he released one of his greatest funk songs, "The Big Payback". In 1974, Brown made headlines when he was one of several featured performers on the venue supporting the fight between boxers Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in the famous "Rumble in the Jungle". Brown continued to score top ten R&B hits well into the late-seventies with disco-infused singles such as "Get Up Offa That Thang" (1976) and "It's Too Funky in Here" (1979). In 1980, he made a comeback to mainstream with his cameo as a singing preacher in "The Blues Brothers". In 1985, Brown scored a comeback single with "Living in America", which returned Brown to the top ten on the pop charts after seventeen years peaking at number four on the chart. The following year, he joined fellow legends such as Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Sam Cooke and Jerry Lee Lewis as he got inducted to the inaugural Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

Brown recorded several top ten R&B singles with hip-hop/R&B band Full Force including the songs "I'm Real" and "Static" and into 1993 continued having Billboard charters. While he never returned to the top of the music world with his new recordings, Brown continued performing into his seventies as he kept getting accolades after accolades. As well as the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Brown was inducted to the Songwriter's Hall of Fame, the UK Music Hall of Fame - which was Brown's final televised performance, got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and was honored by the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003. He also got a statue of himself at his Augusta, GA hometown. Brown's last known recordings were collaborations with the Black Eyed Peas.

As well as the numerous hits Brown scored throughout his multi-decade career, the man is known for defining (and creating) the funk, disco and hip-hop genres, his incredible footwork, miming and stage show would inspire two generations of performers - from Sly & the Family Stone to P-Funk, from Michael Jackson to Bobby Brown, from Bobby Brown to Usher and many more. Along with Elvis, Brown has often been referred to as a man who helped spearhead the music industry. Brown precedes the deaths of his son Teddy and parents and leaves behind a wife Tammi Ray, and four children.

JAMES JOSEPH BROWN, JR.
(May 3, 1933 - December 25, 2006)

[Motorcity]

Unbelievable

I'll say a prayer for soul brother #1 that your trip home is in peace

A true soul man

[Diamond Girl]

Legendary Singer James Brown Dies at 73
By GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press Writer



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.

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."

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 Out 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."

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.

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.

Yahoo! News

[rainymourning]

This one literally hit me like a tonne of bricks. JB will not be easily forgotten, that is for sure. RIP Soul Brother #1

[antceleb12]

When I found out JB passed on, I certainly did not feel good. I felt like I needed shock treatment. It is certainly unbelieveable that the Godfather of Soul is no longer physically with us.

God bless your soul, JB!