Legendary musician James Brown dead at 73
By George Curry and Bernie Hayes
For the St. Louis American
“The Hardest Working Man in Show Business” is now at rest.
James Brown died early Christmas at Emory Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta of heart failure brought on by complications from pneumonia. He was 73 years old.
“He was an innovator, he was an emancipator, he was an originator,” Little Richard said of the superstar known variously as “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business,” “Soul Brother Number 1,” “Mr. Dynamite,” “The Godfather of Soul” and even “The Original Disco Man.”
“This is the guy who literally changed the music industry,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who was once part of Brown’s traveling entourage.
“He put everybody on a different beat, a different style of music. He pioneered it.”
In a career that spanned 50 years and produced 800 songs, an average of more than 16 records a year, Brown was a seminal influence on soul music, disco, funk and rap, not to mention black culture and consciousness.
“Of the major innovators of 1960s R&B/soul music, the greatest was James Brown because he influenced every aspect of music, as performance and as theoretical concept,” said Gerald Early, director for the Center for the Humanities at Washington University and an authority on black music and culture.
“James Brown was a true friend and ally to black disc jockeys in the ‘60s and ‘70s,” said Doug Eason, former station manager at KATZ.
“He often gave advice and personal assistance to local artists, announcers and promoters.”
“I remember James Brown as a friend and as a businessman,” said local entertainer, deejay and radio historian Bernie Hayes, who first met Brown in 1956 while he was riding high on his first national hit, “Please, Please, Please.”
“I was with him at the Apollo Theater and in Louisiana when he discovered there were others imitating him. Over the years, the legend of James Brown slowly formed, and we can describe this prodigy as an artist who is one of the most influential of the 20th Century.”
Hayes said in Brown’s early St. Louis appearances he was a favorite of Regal Sports Entertainment, which brought him to town. His last St. Louis appearance was a rainy Sunday in September in 2005 at Laumeier Sculpture Park. Thousands of fans waited for his show, some for several hours, as the skies opened.
Local entertainer Gene Anderson of the “International Hookup” credited James Brown with keeping him focused and on track to success. Anderson said, “He was the pioneer who elevated the status of popular and soul music to a new plane.”
Local blues musician David Dee said, “He was my idol for dancing and singing. He was an innovative musician who crossed genres to brilliant acclaim.”
Local radio personality Ron Elz, also known as Johnny Rabbit, said, “His artistic genius had always been marked by the fact that it was never limited to specific genres. His spot will remain empty because he will never be replaced.”
John May, president of the St. Louis Blues Society, said, “He brought unmatched intensity to his live performances while pioneering new musical territories and laying new foundations for future generations.”
Up from Augusta
Born outside of rural Barnwell, S.C. on May 3, 1933, Brown was abandoned by his mother at the age of 4 and reared by a great-aunt in an Augusta, Ga. whorehouse. As a teenager, Brown was convicted of stealing and served three years at the Georgia Juvenile Training Institute in Toccoa.
There, he met Bobby Byrd, lead singer of a local gospel group. Some accounts say that Brown met Byrd when the latter’s group sang at the juvenile correctional facility. But Byrd say they met when Brown’s baseball team played against local residents. When Brown was released from reform school, Byrd’s family took him in and Brown joined Byrd’s group, the Gospel Starlighters.
But gospel would soon give way to rhythm and blues. Byrd said, “When we saw all the girls screaming for groups like Hank Ballard & The Midnighters, we thought, ‘Oh, so this is what we want to do!’”
In a booklet that accompanied the CD collection, James Brown – Star Time, Byrd said, “The dancing y’all seen later on ain’t nothing to what he used to do back then. James could stand flat-footed and flip over into a split. He’d tumble, too, over and over like in gymnastics. We’d say, ‘What’s wrong with you? When it’s time to record, you’ll be done killed yourself.’”
James Brown became the lead singer in a group that called themselves the Flames and, later, the Famous Flames. Little Richard would joke, “Y’all are the onliest people who ever made yourself famous before you were famous.”
Brown was a spellbinding performer, sometimes playing as many as 350 shows a year. And what a show. In the early years, he leaped from a piano and landed on stage in a split.
“Brown was a part of the teenage dance crazes of the 1960s, the Twist, the Mashed Potatoes, the Jerk, the Watusi, the Boogaloo,” Early said. “He was known in his early years as much for his dancing as his singing.”
In 1956, “Please, Please, Please” was released by Syd Nathan’s Federal label, rising to #6 on the R&B charts. Other hits followed: “Try Me” (1958), “Night Train” (1962), “Prisoner of Love” (1963), “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” (1965), “I Got You – I Feel Good” (1965), “It’s a Man’s World” (1966), “Cold Sweat” (1967), “I Got that Feeling” (1968), “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud” (1968), “The Popcorn” (1969), “Ain’t It Funky Now – Part 1” (1970), “Hot Pants” (1971), “Get On the Good Foot” (1972) and “The Payback” (1974), the only gold-certified album (with 500,000 copies sold) of his long and successful career.
“Brown was more of an auteur than anyone else in American popular music during the height of his influence,” Early said.
“He controlled his image and he controlled his music in ways that few other black performers did at the time.”
Hayes said that two local landmark songs in the St. Louis African-American community were “Say it Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud” and the less famous “Stay in School.”
Early said Brown was the first performer called in to stop race riots in major American cities in the late 1960s, earning him yet another nickname, “The Brother Who Never Left.”
Though “Say it Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud” became an unofficial Black National Anthem in 1968, later that year he released a lesser known, patriotic song, “America is My Home,” causing some fans to boo him.
He also supported a couple of conservative presidents. He campaigned for Richard M. Nixon at a time when he was an unregistered voter, according to his autobiography, and he served on one of Ronald Reagan’s domestic abuse panels during a time he was being repeatedly arrested for spousal abuse. A series of problems with the Internal Revenue Service led to his losing black radio stations in Knoxville, Tenn. and Baltimore.
Charges of spousal abuse followed Brown to the end of his life. In 2004, he pled guilty to a domestic violence charge against Tomi Rae Hynie, who was listed as his wife, though according to Brown’s lawyer, Buddy Dallas, their marriage was not valid since she was married to another man when she exchanged vows with Brown.
At points when his career appeared to be waning, a movie appearance would introduce James Brown to another generation of fans. In 1980, it was his role as a dancing preacher in John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd’s Blues Brothers and in 1986 it was performing “Living in America” in Rocky IV. He won a Grammy for the song.
Eddie Murphy’s parody of James Brown, which he developed in his stand-up routine and included in the concert film Delirious (1983), introduced the legend to another generation of fans when he reprised it on Saturday Night Live in the infamous “James Brown Celebrity Hot Tub” skit.
His low point came in 1988, when a high-speed chase with police in South Carolina and neighboring Georgia resulted in his serving a two-year prison sentence.
But Brown bounced back, receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1992 Grammy Awards and being honored the following year by the prestigious Kennedy Center in Washingnton, D.C. LL Cool J told the Kennedy Center audience, “In music there are three B’s. There’s Bach – I love Bach. There’s Bethoven – I love Beethoven. And there’s Brown. Doesn’t that name make you feel good?”
Other rappers – including Chuck D, Ice-T and the Fat Boys – also kept James Brown’s music alive by liberally sampling his hits. Brown joked that “the music out there is only as good as my last record.” He told the Associated Press in 2003, “Disco is James Brown, hip-hop is James Brown, rap is James Brown; you know what I’m saying?”
In 2003, BET honored Brown with its Lifetime Achievement Award. During that telecast, pop star Michael Jackson joined Brown on stage in a spontaneous outpouring of dance and song.
Early said, “His name should be beside Aaron Copeland, Duke Ellington, Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Richard Rodgers, Elmer Bernstein, Henry Mancini, and Louis Armstrong as someone who left not only an enormous body of instantly recognizable and uniquely brilliant music, but someone made modern American music possible.”
“I don’t think anyone will ever be able to fully realize the impact that he made on the industry or people around him,” Hayes said.
“He might have walked among the stars, but his feet were firmly on the ground.”
Brown’s body will lie in state at the Apollo Theater in Harlem on Thursday, with the public invited to pay their last respects. A private ceremony will follow the public viewing in Augusta on Friday, with an additional public ceremony scheduled at the town’s James Brown Arena on Saturday.
