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cobra kai 15000+ posts
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'Godfather of Soul' James Brown dies
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 Brown's family was being notified of his death and that the cause was still 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 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.
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Officially "too old for this shit" 15000+ posts
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Damn. I was just listening to his Funky Christmas CD.
He was one of the all-time greats. Up there with guys like Elvis, Dylan, the Beatles and Cash, in terms of his influence.
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200+ posts
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We were playing a lot of his stuff at the bar today. This is depressing as hell.
The above post was brought to you by Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
Rob said:
finding out there are two more homasexuals on this board is actually like finding out gravity works
CJ said: I liked you better when you were drunk.
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I walk in eternity 15000+ posts
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This is quite sad; I had read just last night how he was in the hospital, and how he expected to be all better and on tour soon. Damn. Another great one has passed. 
"I offer you a Vulcan prayer, Mr Suder. May your death bring you the peace you never found in life." - Tuvok. 
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Officially "too old for this shit" 15000+ posts
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Rest in Peace..."Mr. Dynamite," "Soul Brother Number One," and "the Godfather of Soul".... you're now "the Hardest Working Man in the hereafter"
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I walk in eternity 15000+ posts
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James Brown's Seminal Hits
By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY, AP Music Writer
55 minutes ago
James Brown had dozens of hits over his decades-long career. Here is a smattering of his seminal, career-defining songs:
1956: "Please, Please, Please" _ This begging ballad about a man trying to keep his woman took on a raw, sensual tone as Brown growled and yelped through the burning track.
1959: "Try Me" _ Another slow R&B groove from a pleading Brown.
1961: "Bewildered" _ Brown's she-done-me-wrong classic. He shrieks and shouts passionately, "bewildered" by the actions of his now-former woman.
1962: "Night Train" _ One of the first songs to feature the tight, jumping horn section that would become a cornerstone of most of his major hits. Brown's rough-edged voice shouts out cities nationwide on the "Night Train" route.
1965: "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag (Part I)" _ Another classic dance track about _ what else _ dancing.
1965: "I Got You (I Feel Good)" _ Perhaps Brown's most famous tune, and one of the all-time greatest songs in rock's canon. A buoyant, joyful jam that is an instant party starter. If you've never heard this, you've never heard music.
1966: "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" _ Though the title may suggest a chauvinistic ode, this passionate, downbeat track really pays homage to a man's eternal need for a woman by his side.
1967: "Cold Sweat (Part I)" _ A smoking, sultry mid-tempo jam that features Brown singing about a woman that makes him weak-kneed. It was sampled by dozens, perhaps hundreds of '80s rap songs.
1968: "Say it Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud (Part 1)" _ Released at the height of the civil rights movement, this anthem boldly asserted pride in being black at a time when African-Americans were still fighting for basic rights.
1970: "Get Up (I Feel Like Being Like A) Sex Machine" (Part 1)" _ Despite its somewhat risque title, this frenetic groove is more of a call to move your feet. Perhaps Brown's second most-famous song, its signature is its slamming rhythm section.
1971: "Make It Funky (Part 1) _ This could be the theme song of Brown's entire career. It begins with Brown saying what would become his motto: "(Whatever) I play, it's got to be funky!"
1974: "Papa Don't Take No Mess, (Part I): Brown's amazing, funky tribute to a hard-nosed, stern dad.
1974: "The Payback (Part I)": The ultimate revenge song, this song sounded as if it would fit right in with many of the blaxploitation soundtracks of the day with its blaring horns and rumbling bass lines.
1976: "Get Up Offa That Thing": A killer bass instead of horns are the real glue of this James Brown classic dance groove.
1985: "Living in America" _ This rousing, patriotic song from the fourth installment of the "Rocky" movie franchise re-established Brown as a hitmaker in his fifth decade.
1988: "Static, Pts. 1 & 2" (with Full Force) _ As Brown's music was being sampled right and left by rappers, Brown showed hip-hop heads how it should be done with this sizzling collaboration with the group Full Force.
(SUBS 16th graf, bgng, "1985 ..." to correct song from fourth "Rocky" movie, not fifth;.)
"I offer you a Vulcan prayer, Mr Suder. May your death bring you the peace you never found in life." - Tuvok.
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Unbreakable 3000+ posts
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"Batman is only meaningful as an answer to a world which in its basics is chaotic and in the hands of the wrong people, where no justice can be found. I think it's very suitable to our perception of the world's condition today... Batman embodies the will to resist evil" -Frank Miller
"Conan, what's the meaning of life?"
"To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women!"
-Conan the Barbarian
"Well, yeah."
-Jason E. Perkins
"If I had a dime for every time Pariah was right about something I'd owe twenty cents."
-Ultimate Jaburg53
"Fair enough. I defer to your expertise."
-Prometheus
Rack MisterJLA!
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Kneel! 10000+ posts
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You don't have to be the hardest working anymore James. You've earned your break...
big_pimp_tim-made it cool to roll in the first damn place! Mon Jun 11 2007 09:27 PM- harley finally rolled with me "I'm working with him...he's young but, there is much potential. He can apprentice with me and then he's yours for final training. He will remember the face of his father... Some day, Knutreturns just may be the greatest of us all...."-THE bastard
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Tabarnak! 6000+ posts
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The Montreal Mirror (a weelkly 'freepress' here) has James Brown on the cover...but not announcing his passing. It's an interview from a couple weeks ago regarding his plans for his career and his excitement to be performing here next week.
Fucking depressing read...
If karma's a bitch, it will be my bitch!
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Your death will make me king! 15000+ posts
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That frontpage pic is...something else.
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Tabarnak! 6000+ posts
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It was obviously taken post-mortem, Wed. Consider yourself lucky that G-man has access to such things...and is willing to share his finds with us!
If karma's a bitch, it will be my bitch!
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Officially "too old for this shit" 15000+ posts
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