Music

'Godfather of Soul' reshaped pop music

By Dan DeLuca
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Tuesday, December 26, 2006

PHILADELPHIA — James Brown, the dynamic performer who changed the shape of popular music in America and the world and became known as the "Godfather of Soul" and "The Hardest-Working Man in Show Business," died Monday in Atlanta at age 73.

Brown was admitted to Emory Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta on Saturday to be treated for pneumonia, and he died there in the early hours of Christmas morning of congestive heart failure, according to his agent, Frank Copsidas.

Among the iconic figures of 20th century popular music, from Louis Armstong to Bob Dylan, Brown was a true titan. As the inventor of funk and progenitor of rap, the self-proclaimed "Mr. Dynamite" was one of the most important figures in shifting modern pop music's emphasis from melody to rhythm.

The electrifying singer and songwriter's scores of hits include "Please, Please, Please," "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag," "I Got You (I Feel Good)," "Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine," "Say It Loud — I'm Black and I'm Proud" and "Living In America."

"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 Brown's, told MSNBC.

"James Brown changed music," said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who toured with Brown in the 1970s and imitates his hairstyle to this day.

"He made soul music a world music," Sharpton said. "What James Brown was to music in terms of soul and hip-hop, rap, all of that, is what Bach was to classical music. This is a guy who literally changed the music industry. He put everybody on a different beat, a different style of music. He pioneered it."

Full of guttural grunts and shrieks and precise polyrhythms, Brown remade rhythm and blues in his own rugged, intensely physical image. Along the way, he changed the way pop music sounded and also what it looked like, which in his case was a sharply dressed, solidly built, pompadoured black man sweating up a storm on stage as he executed a series of daunting spins and splits.

The funk breaks in Brown's songs such as "Get Up Offa That Thing" and "Funky Drummer" formed the foundation of hip-hop, and Mick Jagger, Michael Jackson and Prince all copied his stage moves.

One of the first performers to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, alongside Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry, Brown won a lifetime achievement Grammy award in 1992, as well as Grammys in 1965 for "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" and in 1987 for "Living in America," which included guitar work from Stevie Ray Vaughan. Last year, Brown published his autobiography, "I Feel Good: A Memoir of a Life of Soul."

Brown's declamatory vocal style, more spoken than sung, prefigured rap and was developed in early hits such as "Try Me" in 1959 and "Out of Sight" in 1964. Brown's music grew more aggressive as the '60s progressed, and he asserted more artistic control over his productions and incorporated more complex rhythms into his sound.

A steady stream of R&B hits won him an enthusiastic black audience, who recognized the ecstatic screams of Southern gospel music in Brown songs such as "Think" and "Night Train" — heard on his great 1962 album "Live at the Apollo." He first broke though to the white mainstream in 1965 with the electric "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag."

Brown's music was always uncompromising, and he became a voice of empowerment and pride within the African American community as well.

He was never a protest singer but always an advocate of education and increasing black economic clout. He bought a string of radio stations in the mid-1960s, and in 1966 he approached Vice President Hubert Humphrey to propose using his "Don't Be a Dropout" hit as the centerpiece of a stay-in-school campaign for urban youths.

Brown, who lived in Beech Island, S.C., near the Georgia line, had a turbulent personal life that included charges of abusing drugs and alcohol. After a widely publicized, drug-fueled confrontation with police in 1988 that ended in an interstate car chase, Brown spent 15 months in a South Carolina prison and 10 months in a work release program.

Brown made his final Austin appearance May 10 at Stubb's.

Additional material from staff writer Joe Gross and The Associated Press.