James Brown

James Brown

James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer and musician. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th-century music, he is referred to by various honorific nicknames, some of which include "the Hardest-Working Man in Show Business", "Godfather of Soul", "Mr. Dynamite", and "Soul Brother No. 1".[1] In a career that lasted more than 50 years, he influenced the development of several music genres.[2] Brown was one of the first 10 inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame at its inaugural induction in New York on January 23, 1986.

Brown began his career as a gospel singer in Toccoa, Georgia.[3] He rose to prominence in the mid-1950s as the lead singer of the Famous Flames, a rhythm and blues vocal group founded by Bobby Byrd.[4][5] With the hit ballads "Please, Please, Please" and "Try Me", Brown built a reputation as a dynamic live performer with the Famous Flames and his backing band, sometimes known as the James Brown Band or the James Brown Orchestra. His success peaked in the 1960s with the live album Live at the Apollo and hit singles such as "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag", "I Got You (I Feel Good)" and "It's a Man's Man's Man's World".

During the late 1960s, Brown moved from a continuum of blues and gospel-based forms and styles to a new approach to music-making, emphasizing stripped-down interlocking rhythms that influenced the development of funk music.[6] By the early 1970s, Brown had fully established the funk sound after the formation of the J.B.s with records such as "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine" and "The Payback". He also became noted for songs of social commentary, including the 1968 hit "Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud". Brown continued to perform and record until his death from pneumonia in 2006.

Brown recorded and released 17 singles that reached No. 1 on the Billboard R&B charts.[7][8] He also holds the record for the most singles listed on the Billboard Hot 100 chart that did not reach No. 1.[9][10] Brown was posthumously inducted into the first class of the Rhythm & Blues Music Hall of Fame in 2013 as an artist and then in 2017 as a songwriter. He also received honors from several other institutions, including inductions into the Black Music & Entertainment Walk of Fame[11] and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.[12] In Joel Whitburn's analysis of the Billboard R&B charts from 1942 to 2010, Brown is ranked No. 1 in the Top 500 Artists.[13] He is ranked seventh on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.[14] And in 2023 Rolling Stone ranked Brown at No. 44 on their list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

After a tumultuous few years of increasingly bizarre, sometimes violent public outbursts, the self-styled Soul Brother No. 1 became Inmate No. 155413 at South Carolina’s State Park Correctional Center.

On this day, Dec. 15, in 1988, James Brown began serving a six-year sentence for carrying a deadly weapon at a public gathering, attempting to flee police, and driving under the influence of drugs, as reported in his 2006 New York Times obituary. Rumors of a PCP habit had already surfaced by the time his erratic behavior came to a head in September, when he reportedly stormed into the insurance company next to his office, waving a shotgun and complaining that “strangers were using his bathroom,” as TIME reported in its take on his crime and punishment.

When the police arrived, Brown led them on a high-speed chase through Georgia and South Carolina. He tried to ram police cars with his pickup truck. They shot out two of his tires; he drove on the rims for six miles. Years later, this episode would frame the 2014 Brown biopic Get On Up.

It became the latest entry on a rap sheet that had begun during Brown’s impoverished childhood in rural South Carolina, where he went to prison for the first time at age 15 for breaking into cars. He sang in the prison choir and started a band when he got out. In many ways, his was a classic American bootstrapping success story, fueled by raw talent and unrelenting effort. He became a soul and R&B legend for his innovative songwriting and his impassioned showmanship, influencing performers from Michael Jackson to Mick Jagger. He earned the nicknames he gave himself: “Godfather of Soul,” “Minister of Super Heavy Funk,” and the “Hardest-Working Man in Show Business,” among others.

But despite his staggering successes, he couldn’t stay out of legal trouble for long. The 1980s were a particularly rocky time, according to TIME’s 1988 report on his prison stint, which noted:

Brown’s fall from the top of the charts to a four-man prison cell has been going on for several years. In 1985 the IRS slapped a lien on his 62-acre spread on rural Beech Island, about ten miles outside Augusta, and he was forced to auction it off. His eight-year marriage to Adrienne, his third wife, has been tempestuous. Last April she filed suit against him for assault, then dropped the charge. (Among other things, he allegedly ventilated her $35,000 black mink coat with bullets.)

He was freed in 1991 after serving half his six-year sentence for the blowup at the insurance company. But in 1998 he reprised his antics and was arrested again on nearly identical charges: discharging a rifle, this time at his South Carolina home, and leading police on another car chase.

On this occasion he was sentenced to a drug rehabilitation program, although his recovery doesn’t seem to have lasted. In 2004, at age 70, he was arrested on domestic violence charges against his fourth wife. When he died two years later, of congestive heart failure, obituaries listed his arrests alongside his achievements, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992, Kennedy Center Honors in 2003, and 116 singles on Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart from 1958 to 1986.

TIME noted in remembering his life that Brown had thrown his full energy into all pursuits in music and in life, including his two police chases.

From Time