James Brown
- JB re-directs here, for other uses see JB (disambiguation)
Template:Infobox musical artist 2 James Joseph Brown, Jr. (May 3, 1933 - December 25, 2006), most commonly known as James Brown (also known as The Godfather of Soul), was an African American entertainer recognized as one of the most influential figures in 20th-century popular music.
As a prolific singer, songwriter, bandleader and record producer, Brown was a seminal force in the evolution of gospel and rhythm and blues into soul and funk. He left his mark on numerous other musical genres, including rock, jazz, reggae, disco, dance and electronic music, afrobeat, and hip-hop music.
Brown began his professional music career in 1953 and skyrocketed to fame in the late 1950s and early 1960s on the strength of his thrilling live performances and a string of smash hits. In spite of various personal problems and setbacks, he continued to score hits in every decade through the 1980s. In the 1960s and 1970s Brown was a presence in American political affairs, noted especially for his activism on behalf of African Americans and the poor (as well as his outspoken support for Richard Nixon).
Brown was recognized by a plethora of (mostly self-bestowed) titles, including Soul Brother Number One, Mr. Dynamite, the Hardest-Working Man in Show Business, Minister of The New New Super Heavy Funk, Mr. Please Please Please, The Boss, and the best-known, the Godfather of Soul. He was renowned for his shouting vocals, feverish dancing and unique rhythmic style.
Biography
Early life
Brown was born in the small town of Barnwell in Great Depression-era South Carolina as James Joseph Brown, Jr; as an adult, Brown would legally change his name to remove the "Jr." designation.[1] Brown's family eventually moved to nearby Augusta, Georgia. During his childhood, Brown helped support his family by picking cotton in the nearby fields and shining shoes downtown. In his spare time, Brown variously spent time either practicing his skills in Augusta-area halls, or committing petty crimes. At the age of sixteen, he was convicted of armed robbery and sent to a juvenile detention center upstate in Toccoa from 1948.
While in prison, Brown later made the acquaintance of Bobby Byrd, whose family helped Brown secure an early release after serving only three years of his sentence, under the condition that he not return to Augusta or Richmond County and that he would try to get a job. After brief stints as a boxer and baseball pitcher (a career move ended by leg injury) Brown turned his energy toward music.
The beginnings of the Famous Flames
Brown and Bobby Byrd's sister Sarah performed in a gospel group called "The Gospel Starlighters" from 1955. Eventually, Brown joined Bobby Byrd's group the Avons, and Byrd turned the group's sound towards secular rhythm and blues. Now called The Famous Flames, Brown and Byrd's band toured the Southern "chitlin' circuit", and eventually signed a deal with the Cincinnati, Ohio-based King Records, presided over by Syd Nathan.
The group's first recording and single, credited to "James Brown with the Famous Flames", was "Please, Please, Please" (1956). It was a #5 R&B hit and a million-selling single. However, their subsequent records failed to live up to the success of "Please, Please, Please". After nine failed singles, King was ready to drop Brown and the Flames until the success of their 1958 single "Try Me." While not a big hit, it went to number forty-eight on the Billboard Hot 100, which was enough to keep the group working Southern one-night stands.[2] Nearly all of the group's releases were written or co-written by Brown, who assumed primary control of the band from Byrd and eventually began billing himself as a solo act with The Famous Flames as his backup.
These early recordings, also including "I'll Go Crazy" (1959) and "Bewildered" (1960), were fairly straightforward gospel-inspired R&B compositions, heavily inspired by the work of contemporary musicians such as Little Richard and Ray Charles. Yet the songs were already marked by a rhythmic acuity and vocal attack that would later become even more pronounced, contributing to the developing style that would eventually be called "funk". Brown, in fact, called Little Richard his idol, and credited Little Richard's saxophone-studded mid-1950's road band The Upsetters as the first to put the funk in the rock and roll beat. [3]
Brown's arrangements and instrumentation, initially standardized, began to give way to more improvisational and rhythm-heavy tracks such as 1961's #5 R&B hit "Night Train", arguably the first single to showcase the beginnings of what today is considered the "James Brown sound". Except for declamatory ad-libs by Brown, "Night Train" is completely instrumental, featuring prominent horn charts and a fast, highly accented rhythm track.
"Papa gets a brand new bag"
While Brown's early singles were major hits in the southern United States and regularly became R&B Top Ten hits, he and the Flames were not nationally successful until his self-financed live show was captured on the LP Live at the Apollo in 1962, released without the consent of his label King Records.
Brown followed this success with a string of singles that, along with the work of Allen Toussaint in New Orleans, essentially defined funk music. 1964's "Out of Sight" was, even more than "Night Train" had been, a harbinger of the new James Brown sound. Its arrangement was raw and unornamented, the horns and the drums took center stage in the mix, and Brown's vocals had taken on an even more intensely rhythmic feel. However, Brown violated his contract with King again by recording "Out of Sight" for Smash Records; the ensuing legal battle resulted in a one year ban on the release of his vocal recordings.[4]
The mid-1960s was the period of Brown's greatest popular success. Two of his signature tunes, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" and "I Got You (I Feel Good)," both from 1965, were Brown's first Top 10 pop hits as well as major #1 R&B hits, remaining the top-selling single in black venues for over a month apiece. His national profile was further boosted that year by appearances in the films Ski Party and the concert film The T.A.M.I. Show, in which he upstaged The Rolling Stones. In his concert repertoire and on record, Brown mingled his innovative rhythmic essays with ballads such as "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" (1965), and even Broadway show tunes.
Brown continued to develop the new funk idiom. "Cold Sweat" (1967), a song with almost no chord changes, was considered a departure even compared to Brown's other recent innovations. Critics have since come to see it as a high-water mark in the dance music of the 1960s; it is sometimes called the first "true" funk recording.
Brown would often make creative adjustments to his songs for greater appeal. He sped up the released version of "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" to make it even more intense and commercial. He also began spinning off new compositions from the grooves of earlier ones by continual revision of their arrangements. For example, the hit "There Was a Time" emerged out of the chord progression and rhythm arrangements of the 1967 song "Let Yourself Go."[5]
The late 1960s: "Ain't It Funky Now"
Brown employed musicians and arrangers who had come up through the jazz tradition. He was noted for his ability as a bandleader and songwriter to blend the simplicity and drive of R&B with the rhythmic complexity and precision of jazz. Trumpeter Lewis Hamlin and saxophonist/keyboardist Alfred "Pee Wee" Ellis (the successor to previous bandleader Nat Jones) led the band; guitarist Jimmy Nolen provided percussive, deceptively simple riffs for each song; Maceo Parker's prominent saxophone solos provided a focal point for many performances. Other members of Brown's band included stalwart singer and sideman Bobby Byrd; drummers John "Jabo" Starks, Clyde Stubblefield, and Melvin Parker (Maceo's brother); saxophonist St. Clair Pinckney; trombonist Fred Wesley; guitarist Alphonso "Country" Kellum; and bassist Bernard Odum.
As the 1960s came to a close, Brown refined his funk style even further with "I Got the Feelin'" and "Licking Stick-Licking Stick" (both recorded in 1968), and "Funky Drummer" (recorded in 1969). By this time Brown's "singing" increasingly took the form of a kind of rhythmic declamation that only intermittently featured traces of pitch or melody. His vocals, not quite sung but not quite spoken, would be a major influence on the technique of rapping, which would come to maturity along with hip hop music in the coming decades. Supporting his vocals were instrumental arrangements that featured a more refined and developed version of Brown's mid-1960s style. The horn section, guitars, bass, and drums all meshed together in strong rhythms based around various repeating riffs, usually with at least one musical "break".
Brown's recordings influenced musicians across the industry, most notably Sly and his Family Stone, Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, and soul shouters like Edwin Starr , Temptations David Ruffin and Dennis Edwards, and a then-prepubescent Michael Jackson, who took Brown's shouts and dancing into the pop mainstream as the lead singer of Motown's The Jackson 5. Those same tracks would later be resurrected by countless hip-hop musicians from the 1970s on; in fact, James Brown remains the world's most sampled recording artist, and "Funky Drummer" is itself the most sampled individual piece of music.[citation needed]
The content of Brown's songs was now developing along with their delivery. Socio-political commentary on the black person's position in society and lyrics praising motivation and ambition filled songs like "Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud" (1968) and "I Don't Want Nobody to Give Me Nothing (Open Up the Door I'll Get It Myself)" (1970). However, while this change gained him an even greater position in the black community, it lost him much of his white audience who could no longer relate to his lyrics.
The 1970s: The JB's
By 1970, most of the members of James Brown's classic 1960s band had quit his act for other opportunities. He and Bobby Byrd employed a new band that included future funk greats such as bassist Bootsy Collins, Collins' guitarist brother Phelps "Catfish" Collins, and trombonist/musical director Fred Wesley. This new backing band was dubbed "The JB's", and made their debut on Brown's 1970 single "(Get Up I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine". Although it would go through several lineup changes (the first in 1971), The JB's remain Brown's most familiar backing band.
As Brown's musical empire grew (he bought radio stations in the late 1960s, including Augusta's WRDW, where he had shined shoes as a boy), his desire for financial and artistic independence grew as well. In 1971, he began recording for Polydor Records; among his first Polydor releases was the #1 R&B hit "Hot Pants (She Got To Use What She Got To Get What She Wants)". Many of his sidemen and supporting players, such as Fred Wesley & the JB's, Bobby Byrd, Lyn Collins, Myra Barnes, and Hank Ballard, released records on Brown's subsidiary label, People, which was created as part of Brown's Polydor contract. These recordings are as much a part of Brown's legacy as those released under his own name, and most are noted examples of what might be termed James Brown's "house" style. The early 1970s marked the first real awareness, outside the African-American community, of Brown's achievements. Miles Davis and other jazz musicians began to cite Brown as a major influence on their styles, and Brown provided the score for the 1973 blaxploitation film Black Caesar.
In 1974 Brown performed in Zaire as part of the build up to the The Rumble in the Jungle fight between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman.
His 1970s Polydor recordings were a summation of all the innovation of the last twenty years, and while some critics maintain that he declined artistically during this period, compositions like "The Payback" (1973); "Papa Don't Take No Mess" and "Stoned to the Bone" (1974); "Funky President (People It's Bad)" (1975); and "Get Up Offa That Thing" (1976) are still considered among his best.
Into the late-1970s and 1980s
By the mid-1970s, Brown's star-status was on the wane, and key musicians such as Bootsy Collins had begun to depart to form their own groups. The disco movement, which Brown anticipated, and some say originated, found relatively little room for Brown; his 1976 albums Get Up Offa That Thing and Bodyheat were his first flirtations with "disco-fied" rhythms incorporated into his funky repertoire. While 1977's Mutha's Nature and 1978's Jam 1980's generated no charted hits, 1979's The Original Disco Man LP is a notable late addition to his oeuvre. It contained the song "It's Too Funky in Here," which was his last top R&B hit of the decade.
Brown experienced something of a resurgence in the 1980s, effectively crossing over to a broader, more mainstream audience. He made cameo appearances in the feature films The Blues Brothers, Doctor Detroit, and Rocky IV, as well as being a guest star in the Miami Vice episode "Missing Hours" in 1988. He also released Gravity, a modestly popular crossover album, and the hit 1985 single "Living in America". Acknowledging his influence on modern hip-hop and R&B music, Brown collaborated with hip-hop artist Afrika Bambaataa on the single "Unity", and worked with the group Full Force on a #5 R&B hit single, 1988's "Static," from the hip-hop influenced album I'm Real. The drum break to his 1969 song "Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose" became so popular at hip hop dance parties (especially for breakdance) in the late 1970s and early 1980s that hip hop founding father Kurtis Blow calls the song "the national anthem of hip hop."[1]
Later years and death
In spite of his return to the limelight, by the late 1980s, Brown met with a series of legal and financial setbacks. In 1988, he was arrested following a high-speed car chase down Interstate 20 in Augusta. He was imprisoned for threatening pedestrians with firearms and abuse of PCP, as well as for the repercussions of his flight. Although he was sentenced to six years in prison, he was eventually released in 1991 after having only served three. A new album called Love Overdue was released that same year, with the new single "Move On".
During the 1990s and 2000s, Brown was repeatedly arrested for drug possession and domestic abuse. However, he continued to perform regularly and even record, and made appearances in television shows and films such as Blues Brothers 2000. The 1991 four-CD box set Star Time spanned his four-decade career. Nearly all his earlier LPs were re-released on CD, often with additional tracks and commentary by experts on Brown's music. In 1993, James Brown released a new album called Universal James, which spawned the singles "Can't Get Any Harder", "How Long" and "Georgia-Lina". In 1995, the live album Live At The Apollo 1995 was released, featuring a new track recorded in the studio called "Respect Me". It was released as a single that same year. A megamix called "Hooked on Brown" was released as a single in 1996. And in 1998, James Brown released a new studio album, I'm Back, featuring the single "Funk On Ah Roll".
In 2002, James Brown released the album The Next Step, which features the single "Killing is Out, School is In." Brown appeared at Edinburgh 50,000 - The Final Push, the final Live 8 concert, on July 6, 2005, where he did a duet with British pop star Will Young on "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag." He also did a duet with another British pop star, Joss Stone, a week earlier on the UK chat show Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Before his death, he was scheduled to perform a duet with singer Annie Lennox on the song "Vengeance" on her new album Venus, scheduled for release in early 2007.
In 2006, Brown continued his "Seven Decades Of Funk World Tour", to be his last, performing all over the world. His latest shows were still greeted with positive reviews. His last Irish performance was at the Oxegen festival in Punchestown in 2006.
On November 14, 2006, Brown was inducted to the UK Music Hall of Fame. He was one of several inductees that performed at the ceremony.
Brown was admitted to the Emory Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia on December 24, 2006 after a dentist visit where he was found to have severe pneumonia.[6] Brown died the next day on December 25 2006, around 1:45 a.m. of heart failure.(06:45 UTC) at the age of 73. [7]
Personal life and dedications to Brown
Brown had been married four times. He and his last wife Tommie Raye Hynie were married in 2002, but the marriage was annulled. They remarried in 2004 and had one child together. Brown also had two children by his first wife, Velma Warren, and three more by his second, Deidre Jenkins. Adrienne Rodriegues, Brown's third wife, had him arrested four times on charges of assault.
James Brown lived in a riverfront home in Beech Island, South Carolina, directly across the Savannah River from Augusta. On November 11, 1993, Augusta mayor Charles DeVaney held a ceremony during which Augusta's 9th Street was renamed "James Brown Boulevard" in the entertainer's honor. On May 6, 2005, as a seventy-second birthday present for James Brown, the city of Augusta unveiled a seven-foot bronze statue of Brown. The statue was to have been dedicated a year earlier, but the ceremony was put on hold because of a domestic abuse charge Brown was facing at the time. He later forfeited bond on the domestic abuse charge.
On August 22, 2006, the Augusta-Richmond County Coliseum Authority voted to rename the city civic center the James Brown Arena.
Trivia
- Brown was a recipient of Kennedy Center Honors for 2003, and a scheduled 2004 unveiling of a statue of Brown in Augusta was delayed because of James Brown's ongoing legal problems.
- Brown's eyebrows were tattoos.
- In December 2004 Brown was diagnosed with prostate cancer, which was successfully treated with surgery.
- Brown collaborated in the production of Soul Survivor -- The James Brown Story with English director Jeremy Marre.
- Brown held the record for the artist who has charted the most singles on the Billboard Hot 100 without ever hitting number one on that chart.
- At around the time of his legal troubles in the late 1980s, there happened to be a Supreme Court vacancy. Late-night talk-show host Arsenio Hall proposed nominating Brown, because "He's black, he's liberal... and he's familiar with the court system!"
- A mistaken news broadcast reported him as dead in 1992. A sample of that broadcast became the basis of a techno hit for L.A. Style called "James Brown Is Dead". (There were two songs quickly made in response: "James Brown Is Still Alive" by Holy Noise, and "Who the F*** Is James Brown?" by Traumatic Stress.)
- James Brown Jr. was featured as a recurring character on Mad TV, played by Aries Spears. The portrayal was an humorously exaggerated parody of Brown's energetic performing style.
- Brown was the subject of the Tom Tom Club's 1982 hit song, "Genius of Love."
- Brown's 1976 single "Hot" (I Need To Be Loved, Loved, Loved, Loved)" (R&B #31) was a cover of David Bowie's "Fame", not the other way around. The funky riff was provided to co-writers Lennon/Bowie by guitarist Carlos Alomar.
- "Funky President" and "The Payback" were included in the videogame Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, playing on fictional radio station Master Sounds 98.3.
- "The Payback" was prominently played in the film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
- Brown's works have been sampled by a number of the most popular rap artists of the 80's, 90's and 00's.
- In the 1993 movie Mrs. Doubtfire, Daniel Hillard, played by Robin Williams, is joking around in a movie studio with some toy dinosaurs, not realizing that he is being watched by the studio executive, who is impressed with his humor and ingenuity. One of the jokes he makes is with a brontosaurus, saying "Let's welcome Mr. James Browntasaurus," and continuing on to sing a parody of I Got You (I Feel Good), called "I Eat Wood." Because of this scene, Hillard is offered a position and the studio executive sets up a meeting with him to discuss it.
- He appeared at the World Championship Wrestling pay-per-view event SuperBrawl X in 2000, dancing alongside wrestler Ernest "The Cat" Miller.
Discography
For a full listing of albums and singles, see James Brown discography.
Top ten singles
These singles reached the top ten on either the Billboard Hot 100 or the Billboard Top R&B Singles charts.
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Best albums
The question of which were the most critical albums of Mr. Brown's career is debatable. Until the early 1970s, he was famous mostly for his roadshow and singles rather than his albums (his live LPs being a major exception). Many of his early albums include tracks that were recorded in the studio and later overdubbed with the sounds of a live audience in an attempt to recreate the explosive excitement of the original Live at the Apollo. Four James Brown albums, all but one of them compilations, appear on Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time:
- Live at the Apollo (1963)
- In the Jungle Groove (1986)
- Star Time (1991)
- 20 All-Time Greatest Hits! (1991)
The following albums, originally released as double LP records, feature extensive playing by the legendary JB's. They have been a prolific source of samples for later musical artists:
- The Payback (1973)
- Get on the Good Foot (1972)
- Hell (1974)
The Live at the Apollo Vol. 2 double LP album, released in 1968, was notably influential on then-contemporary musicians. It remains an example of Mr. Brown's highly energetic live performances and audience interaction, as well as documenting the metamorphosis of his music from R&B and soul styles into hard funk.
Chronological collections
In addition to the career-spanning Star Time, Polydor released a series of CD collections devoted to specific periods in Brown's long career, similar to Columbia Records' Miles Davis boxed sets.
- Roots of a Revolution (2 CD; covers 1956-1964)
- Foundations of Funk: A Brand New Bag, 1964-1969 (2 CD)
- Funk Power 1970: A Brand New Thang (1 CD)
- Make It Funky - The Big Payback: 1971-1975 (2 CD)
- Dead on the Heavy Funk, 1975-1983(2 CD)
Two other collections anthologize Brown's instrumental recordings with his 60s band and the JBs:
- Soul Pride: The Instrumentals (1960-69) (2 CD)
- Funky Good Time: The Anthology (2 CD; covers 1970-1976)
Sample
References
- ^ Brown, James (2005). I Feel Good : A Memoir of a Life of Soul. NAL Hardcover. 045-121393-9.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
rollwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ "Little Richard". Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Retrieved from http://www.rockhall.com/hof/inductee.asp?id=179 on October 28, 2006.
- ^ "James Brown Biography". allmusic.
{{cite web}}: Unknown parameter|at ccessdate=ignored (help) - ^ Nelson George, The Death of Rhythm & Blues (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), 101.
- ^ Agent: James Brown hospitalized with pneumonia CNN. December 24 2006.
- ^ http://www.depothillmedia.com/news.php?item.29.4 "Godfather Of Soul" dies at 73 - Depot Hill Media. December 25 2006.
External links
- James Brown - Godfather of Soul, Brown's official site.
- The James Brown Burn Team
- James Brown discography
- BBC Obituary: James Brown
- Burnett, Bugs. "Audience With the Godfather" -- Interview. The Hour, December 21, 2006.
- Lethem, Jonathan. "Being James Brown" -- Interview. Rolling Stone, June 12, 2006. with audio.
- James Brown at IMDb
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- Photo archive of James Brown by rock photographer Chris Walter
- James Brown
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- American soul musicians
- American rhythm and blues singers
- American funk musicians
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