James Brown:James Brown, who has died aged 73 of congestive heart failure, was a dominant force in the development of African-American music and culture from the 1960s onwards. He was still performing up to his death. The day before he was hospitalised with pneumonia, he was at his annual Christmas toy giveaway in Atlanta, Georgia, and looking forward to giving a New Year's Eve concert.
Not that Brown was ever comfortable with such a politically correct notion as African-American. He was first and foremost of and for the US. Secondly, he remained defiantly a southerner. And, although he was unashamedly black, he had a lot more Cherokee Indian and, as he maintained, Mongolian blood in him than any special connection or empathy with Africa - despite being hailed as some kind of homecoming hero when touring that continent. Latterly, he saw himself as Universal James.
From the degradation and apparent hopelessness of an apparently stillborn delivery in a rural shack in the segregated southern US - he was resuscitated only when it was noticed that his body had stayed warm - he fiercely drove himself to become an internationally renowned, massively influential icon of his own invention, the Godfather of Soul.
Like other sobriquets - the Hardest Working Man in Showbusiness was an earlier claim, Minister of New Super Heavy Funk a later pitch - GOS was OTT, but it was the one that stuck and most befitted the nature of the man and his Taurean charge at life. His career thundered or faltered more in accordance with the strengths and pitfalls of his relentless ego and determination to be Somebody than any believable script. The fallout of his monumental drive "to the bridge" is a persistently resonating pulse that informs the dance of opportunity for all of us, of any creed or colour.
Brown's professional recording career lasted more than 40 years, but it was the decade from 1965 to 1974 that circumscribed his most extraordinary achievements. During that turbulent era of civil rights upheaval and war in Vietnam, he exploded from the launch pad of "chitlin circuit" stardom (named after the characteristic dish of boiled pig's intestines), playing the chain of "safe" black venues in the south and east, to become a national spokesman for black America.
By then independently controlling his own affairs, he hob-nobbed with politicos and cultural luminaries, was feted by the White House and was credited with helping greatly to calm the streets immediately after the assassination of Martin Luther King in April 1968.
He bought three of the then five black-owned US radio stations, launched his own soul food restaurants and food stamps programme, entertained in Africa and for US troops in Vietnam. He commanded attention. He was on an unprecedented, socially provocative roll while all the while maintaining a punishing schedule with his frenetic stage show.
By the mid-1970s, his political and business naivety had backfired. Nonetheless, it was during those 10 years that he and, just as importantly, the changing ensembles of talented musicians he employed, inspired and bullied, created music that was challenging, exhilarating, fuelled with passion and a rhythmic intensity unlike anything before.
In January 1986 he was inducted as one of the 10 charter members into the US music industry's Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame. The other worthies were either dead or well beyond their "best before" date. Brown was concurrently riding his biggest international hit for more than a decade (Living in America, appropriately soundtracked in the bullish movie Rocky IV) at the very time his back catalogue was being plundered by a new international generation.
Brown was born in 1933 in the pine woods outside Barnwell, South Carolina, to parents who soon separated, leaving him in the care of an "aunt" who ran a whorehouse across the Savannah River in nearby Augusta, Georgia. A ragged waif with limited education but street nous, his early focus on sport and music was interrupted by four years in the slammer for petty theft.
Paroled in 1952 in Toccoa, Georgia, he was taken in by the family of Bobby Byrd, leader of the Gospel Starlighters. After "wrecking the church" as a fervent gospeller with Sarah Byrd (an innate gift he later parodied in the 1980 movie, The Blues Brothers), he then joined Bobby's group.
With their secular heads on, known as the Avons, their performances drew inspiration from a variety of sources including Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five, the jump-jive of Joe Turner, Roy Brown and Wynonie Harris, the close-knit harmonies of groups such as the Ink Spots and Orioles, and the newly emergent R&B of Billy Ward's Dominoes, Clyde McPhatter & the Drifters, the Clovers and suchlike.
Byrd's Avons became the Famous Flames with Brown at the forefront and relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, in pursuit of local tearaway Little Richard. In 1955, Richard had a hit with Tutti Frutti and decamped to Los Angeles for an incandescent if brief eruption of some of the greatest rock'n'roll records ever made. Brown temporarily emulated Richard on stage but eschewed rock'n' roll when the Famous Flames went into the studio in February 1956. Instead, they cut a tortured, gospel-derived personalisation of an Orioles version of the Big Joe Williams's blues, Baby Please Don't Go. They called it Please, Please, Please. It has sold millions over the years and remained Brown's cape-flourishing, knee-dropping homage to his past throughout his career.
Despite their initial territorial success, Brown and a changing vocal group struggled in southern obscurity until a second hit in late 1958 (Try Me, a more romantic supplication) convinced Ben Bart, owner of Universal Attractions Booking Agency, to become Brown's personal manager, business mentor and surrogate "pops". Recruiting his first small band of regular musicians, and with his teeth, hair and wardrobe made over, by 1962 Brown was breaking box office records in major black venues throughout the US with a whirlwind revue of his own creation that synthesised all of his roots into a shockingly unique new persona. Live at the Apollo, the resulting LP recorded at the top New York venue, smashed him into the face of white recognition.
Brown formed his own independent company, Fair Deal Productions, and rebuilt his band into a sizeable orchestra with the intention of crossing the tracks at Tuxedo Junction. The prevailing social climate in the US, Brown's responses to the situation, and that his new recruits were mostly restless young jazzers, sparked them all off into uncharted territory.
It was Out of Sight, Papa Got a Brand New Bag. A Man's World bathed in Cold Sweat. He Said it Loud, was Black and Proud and danced the Popcorn. In a New Day it was Funky Now. He was Super Bad, a Sex Machine with Soul Power. He had his Thang and Papa Didn't Take No Mess, he demanded Payback. This litany of just a few of his more familiar titles does little justice to the underlying tour de force, involving three effectively different bands over 10 years, that changed the direction of black American music.
But by 1975, Brown was being outflanked in the charts by many of the younger acts he had inspired, he was on shaky ground with his record company, Polydor (a dispassionate international corporation, unlike the seat-of-the-pants operation with which he had grown strong), some of his leading musicians left him and the taxman was on his case.
It was then that he apparently began smoking something rather more confusing than the occasional menthol and began rehashing his old hits, following trends instead of creating them. He seemed to be settling into his establishment-honoured role as a living legend, until 1987. That year saw him back in a southern jail, this time for throwing a drug-fuelled tantrum, brandishing a shotgun and nearly getting himself shot in a Keystone Cops chase around state borders.
Released in 1991, a lesser man might have deemed it prudent to retire gracefully. Brown dusted himself off, ordered a new spangle suit, assembled another band and charged forth once again. It was never the same as his heyday, but it remained an audience with a formidable personality.
Another car chase in 1998 led to a drug rehabilitation programme, and in 2004 he was arrested on charges of domestic violence against his fourth wife, Tomi Rae Hynie. She survives him, as do their son and at least three other children.
James Brown: born May 3rd, 1933; died December 25th, 2006.