NEWS: James Brown: 1933-2006

MUSIC: James Brown: 1933-2006

The Godfather of Soul is has passed away. Hospitalized for pneumonia on Sunday night, James Brown was pronounced dead at 1:45 AM Christmas morning due to congestive heart failure. It would have been his seventy-third Christmas.



Say what you will about the man's lucidity, or lack there-of over the last few years, Brown's contribution to all manner of pop music is undeniable. Tagged "the hardest working man in show business", Brown has been an active touring artist since 1956, when his single "Please, Please, Please" became his first R&B hit.



Through the late 1950's and 1960's Brown danced his way over countless stages both nationally and abroad, releasing hit single after hit single. He quickly became an international icon of American soul music, with a stage presence that was imitated by white rock artists as disparate as Mick Jagger and Ian Svenonious,



Brown's heavy funk of the 1970's laid the groundwork for new musical forms as well. The number of Brown samples that have been looped over and over again by various hip hop, R&B and dance artists is staggering. As Brown modestly claimed in a 1989 interview, "the music out there is only as good as my last record." In 1986, Brown was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.



Two years later, Brown's issues with drugs caught up with him. In the midst of a PCP binge, the Godfather walked into an insurance seminar in an office next-door to his own and allegedly asked the participants if they had been using his private bathroom. Brown was sentenced to a six-year jail sentence, but only spent about a year in a South Carolina prison and 10-months in a work-release program. Soon, Brown was back on stage doing what he did best.



Brown continuied to perform throughout the 1990's and well into the new millenium. However, his drug dependency dogged him and anyone's that seen the man speak to the media in the last ten or so years knows he has been living on another planet. Regardless, Brown will be missed and remembered as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century; he created a legacy that laid the groundwork for a lot of what we recognize as pop music today. Mr. Brown, we can only hope you're dancing in a better place. Rest in peace, Godfather.

RIP.

So sad. I'm starting to regret my decision to see Tool instead of him when they both played in my town on the same night.

He is a legend.

awwwww man. that sucks....

Papas got a brand new bag.

Mr. Please, Please, Please......where ever you are I know you're going to have a Funky Good Time and take it HIGHER!!!........show them Angles or Demons how to get on the Good Foot!

So long, Godfather of Soul!

Qué pasa people, qué pasa ...hit me!

Ooh!
Get on down like a...
Unh!
I wanna get on the good foot
Ho! Good foot
I got to get on the good foot-ah

Going down to the crib
Let all hang out
Where soulful people knows what it's about-ah
Going down to the crib
And let it all hang out-ah
Where soulful people knows what it's about-ah

Where people do the sign and take your hands-ah
And dancin' to the music James Brown band... mmm

They're dancing on the good foot
I got to get on the good foot
Got to do it on the good foot
Do it with the good foot

Said the long-hair hippies and the afro blacks
They all get together across the tracks
And they PARTY
Ho! On the good foot
You know they dance on the good foot
Dance on the good foot

Ain't nothing goin' on now
But the rent-ah
A whole lotta bills and my money's spent
Mmm
And that's on my bad foot
Whoa, unh

You know my face gettin' short and I got the blues
I got a funky job and I paid my dues on the good foot
Ho! On the good foot
I got to get on the good foot
Hey! On the good foot
Get on the good foot
Come over!

Hit it there
You got to
Get it
Get it
Sharper now, unh!

Come on, get it-ah
Hunh!

On the good foot
On the good foot
Ho! On the good foot
Get on the good foot
On the good foot
On the good foot
Ho! Get on the good foot
On the good foot

Bass! Bass-ah!

Get it there
Get it there
Ho!
Now bass

Play on it now

Come on
Get it-ah

Get it
Get on the good foot
Ooh!
I got to get on the good foot
Ooh!
Get on the good foot
Ho!
Take care of business, sister, I'm your fella



The band up there just got themselves a new frontman. RIP Godfather!

I heard about it this morning, so sad. I am thininking not today of all days. Mah he rest in peace.

may he rest in piece

you shall be missed .......

no matter what your age he touched us all with his music. he will be missed...but never forgotten.

I miss him already! The Good Die Young!

Merry Christmas JB

RIP.

RIP!!!

Not to rain (snow?) on everyone's funeral, but he's totally lip-synching up there in that video. He isn't even carrying an unplugged mic!

The idiot viewers got the exact song note for note as they would hear it on records and the radio, the network (or J.B., depending on how badly he was getting screwed by the network or show) didn't have to pay to bring the entire band and their equipment, so I'd consider this more a segment of "Dancing with the Stars."

Shout it loud!
...

I remember how James's soul changed us as much as anything going on in the civil rights movement. Look at the YouTube clip above, all those suburban white kids in their Bandstand suits and ties gathered around the dance floor... and try to imagine the influence he had on us. The man was truly one of a kind.

Rest easy, brother.

Yeah, I saw this somewhere else.
That sucks.

BETTER THAN JESUS.

I'm a JB fan, but I think you're largely overplaying the case you're trying to make.

As late as the mid-eighties I remember white kids who worshipped Hendrix or (insert black celeb here) saying things like "Well, there's niggers and then there's black people like my friend (insert suburban black classmate here) or (insert black celeb here, usually Eddie Murphy).

Those kids up there and their contemporaries loved Sammy Davis Jr too. Until he married a white (albeit Swedish) woman and kissed a white woman on the Tonight Show couch.

It's to some degree how gays were hated but Liberace or David Bowie were fine so long as they didn't confirm their gayness. I have a homophobe bro-in-law who's probably the biggest Bowie fan I've ever known.

I am shocked. SHOCKED, to learn that a tv show in the 1960's would have a performer come on and lip synch. Say it ain't so!

Seriously man, if you didn't want to "rain on everyone's funeral", why would you bother to mention it? In the first place, it's fucking obvious he's lip-synching. We can see for ourselves there's no mic and no band. So was the point of your post just to piss on the man's grave?

Kinda reminds me of that scene in "Do the Right Thing".

I think, judging from this, which posted while I was writing my previous reply, that I misjudged you, so apologies for the hostile tone of that reply.

guess he didnt feel so good after all......

The King of Rock n' Roll has been dead.
The Godfather of Soul has passed... the pillars of music are crumbling down


May the music keep them immortalized.