James Brown (born May 3, 1933, Barnwell,
S.C.,
U.S.—died
Dec. 25,
2006,
Atlanta, Ga.)
American singer, songwriter, arranger, and dancer, who was one of the most important and influential entertainers in
20th-century popular music and whose remarkable achievements earned him the sobriquet "the Hardest-Working Man in
Show Business."
Brown was raised mainly in
Augusta, Ga., by his great-aunt, who took him in at about the age of five when his parents divorced.
Growing up in the segregated
South during the
Great Depression of the
1930s, Brown was so impoverished that he was sent home from grade school for "insufficient clothes," an experience that he never forgot and that perhaps explains his penchant as an adult for wearing ermine coats, velour jumpsuits, elaborate capes, and conspicuous gold jewelry.
Neighbours taught him how to play drums, piano, and guitar, and he learned about gospel music in churches and at tent revivals, where preachers would scream, yell, stomp their feet, and fall to their knees during sermons to provoke responses from the congregation. Brown sang for his classmates and competed in local talent shows but initially thought more about a career in baseball or boxing than in music.
At age 15 Brown and some companions were arrested while breaking into cars. He was sentenced to 8 to 16 years of incarceration but was released after 3 years for good behaviour. While at the
Alto Reform School, he formed a gospel group. Subsequently secularized and renamed the
Flames (later the
Famous Flames), it soon attracted the attention of rhythm-and-blues and rock-and-roll shouter
Little Richard, whose manager helped promote the group. Intrigued by their demo record,
Ralph Bass, the artists-and-repertoire man for the
King label, brought the group to
Cincinnati, Ohio, to record for
King Records's subsidiary
Federal. The label's owner,
Syd Nathan, hated
Brown's first recording, "
Please, Please, Please" (
1956), but the record eventually sold three million copies and launched Brown's extraordinary career. Along with placing nearly
100 singles and almost 50 albums on the best-seller charts, Brown broke new ground with two of the first successful "live and in concert" albums—his landmark
Live at the Apollo (
1963), which stayed on the charts for 66 weeks, and his 1964 follow-up,
Pure Dynamite!
Live at the
Royal, which charted for 22 weeks.
During the
1960s Brown was known as "
Soul Brother Number One." His hit recordings of that decade have often been associated with the emergence of the black aesthetic and black nationalist movements, especially the songs "
Say It Loud—I'm
Black and I'm
Proud" (
1968), "
Don't Be a Drop-Out" (1966), and "I
Don't Want Nobody to
Give Me
Nothin' (
Open Up the
Door,
I'll Get It Myself)" (
1969). Politicians recruited him to help calm cities struck by civil insurrection and avidly courted his endorsement
. In the 1970s Brown became "the
Godfather of Soul," and his hit songs stimulated several dance crazes and were featured on the sound tracks of a number of "blaxploitation" films (sensational, low-budget, action-oriented motion pictures with
African American protagonists). When hip-hop emerged as a viable commercial music in the
1980s, Brown's songs again assumed centre stage as hip-hop disc jockeys frequently incorporated samples (audio snippets) from his records. He also appeared in several motion pictures, including
The Blues Brothers (
1980) and
Rocky IV (
1985), and attained global status as a celebrity, especially in
Africa, where his tours attracted enormous crowds and generated a broad range of new musical fusions. Yet Brown's life continued to be marked by difficulties, including the tragic death of his third wife, charges of drug use, and a period of imprisonment for a
1988 high-speed highway chase in which he tried to escape pursuing police officers.
http://www.biography.com/articles/James-Brown-9228350
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- published: 13 Sep 2014
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