James Brown Is Dead R.i.p

[terryp]

Atlanta (dpa) - US singer James Brown, known as the "Godfather of Soul," died early Monday at the age of 73, news reports said.

Brown had been hospitalised with pneumonia in the US city of Atlanta on Sunday, reports quoting his agent said. The cause of death was not immediately confirmed.

Born in 1933, Brown was charismatic and controversial performer who earned the title "the hardest working man in show business."

One of the founding fathers of soul and funk music, Brown was a seminal stylistic influence who laid the foundations for many modern genres. Classic compositions included "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," "It's a Man's Man's Man's World," and "Get Up (I Feel Like Being Like A) Sex Machine."

[Buckwheat]

Great talent. Loved his work.

R.I.P GoS

[mbkudu]

James Brown was the best.

[Archie Bunker]

Good Riddance Wife Beater

[Upcountry]

Christmas, too bad, otherwise it would be his biggest radio day in decades (popular music stations are too busy playing other funky Christmas songs)....

[soi lurker]

You must have known him well archie, im sure your not going by what uve read and heard.

[girlx]

i went to elementary school right across the street from the house he grew up in. i used to see him occasionally. love his music. RIP

[Vespa]

He Paid The Cost To Be The Boss

[Who, me ?]

Atlanta (dpa) - US singer James Brown, known as the "Godfather of Soul," died early Monday at the age of 73, news reports said.

Brown had been hospitalised with pneumonia in the US city of Atlanta on Sunday, reports quoting his agent said. The cause of death was not immediately confirmed.

Born in 1933, Brown was charismatic and controversial performer who earned the title "the hardest working man in show business."

One of the founding fathers of soul and funk music, Brown was a seminal stylistic influence who laid the foundations for many modern genres. Classic compositions included "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," "It's a Man's Man's Man's World," and "Get Up (I Feel Like Being Like A) Sex Machine."

This is not a Merry Christmas anymore....RIP, James.....

[Archie Bunker]

i went to elementary school right across the street from the house he grew up in. i used to see him occasionally. love his music. RIP

Oh yeah? Where was that? Harlem, South Bronx or Watts?

[Archie Bunker]

You must have known him well archie, im sure your not going by what uve read and heard.

Hey dude, you got 499 posts

[thaihome]

i went to elementary school right across the street from the house he grew up in. i used to see him occasionally. love his music. RIP

Oh yeah? Where was that? Harlem, South Bronx or Watts?

How about Augusta, Georgia.

Very sorry to hear this. though he had some problems, his music was great and he had a good heart. I saw him a couple of times in the store near his house in New Ellington, South Carlolinia, it was the first place to get a beer after work.

TH

[rollergirl]

Good Riddance Wife Beater

Is there really any need for this, nobody likes a smart arse.

[chonabot]

RIP Dude.

Watch yerself Archie.....

[chuchok]

Well, it won't quite feel the same, when the wife starts singing "i feel good....." to me when I have a big hangover...

RIP

[tutsiwarrior]

for as long as I had an appreciation of R&B music there was James Brown...I remember making love to my girlfriend in Bolivia with 'It is a man's world' on the box in 1966...

godam, godam...rest in peace James...

[redrus]

ATLANTA, Dec. 25, 2006

By GREG BLUESTEIN Associated Press Writer

(AP)

(AP) James Brown, the dynamic, pompadoured "Godfather of Soul," whose rasping vocals and revolutionary rhythms made him a founder of rap, funk and disco as well, died early Monday, his agent said. He was 73.

Brown was hospitalized with pneumonia at Emory Crawford Long Hospital on Sunday and died around 1:45 a.m. Monday, said his agent, Frank Copsidas of Intrigue Music. Longtime friend Charles Bobbit was by his side, he said.

Copsidas said the cause of death was uncertain. "We really don't know at this point what he died of," he said.

Pete Allman, a radio personality in Las Vegas who had been friends with Brown for 15 years, credited Brown with jump-starting his career and motivating him personally and professionally.

"He was a very positive person. There was no question he was the hardest working man in show business," Allman said. "I remember Mr. Brown as someone who always motivated me, got me reading the Bible."

Along with Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and a handful of others, Brown was one of the major musical influences of the past 50 years. At least one generation idolized him, and sometimes openly copied him. His rapid-footed dancing inspired Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson among others. Songs such as David Bowie's "Fame," Prince's "Kiss," George Clinton's "Atomic Dog" and Sly and the Family Stone's "Sing a Simple Song" were clearly based on Brown's rhythms and vocal style.

If Brown's claim to the invention of soul can be challenged by fans of Ray Charles and Sam Cooke, then his rights to the genres of rap, disco and funk are beyond question. He was to rhythm and dance music what Dylan was to lyrics: the unchallenged popular innovator.

"James presented obviously the best grooves," rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy once told The Associated Press. "To this day, there has been no one near as funky. No one's coming even close."

His hit singles include such classics as "Out of Sight," "(Get Up I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine," "I Got You (I Feel Good)" and "Say It Loud _ I'm Black and I'm Proud," a landmark 1968 statement of racial pride.

"I clearly remember we were calling ourselves colored, and after the song, we were calling ourselves black," Brown said in a 2003 Associated Press interview. "The song showed even people to that day that lyrics and music and a song can change society."

He won a Grammy award for lifetime achievement in 1992, as well as Grammys in 1965 for "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" (best R&B recording) and for "Living In America" in 1987 (best R&B vocal performance, male.) He was one of the initial artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, along with Presley, Chuck Berry and other founding fathers.

He triumphed despite an often unhappy personal life. Brown, who lived in Beech Island near the Georgia line, spent more than two years in a South Carolina prison for aggravated assault and failing to stop for a police officer. After his release on in 1991, Brown said he wanted to "try to straighten out" rock music.

From the 1950s, when Brown had his first R&B hit, "Please, Please, Please" in 1956, through the mid-1970s, Brown went on a frenzy of cross-country tours, concerts and new songs. He earned the nickname "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business."

With his tight pants, shimmering feet, eye makeup and outrageous hair, Brown set the stage for younger stars such as Michael Jackson and Prince.

In 1986, he was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And rap stars of recent years overwhelmingly have borrowed his lyrics with a digital technique called sampling.

Brown's work has been replayed by the Fat Boys, Ice-T, Public Enemy and a host of other rappers. "The music out there is only as good as my last record," Brown joked in a 1989 interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

"Disco is James Brown, hip-hop is James Brown, rap is James Brown; you know what I'm saying? You hear all the rappers, 90 percent of their music is me," he told the AP in 2003.

Born in poverty in Barnwell, S.C., in 1933, he was abandoned as a 4-year-old to the care of relatives and friends and grew up on the streets of Augusta, Ga., in an "ill-repute area," as he once called it. There he learned to wheel and deal.

"I wanted to be somebody," Brown said.

By the eighth grade in 1949, Brown had served 3 1/2 years in Alto Reform School near Toccoa, Ga., for breaking into cars.

While there, he met Bobby Byrd, whose family took Brown into their home. Byrd also took Brown into his group, the Gospel Starlighters. Soon they changed their name to the Famous Flames and their style to hard R&B.

In January 1956, King Records of Cincinnati signed the group, and four months later "Please, Please, Please" was in the R&B Top Ten.

While most of Brown's life was glitz and glitter, he was plagued with charges of abusing drugs and alcohol and of hitting his third wife, Adrienne.

In September 1988, Brown, high on PCP and carrying a shotgun, entered an insurance seminar next to his Augusta office. Police said he asked seminar participants if they were using his private restroom.

Police chased Brown for a half-hour from Augusta into South Carolina and back to Georgia. The chase ended when police shot out the tires of his truck.

Brown received a six-year prison sentence. He spent 15 months in a South Carolina prison and 10 months in a work release program before being paroled in February 1991. In 2003, the South Carolina parole board granted him a pardon for his crimes in that state.

Soon after his release, Brown was on stage again with an audience that included millions of cable television viewers nationwide who watched the three-hour, pay-per-view concert at Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles.

Adrienne Brown died in 1996 in Los Angeles at age 47. She took PCP and several prescription drugs while she had a bad heart and was weak from cosmetic surgery two days earlier, the coroner said.

More recently, he married his fourth wife, Tomi Raye Hynie, one of his backup singers. The couple had a son, James Jr.

Two years later, Brown spent a week in a private Columbia hospital, recovering from what his agent said was dependency on painkillers. Brown's attorney, Albert "Buddy" Dallas, said singer was exhausted from six years of road shows.

RIP

redrus

[chutai]

Santa Clause, go straight to the ghetto.

Santa Clause, go straight to the ghetto.

Tell him James Brown sent you. Ha!

Go straight to the ghetto.

You know that I know that you will see

Cause' that was once. Me.

RIP

[girlx]

i went to elementary school right across the street from the house he grew up in. i used to see him occasionally. love his music. RIP

Oh yeah? Where was that? Harlem, South Bronx or Watts?

How about Augusta, Georgia.

yep right outside augusta in hephzibah, georgia

[tutsiwarrior]

for the past few days I've had an apparition of James Brown singing 'Please, please, please me' where he collapses on stage, and bandmembers wrap him inna cape to lead him off stage for him to throw off the cape, grab the mike and start screaming again...the actual performance is on film...

it was prescient...I should have known that he was dyin'...

I haven't been this sad for ages...popular American music, and the R&B genre in particular is one of the positive things that the US has given to the world...James Brown helped to define that genre...he was a giant...

Edited December 25, 2006 by tutsiwarrior

[tutsiwarrior]

also...for those that are into trivia, I read somewhere that Jimi Hendrix played in JB's band as a young musician...you can hear the distinct R&B influence on some of his more obscure compositions...

Edited December 25, 2006 by tutsiwarrior

[raro]

what a big loss!

[Boon Mee]

RIP: Sex Machine (James in his prime) you'll be missed.

[Mighty Mouse]

Ugly looking bugger but a great entertainer.....RIP

[Boon Mee]

Last Words? - "I do not feel good"

[Jockstar]

So sad to hear that. But he had a good life. R.I.P. James. At least his music will live on.

[Sing_Sling]

Good Riddance Wife Beater

Is there really any need for this, nobody likes a smart arse.

He's not being a smart-arse, he's right.

Great musician, a failure as a man.

[helicoptor]

He was a surpise support act for RHCP in Manchester a couple of years ago, he had 60,000 people jumping.. including me.

A great loss to the music industry, he was no saint, true - but I'm thinking.. 'he who is without sin, cast the first stone'

And I'm not even religious!!!

Great Singer, totally incoherent when talking, remember Eddie Murphys mpression of him in ''Delirious'

RIP

[tutsiwarrior]

He was a surpise support act for RHCP in Manchester a couple of years ago, he had 60,000 people jumping.. including me.

A great loss to the music industry, he was no saint, true - but I'm thinking.. 'he who is without sin, cast the first stone'

And I'm not even religious!!!

Great Singer, totally incoherent when talking, remember Eddie Murphys mpression of him in ''Delirious'

RIP

yeah...and sum folks on this forum despise Roman Polanski as a 'child molester' for liking young girls, totally neglecting his contribution to world cinema...

fcukin' idiots...great artists have a higher profile than the rest of us carrion eaters...a bit of liege majeste(sp?) should be considered...

Edited December 26, 2006 by tutsiwarrior

[jing jing]

RIP: Sex Machine (James in his prime) you'll be missed.

Thanks for the link Boon Mee. RIP James Brown, Godfather of Soul.

I prefer to judge the artist for his work rather than the details of his personal life, as I wasn't there, don't know exactly what the circumstances were, and frankly don't give a flying <deleted>.