A 1963 live album from a Harlem theatre that he financed himself after his label refused to pay for it (1963)
Live at the Apollo, recorded October 1962; it reached number two on the US album chart.
Popular music · Soul, funk & R&B
James Brown
1933–2006 · American
Soul and funk; the Godfather of Soul
James Brown turned soul into funk by pushing the emphasis onto the first beat of the bar and treating every instrument, including his voice, as percussion. Billed as the Hardest-Working Man in Show Business, he built a reputation on ferociously drilled live performance, and his rhythm tracks became the most sampled records in the history of hip-hop.
How to spot them
- ▸Titles: the Godfather of Soul, the Hardest-Working Man in Show Business, Mr Dynamite, Soul Brother Number One
- ▸'On the one' — the accent thrown onto the downbeat, with the band playing riffs rather than chord changes
- ▸The cape routine, in which MC Danny Ray drapes a cape over his shoulders as he collapses, and he throws it off to sing again
- ▸Bands: the Famous Flames, then the J.B.'s with Bootsy Collins, Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley
- ▸Fining musicians on stage for wrong notes, signalled with a hand gesture
Songs & albums
A 1965 single built on a hard downbeat and a choked guitar, usually named the first funk record (1965)
'Papa's Got a Brand New Bag' — it won him his first Grammy.
A 1965 follow-up in which the singer announces he is in fine spirits because he has her (1965)
'I Got You (I Feel Good)' — his highest-charting pop single, at number three.
A 1966 ballad conceding that every invention and empire would count for nothing without a woman (1966)
'It's a Man's Man's Man's World', co-credited to Betty Jean Newsome.
A 1968 call-and-response chant of racial pride, answered on the record by a crowd of Los Angeles children (1968)
'Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud', released two months after Martin Luther King's assassination.
A 1970 record whose drum break by Clyde Stubblefield became the most sampled passage in hip-hop (1970)
'Funky Drummer' — sampled by Public Enemy, N.W.A, Run-DMC, LL Cool J and hundreds more.
A 1985 patriotic theme from the fourth film in a boxing series, which won him his only competitive Grammy of the decade (1985)
'Living in America', from Rocky IV, produced by Dan Hartman.
Quick-fire facts
- •Born in Barnwell, South Carolina, in 1933 and raised in Augusta, Georgia, partly in his aunt's brothel; he served time for theft as a teenager
- •His first hit, 'Please, Please, Please', appeared on King Records in 1956, credited to James Brown and the Famous Flames
- •He had seventeen number ones on the US R&B chart but never topped the pop chart
- •His concert at the Boston Garden on 5 April 1968, televised live the night after Martin Luther King's assassination, is credited with keeping the city calm
- •He toured Vietnam for US troops in 1968 and endorsed Richard Nixon in 1972, to the anger of parts of his audience
- •He was in the first class of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees in 1986, inducted by Steve Winwood
- •He received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992 and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003
- •He appeared as a preacher in The Blues Brothers (1980)
- •He died of heart failure in Atlanta on Christmas Day 2006, aged 73
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- James Brown — Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
- RJ Smith — The One: The Life and Music of James Brown