The Hardest Working Man in Show Business

We lost one of the towering figures in American music yesterday. James Brown, the Godfather Of Soul left us on Christmas Day 2006. He was called “The Hardest-Working Man in Show Business,” and with good reason — Soul Brother James was still touring, singing and dancing at a pace that would exhaust a man half his age. He was performing right up to the end, at age 73.

It’s a worthy title, but James Brown was much more important to American music than that. James Brown was born in the South during the Depression, working odd jobs as a boy to support his family. He had a hard childhood and spent time in juvenile corrections. After his release he joined a gospel group with the intention of turning himself around. He wrote & sang on their first (and only) Top Ten hit, before going solo. As a solo artist, his unique sense of rhythm asserted itself. A James Brown song had an unusually persistent rhythm, with jarring vocal stabs — Brown would often scream “wow,” “yeah” and “get down” in time with the beat, adding punctuation to the song and giving it more punch. By the mid-1960s, Brown had refined this sound into a wildly energetic & danceable style, creating what people call funk. The new sound was a huge hit and has influenced hundreds of performers who came after, from P-Funk to Snoop Dogg.

Brown was touring and performing regularly from the early 60s to the late 80s, touching on the new sounds that he’d influenced like disco and early hip-hop, until he was jailed for a driving offense in 1988. After being released in 1991, he went right back to work and released new albums. Other legal problems dogged him, but nothing slowed him down until he was diganosed with prostate cancer in 2004.

James Brown’s effect on American music can’t be underestimated. While we’re sorry to lose him, we take some comfort in knowing that his music will live on. We’ll always be grateful to him for spending his life trying to keep the party going. For an in-depth look into the mind of a great musicians, click HERE and HERE. And to get a feel for what made James Brown the Godfather, here’s a clip of one of his legendary TV performances.

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This entry was posted by A.Rehak on Tuesday, December 26th, 2006 at 3:06 pm