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James Brown, born May 3, 1933, in Barnwell, South Carolina (some sources list his year of birth as 1928 and his birthplace as Pulaski, Tennessee), is one of the most important figures in twentieth-century music, whose career has been a study in the evolution of gospel and rhythm-and-blues into soul music and funk. As a singer, dancer and bandleader, he has influenced popular musicians since the 1960s, been cited as an influence by jazz musicians such as Miles Davis, and, with the advent of rap music and hip-hop, has seen his rhythmic innovations used as samples in countless songs.

James Brown's innovations in funk music have been extraordinarily influential. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, his irresistible sound spawned countless imitators. By the mid 70s, several of his key band members (Bootsy Collins, Fred Wesley, and Maceo Parker) had left James Brown and joined forces with George Clinton to create a new type of funky music, now collectively referred to as P-Funk. With the advent of hip hop in the late 70s, James Brown's grooves became the foundation for rap music and breakdancing, as DJs such as Grandmaster Flash looped and extended the drum breaks from earlier JB favorites like "Give It Up Or Turn It A Loose." In the late 1980s, James Brown's music experienced a renaissance with the rise of sampling by Hip Hop producers. Snippets of his songs were recycled into hundreds of rap songs and continue to appear in electronic music to this day.

Brown grew up in Augusta, Georgia in a poor family. As a teenager he turned to petty crime and was eventually sent to prison. Securing an early release after three years, under the condition that he not return to Augusta or Richmond County, Brown turned his considerable energy to music, transforming the vocal band The Gospel Starlighters into the first generation of the Famous Flames.

He began to tour relentlessly (Brown often calls himself The Hardest Working Man In Show Business) and the band built a following with their live shows. Musically they played a brand of tight rhythm and blues that would later be known as funk, and mixed with Brown's trademark screams and melodramatic stage persona, they were capable of whipping crowds into a frenzy. While their early singles were local hits, and performed well on the r&b chart, the band was not nationally successful until this live show was captured on record, on Brown's self-financed Live at the Apollo in 1963. During this time Brown recorded for the Cincinnati, Ohio-based King Records, presided over by Syd Nathan.

Brown followed this success with a string of singles that essentially defined funk music. "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" and "I Got You (I Feel Good)" featured deceptively simple riffs on horn and guitar locked into a compelling groove by the bass guitar. The 1967 "Cold Sweat" marked a radical departure into more abstract music, and critics have come to see this recording as a high mark in the music of the 1960s, although at the time the innovations of Brown were overshadowed by the somewhat more superficial work of the Beatles. Brown employed musicians and arrangers who had come up through the jazz tradition, and his genius as a bandleader and songwriter was to marry the simplicity and drive of r&b to the rhythmic complexity and precision of jazz music, something other musicians were doing, to be sure, but not as aggressively and single-mindedly as Brown. Mixed in with his more famous rhythmic essays of the era were ballads and even Broadway show tunes. As the 1960s went on, Brown would refine this style further on "Licking Stick-Licking Stick" (recorded 1968), "Funky Drummer" (recorded 1969) and add socio-political comment on the 1968 "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)."

By 1970 and his superb "Get Up (I Feel Like Being) A Sex Machine" (recorded in Nashville, Tennessee), his "classic" '60s band, featuring guitarist Jimmy Nolen, saxophonist Maceo Parker, and trombonist Fred Wesley, had left him, and he employed a new band that included Bootsy Collins. In the early '70s he began recording for Polydor Records, and beginning in the late '60s many of his sidemen and supporting players, such as Fred Wesley, Bobby Byrd, Lyn Collins and Hank Ballard, released records on Brown's subsidiary labels like People. These recordings are as much a part of Brown's legacy as those released under his own name, and most are excellent examples of what might be termed James Brown's "house" style. The early '70s marked the first real awareness, outside the African-American community, of his achievements; Miles Davis and other jazz musicians began to cite Brown as a major influence on their styles.

By the mid-seventies Brown's star was on the wane. Hits dried up, key musicians such as Bootsy Collins left his band, not least due to the wearing effect of Brown's ego, and his releases were poor imitations of his best records. In 1986 he managed another hit single, "Living In America", but in 1988 he was arrested following a high speed car chase through the streets of Augusta. Imprisoned for firearms and drugs offences, as well as the repercussions of his flight, he was released in 1991 to find the sampled rhythms and drum beats from his records almost ubiquitous in rap music, a 20 second drum solo near the end of the song "Funky drummer" is perhaps the single most sampled piece of music in history. Brown still makes his home in the Augusta area, and is one of the most prominent figures in that community.

As Brown continues to tour, and his reputation as an innovator still guarantees crowds, the influence of his music and sounds he first created continue to define the notion of funky.

Brown was a recipient of Kennedy Center Honors for 2003.

Samples

• Download sample of "Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag"

External links

• James Brown - Godfather of Soul, Brown's official site.
• DMoz, listing of James Brown sites.