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James Brown Biography

nicknames the Hardest Working Man in Show Business, Soul Brother Number One

(1933–2006)

Related Works

Albums
1959 Please Please Please
1959 Try Me
1960 Think

1961 The Amazing James Brown
1961 James Brown Presents His Band/Night Train
1962 Shout And Shimmy
1962 James Brown and His Famous Flames Tour the USA
1963 Live At The Apollo
1963 Prisoner of Love
1964 Pure Dynamite: Live at the Royal
1964 Showtime
1964 The Unbeatable James Brown
1964 Grits and Soul
1964 Out Of Sight
1965 Papa's Got A Brand New Bag
1966 I Got You (I Feel Good)
1966 James Brown Plays James Brown Today and Yesterday
1966 Mighty Instrumentals
1966 James Brown Plays New Breed (The Boo-Ga-Loo)
1966 Soul Brother No. 1: It's A Man's Man's Man's World
1966 James Brown Sings Christmas Songs
1966 Handful of Soul
1967 The James Brown Show
1967 Sings Raw Soul
1967 James Brown Plays The Real Thing
1967 Live At The Garden
1967 Cold Sweat
1968 James Brown Presents His Show of Tomorrow
1968 I Can't Stand Myself
1968 I Got The Feelin'
1968 Live At The Apollo, Volume 2
1968 Jams Brown Sings Out Of Sight
1968 Thinking About Little Willie John and a Few Nice Things
1968 A Soulful Christmas
1969 Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud
1969 Gettin' Down To It
1969 The Popcorn
1969 It's A Mother
1970 Ain't It Funky
1970 Soul On Top
1970 It's A New Day - Let A Man Come In
1970 Sex Machine
1970 Hey America
1971 Super Bad
1971 Sho' Is Funky Down Here
1971 Hot Pants
1971 Revolution of the Mind/Live At The Apollo, Volume 3
1972 There It Is
1972 Get On the Good Foot
1973 Black Caesar
1973 Slaughter's Big Rip-Off
1974 The Payback
1974 Hell
1975 Reality
1975 Sex Machine Today
1975 Everybody's Doin' The Hustle and Dead on the Double Bump
1976 Hot
1976 Get Up Offa That Thing
1976 Bodyheat
1977 Mutha's Nature
1978 Jam 1980's
1979 Take A Look At Those Cakes
1979 The Original Disco Man
1980 People
1980 Hot On The One
1980 Soul Syndrome
1981 Nonstop!
1981 Live In New York
1983 Bring It On
1986 Gravity
1988 James Brown And Friends
1988 I'm Real
1991 Love Over-Due
1993 Universal James
1993 Funky President
1995 Live At The Apollo
Compilations
1972 Soul Classics
1973 Soul Classics, Volume 2
1977 Solid Gold
1977 The Fabulous James Brown
1981 Can Your Heart Stand It?
1981 The Best of James Brown
1984 The Federal Years, Part 1
1984 The Federal Years, Part 2
1984 Roots of A Revolution
1984 Ain't That A Groove - The James Brown Story 1966-1969
1984 Doing It To Death - The James Brown Story 1970-1973
1985 Dead On The Heavy Funk 1974-1976
1985 The CD of JB: Sex Machine and Other Soul Classics
1986 The LP of JB
1986 In The Jungle Groove
1988 Motherlode
1991 Messin' With The Blues
1991 Star Time
1993 Chronicles - Soul Pride
1996 JB40: 40th Anniversary Collection
1997 On Stage

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(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.