James Brown 1933-2006

The Godfather Of Soul has died at the age of 73 this Christmas day.

Well known as an innovator and influence on music for the past 50 years, it was not until very recently that I came to understand who the true James Brown is.

He is a crazy person. A force of nature trapped inside of a man that can only be unleashed in the form of music.

Rolling Stone magazine recently published the article Being James Brown and its a shockingly hilarious look inside the world of the hardest working man in show business. Its a long read, and probably not your idea of holiday entertainment, but unhinged insanity that begins when James Brown enters a room and lingers long after he leaves… well its a good metaphor for his legacy in music as well.

From the article:

James Brown writes a lyric, to record over a long, rambling blues-funk track titled “Message to the World.” For anyone who has ever wondered how James Brown writes a song, I have a sort of answer for you. First: He borrows Mr. Bobbit’s bifocals. James Brown doesn’t have glasses of his own, or left them at home, or something. Second: He borrows a pencil. Third: He sits, and writes, for about fifteen minutes. Then he puts himself behind the microphone. The result is a cascading rant not completely unlike his spoken monologues. Impossible to paraphrase, it meanders over subjects as disparate as his four marriages, Charles Barkley, Al Jarreau, a mixture of Georgia and Carolina identities he calls “Georgia-lina,” the fact that he still knows Maceo Parker and that Fred Wesley doesn’t live very far away, either, Mr. Bobbit’s superiority to him as a checkers player, the fact that he believes himself to have both Asian and Native American ancestry, and, most crucially, his appetite for corn on the cob and its role in his health: “I like corn, that’s a regular thing with me. Gonna live a long time, live a little longer.”

Mr. James Brown will live a little longer. Here he is just a year and a half ago at the Live 8 benefit concert, in top form.