Adieu Mr. Dynamite
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James Brown's musical innovation impacted two succeeding generations of musicians.
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James Brown was far more than a musician. He was a musical performer, very much in the same canon as Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix or Michael Jackson. And, also like a Hendrix or a Berry, his musical innovation impacted two succeeding generations of musicians. Funk of the late sixties and early seventies was invented by James Brown, for it was he who had delivered black R&B back to its African polyrhythmic roots. But this same funk that he had pioneered mutated into technically slick dance-club music as the seventies spooled out, and it seemed as though this new disco genre was finally going sideline him.
Ironically, at the onset of the Eighties, black music traced a full circle back to James Brown; for his monumental repertoire of over 700 songs provided sampling fodder to rap artistes who ushered the hip-hop revolution as disco faded away.
Born into extreme rural Southern poverty in 1933, Brown started out picking cotton and later shining shoes in the streets of Augusta, Georgia. A robbery conviction landed him behind bars at age 16, but gospel singer Bobby Byrd got him paroled, and recruited him as a band-mate. Christening themselves as The Flames, they abandoned gospel in favour of the R&B, which had become a rage in the early fifties. Their first recording for the Federal/King label was the gospel-hued "Please, Please, Please", which became a million-selling southern regional hit in 1956. Being the main attraction of the band, Brown soon assumed band-leader status, and began to tirelessly polish his stage act and music to perfection.
Later renamed "James Brown and the Famous Flames", they entered the sixties riding a wave of popularity with black audiences all over the country, patenting a raw gospel sound that broke with R&B conventions of the day.
He tasted national success with "Try Me", which topped the countrywide R&B charts in 1958.
The great soul legend died of pneumonia related complications in an Atlanta, Georgia hospital on Christmas day, 2006.
VISHWAMBHAR PATI
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