Saturday, January 06, 2007

James Brown: The Godfather of Soul (1933-2006)

On the 25th of December 2006, the godfather of Soul passed away. James Brown is a case study of strong will and self determination and big achievements. Born in poverty in South Carolina and abandoned at 4 years old, he grew up on the streets of Augusta, Georgia and had many episodes of law breaking until adopted by a friend’s family where he got introduced to Gospel and founded his first band the Gospel Starlighters in the early 50’s.

He started in the R&B and made it in the top 10 by 1956 with “Please,Please,Please”, since then he revolutionized the world music and influenced the last half of the 20th century music. His music was an influence for soul, rock, rap, break-dancing and hip-hop. James Brown’s music has even been re-mastered and replayed by rappers like Fat Boys and Public Enemy. Many of his 800+ songs were used by hip hop samplers and DJ’s.

His innovations and hard work gained him the nicknames of “Hard working man in show business” and “The godfather of Soul”. His fast foot movement’s dance inspired Michael Jackson and Mike Jagger and so did his costumes.

JB rhythms are still present in current music and his vocal style too. This man is a god, he did it all, and he had it in him. Songs like “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” , “I Feel good”, "Get Up I Feel Like Being a Sex Machine", “I Got the feeling” still make my day anytime I listen to them.

I'll let you enjoy these 2 very old videos, the first is for "Sex Machine" and the second for "I Feel good". Notice the foot dance in the second one and don't tell me that Michael Jackson invented the moon walk.








JB, rest in peace and May god bless your soul.

2 comments:

Napo said...

Have you seen his funerals? Amazing, someone identical was reciting all his songs...it was really unique !

samsoum said...

Unfortunately I did not see it. I'll try to look it up on the web.