Innovative James Brown was the Most Influential Musician in History

By George E. Curry
NNPA Editor-in-Chief

AUGUSTA, GA. (NNPA) --When he died early Christmas Day, James Brown, left behind the legacy of having been the most influential musician in history, credited with single-handedly inspiring what was known as soul music, disco, funk and rap over a career that spanned 50 years and produced 800 songs, an average of more than 16 records a year.

Brown died early Christmas at Emory Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta of heart failure brought on by complications from pneumonia. He was 73 years old.

"He was an innovator, he was an emancipator, he was an originator," said Little Richard. "Rap music, all that stuff, came from James Brown."

Brown was buried Saturday on his estate in Beech Island, S.C., just across the state line near Augusta, Ga., following three days of farewells.

The most elaborate was Brown’s final appearance Thursday at New York City’s famed Apollo Theater, where thousands that had marveled at his showmanship in life came to bid him good-bye. Posters of James Brown shows at the Apollo flanked his gold casket and music from his 1962 “ Live at the Apollo” album filled the background. Mourners passed a 6 by 6 floral arrangement that spelled “Godfather” in red carnations.

Brown arrived at the Apollo in a white, painted hearse pulled by two white horses. His golden casket was lined with white velvet. He was decked out in a cobalt, sequined satin suit, white gloves and pointed silvery shoes. Standing a few steps away, near the orchestra pit, was Al Sharpton, once part of Brown’s road crew before rising to prominence in the civil rights movement.

A private service presided over by Sharpton was held Friday at the Carpentersville Baptist Church in North Augusta, S.C. That service, closed to the public, was attended by relatives a dignitaries, including comedian/social activist Dick Gregory and boxing promoter Don King.

On Saturday, fans in Augusta, Ga., his childhood home, were able to pay their respects at the James Brown Arena. Celebrities included Jesse L. Jackson Sr. and mega-star Michael Jackson. A tearful Michael Jackson bowed before Brown’s casket in Augusta and then hugged Sharpton.

“James Brown is my greatest inspiration,” the singer told mourners. “When I saw him move, I was mesmerized. I knew that’s what I wanted to do for the rest of my life because of James Brown.”

Aides and relatives say they expect to turn Brown’s home to a museum, similar to Graceland, Elvis Presley’s former estate in Memphis.

In the meantime, members of James Brown band say they will resume touring, probably in February. Spike Lee has signed a contract to do a movie on the singer’s life, expected to be completed by 2008.

While most stars would be happy to be associated with one honorific, James Brown had five, more than any other entertainer in history: "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business," "Soul Brother Number 1," "Mr. Dynamite," "The Godfather of Soul" and even "The Original Disco Man."

Brown was a spellbinding performer, sometimes playing as many as 350 shows a year. And what a show. In the early years, he leaped from a piano and landed on stage in a split. He was an energetic dancer, doing the camel walk, the mash potato and sometimes would "back up and do the James Brown."

In a booklet that accompanied the CD collection, "James Brown - Star Time," long-time friend and performer Bobby Byrd said: "The dancing y'all seen later on ain't nothing to what he used to do back then. James could stand flat-footed and flip over into a split. He'd tumble, too, over and over like in gymnastics. We'd say, 'What's wrong with you? When it's time to record, you'll be done killed yourself."

Born outside of rural Barnwell, S.C. on May 3, 1933, Brown was abandoned by his mother at the age of 4 and reared by a great-aunt in an Augusta, Ga. whorehouse.As a teenager, Brown was convicted of stealing and served three years at the Georgia Juvenile Training Institute in Toccoa. There, he met Bobby Byrd, lead singer of a local gospel group. Some accounts say that Brown met Byrd when the latter's group sang at the juvenile correctional facility. But Byrd says they met when Brown's baseball team played against local residents. When Brown was released from reform school, Byrd's family took him in and Brown joined Byrd's group, the Gospel Starlighters.

But gospel would soon give way to rhythm and blues.

Byrd said, "When we saw all the girls screaming for groups like Hank Ballard & The Midnighters, we thought, 'Oh, so this is what we want to do!'"

And they did. James Brown became the lead singer in a group that called themselves the Flames and, later, the Famous Flames. Little Richard would joke, "Y'all are the onliest people who ever made yourself famous before you were famous."

But fame was just around the corner.

In 1956, "Please, Please, Please," was released by Syd Nathan's Federal label, rising to #6 on the R&B charts. Other hits followed: "Try Me" (1958), "Night Train" (1962), "Prisoner of Love" (1963), "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" (1965), "I Got You - I Feel Good" (1965), "It's a Man's World" (1966), "Cold Sweat" (1967), "I Got that Feeling" (1968), "Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud" (1968), "The Popcorn" (1969), "Ain't It Funky Now" - Part 1 (1970), "Hot Pants" (1971), "Get On the Good Foot" (1972) and "The Payback" (1974), the only gold-certified album [500,000 copies sold] of his long and successful career.

At points when his career appeared to be waning, a movie appearance would introduce James Brown to another generation of fans. In 1980, it was his role as a dancing preacher in John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd's "Blues Brothers" and in 1986, it was performing "Living in America" in "Rocky IV."

Though his "Say it Loud -- I'm Black and I'm Proud" became a Black National Anthem" in 1968, later that year, he released a lesser known, patriotic, "America is My Home," causing some fans to boo him. He also supported a couple of conservative presidents, campaigning for Richard M. Nixon at a time when he was an unregistered voter, according to his autobiography, and served on one of Ronald Reagan's domestic abuse panels during a time he was being repeatedly arrested for spousal abuse. A series of problems with the Internal Revenue Service led to his losing Black radio stations in Knoxville, Tenn. and Baltimore, Md.

His low point came in 1988 when a high-speed chase with police in South Carolina and neighboring Georgia resulted in his serving a two-year prison sentence. But as has been the case throughout his life, Brown bounced back, receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1992 Grammy Awards and being honored the following year by the prestigious Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. LL Cool J told the Kennedy Center audience, "In music there are three B's. There's Bach - I love Bach, there's Beethoven - I love Beethoven. And there's Brown. Doesn't that name make you feel good."

Other rappers --including Chuck D, Ice-T and the Fat Boys -- also kept James Brown's music alive by liberally sampling his hits. Brown joked that "the music out there is only as good as my last record." He told the Associated Press in 2003, "Disco is James Brown, hip-hop is James Brown, rap is James Brown; you know what I'm saying? You hear all the rappers, 90 percent of their music is me."

James Brown revolutionalized more than rap music. What became known as the James Brown beat was a unique sound when he introduced it.

"What James Brown was to music in terms of soul and hip-hop, rap, all of that, is what Bach was to classical music," said Al Sharpton, who was once part of Brown's traveling entourage. "This is the guy who literally changed the music industry. He put everybody on a different beat, a different style of music. He pioneered it."

Join Our Mailing List

Email:

[A Tribute to Gerald Michael Boyd by George E. Curry, Editor-in-Chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) and BlackPressUSA.com, at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, N.Y., November 30, 2006]

I am here tonight to re-claim a friend. I am here to restore his good name. I am here to set the record straight. Some of the things I am about to say may not be politically correct. But I don’t care about being politically correct. When it comes to discussing Gerald, I just want to be correct. We all owe him that.
If you detect anger in my voice, it’s because I am angry. Very angry. I am not angry at God for taking Gerald away from us at such an early age; I do not question the Lord’s judgment or His wisdom. Instead, I thank Him for the time He allowed us to share Gerald on this earth. But I am angry over the way Gerald’s career is being framed by many of our colleagues.
For those of you who don’t know me, I was a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch when Gerald joined the staff after graduating from the University of Missouri. He and I started the first NABJ-chapter workshop for high school students in 1977 – next year will mark 30 years. I lived across the street from Gerald and Sheila in St. Louis. On weekends, he and I played touch football by day and cards – notably Dirty Hearts – by night. Not only did we train young Black students in St. Louis, we taught every summer in a workshop at the University of Missouri under the direction of Dr. Robert Knight, one of Gerald’s former professors. Gerald presented me with NABJ’s “Journalist of the Year” award in 2003 and just before he resigned from The New York Times, I came up to have breakfast with my friend and we’ve remained in touch since then. I’ve known him before and after the New York Times. In fact, I’ve known him his entire professional career. Not only have I known him as a journalist, I have known him as a friend. And if you were his friend, there was nothing he would not do for you.
As one of his friends, I watched with pride as he returned to his hometown paper and covered City Hall. We were all happy for him when was assigned to the Post-Dispatch’s Washington Bureau. His friends celebrated his winning a Neiman Fellowship. We applauded and sent him notes of congratulation when he covered the White House for the New York Times. We teased him when Ronald Reagan would recognize him at press conferences, calling him “Gerry.” We were ecstatic when he was named managing editor of The Times.
By any measurement, Gerald had an extremely successful career. And we, as his friends, should not allow those in our field to sully his reputation now that he can no longer speak for himself.
In case some of you rode the short bus to school, let me be more direct. It is irresponsible, in writing about Gerald’s career, to mention that he lost his job at The Times because of Jayson Blair before you mention that he is dead or what he accomplished as a journalist. It is unfair to act like Blair, that serial liar, was an appendage of Gerald Boyd. Gerald was not his direct supervisor and Gerald certainly did not fabricate any stories. But you’d never know that from some of the coverage of his death, including that of the New York Times.
In one account, the Associated Press even substituted Blair’s name for Gerald’s. It seems that my friend cannot even go to his grave peacefully without his own colleagues besmirching his reputation.
I stand here tonight to reclaim Gerald’s good name. The only reason I am mentioning Jayson Blair is because journalists are trying to join Gerald and Jayson at the hip and I, for one, will not allow it. And nor should you.Sure, any major story about Gerald Boyd should mention the Blair incident, but that shouldn’t supercede or overshadow Gerald’s accomplishments as a first-rate journalist. Gerald was a victim of Jayson Blair, not his protector.
Why should Gerald be forever linked to Jason Blair? Blair joins a long list of discredited journalists: Stephen Glass, Patricia Smith, Mike Barnicle, Bob Green and Jack Kelley, among them. Yet, you can’t name any of their editors. If those editors are not linked to their respective culprits, then Gerald should not be perpetually linked to Jayson Blair. And even if he is associated with Blair, it should not be so prominently mentioned.
When the Blair scandal first broke there were reports that Gerald may have extended Jayson special favors because both were African-Americans. Anyone thinking that certainly doesn’t know Gerald Boyd.
If anything, Gerald was harder on young Black reporters because he wanted to prepare them for the slings and arrows they would later face in their career. When Gerald and I started the workshop in 1977, he was rough on Black high school students. If he didn’t cuddle teenagers, there was no chance that he was going to baby an adult. If you don’t believe he was tough on teenagers, I can give you some references.
Ask Marcia Davis, an editor at the Washington Post. Ask Ann Scales, an editor and former White House correspondent for the Boston Globe. Both of them are here tonight. Ask Bennie Currie, a former reporter for the Associated Press. Ask Russ Mitchell of CBS News. Ask Andre Jackson, business editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Ask any of those he mentored.
Gerald cared deeply for them and all young people. In fact, I would argue that Gerald’s greatest contribution to journalism was not becoming managing editor of the New York Times; he recognized that others, especially Paul Delaney, should have had that job before him. Gerald’s greatest contribution to journalism was that he introduced hundreds of young people to our profession and because he was hard on them, they have excelled as journalists.
Let me share just a couple of notes I received this week. They were not sent to so that I could read them in public, but I don’t think the students will mind my sharing them with you.
Ben Holden participated in our workshops in St. Louis and followed Gerald to Mizzou. Ben is now vice president and executive editor of the Ledger-Enquirer in Columbus, Ga. He said, “Gerald was one of the first people (along with you, of course) to teach me about journalistic objectivity. I asked him what he thought of Reagan and he simply would not say, no matter how many different ways I asked. I never forgot that.”
Mark Russell, another workshop and Mizzou graduate, is managing editor of the Orlando Sentinel. His first job out of college was with the Wall Street Journal. Mark wrote: “As a snot-nose teen growing up in north St. Louis in the late 1970s, I dared to dream that I could one day become a journalist. And Gerald, George, Chris Moore, Ken Cooper and others were there to guide me, challenge me, cut me down when necessary and then just as quickly, build me back up. When I became managing editor two years ago – in 2004 – I knew that I’d have to uphold a powerful tradition of being an excellent journalist and a good man. After all, I had the best role model: Gerald Boyd.”
Those are just a couple of examples of the impact that Gerald has had on a generation of journalists. That’s his true legacy. If Gerald were joined at the hip with anyone outside of his wife, Robin, and son, Zachary, it has been these former students. That’s what we should be celebrating.
Finally, the angriest I ever saw Gerald Boyd in the 33 years that I’ve known him was when the Janet Cooke scandal broke at the Washington Post. He was angry that we had put all this time and effort into opening doors for young people, and this imposter had made it more difficult for young Black journalists to advance their careers.
Well, I am not going to let another imposter – or our industry – tarnish Gerald’s reputation. We know of his personal accomplishments and even more important, we know what he has done for others. That’s the real Gerald Boyd. That’s the Gerald Boyd we’re here to reclaim. And that’s the Gerald Michael Boyd we’ll always remember.###

Join Our Mailing List

Email: