James Brown - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Overview

James Joseph Brown was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

Singing

Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...

, songwriter

Songwriter

A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...

, musician

Multi-instrumentalist

A multi-instrumentalist is a musician who plays a number of different instruments.The Bachelor of Music degree usually requires a second instrument to be learned , but people who double on another instrument are not usually seen as multi-instrumentalists.-Classical music:Music written for Symphony...

, and recording artist. He is the originator of Funk

Funk

Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...

and is recognized as a major figure in the 20th century popular music

Popular music

Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...

for both his vocals and dancing. He has been referred to as "The Godfather of Soul," "Mr. Dynamite," "Soul Brother Number One" and "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business."
James Brown was born in Barnwell, South Carolina on May 3, 1933 at 5:10pm to Susie Brown and Joseph ("Joe") Gardner (who changed his surname to Brown after Mattie Brown who raised him).

Unanswered Questions

What was James Brown reason for writing Say it loud.

My uncle asked me to look for a song by James Brown called Four Black Horses. But I can't find anything even close. Is he mistaken? Or does someone kn...

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Quotations

I'm the most sampled and stolen. What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine, too ... I got a song about that ... But I'm never gonna release it. Don't want a war with the rappers. If it wasn't good, they wouldn't steal it.

"Being James Brown," Rolling Stone Magazine, 2006-06-12

I would warn against anyone marrying a person with more than a ten-year age difference. It almost never works. It is difficult to find things to talk about, to use similar reference points, and to operate at the same speed of life. Another problem is that both sides usually don't want the same things at the same time.

Brown, J. & Eliot, M. (2005). I Feel Good: A Memoir of a Life of Soul , pp. 247-248. New American Library: New York. ISBN 0-45121-393-9

This is an issue couples have to be straight on and agree on before they walk down that aisle; otherwise there is no way their marriage will survive.

On having children — as quoted in Brown, J. & Eliot, M. (2005). I Feel Good: A Memoir of a Life of Soul, p. 248. New American Library: New York. ISBN 0-45121-393-9

To make it in life, you and your wife need to be in the same business. That has been my problem all along. My wives didn't know what I was doing. I would come back home from the road to a stranger. That's no good.

Brown, J. & Tucker, B. (2003). James Brown: The Godfather of Soul, p. 266. Thunder's Mouth Press: New York. ISBN 1-56025-388-6

Hair is the first thing. And teeth the second. Hair and teeth. A man got those two things he's got it all.

Brown, J. & Tucker, B.B. (1986). James Brown: The Godfather of Soul. Macmillan: New York. ISBN 0-02517-430-4

It doesn't matter how you travel it, it's the same road. It doesn't get any easier when you get bigger, it gets harder. And it will kill you if you let it."

Brown, J. & Tucker, B.B. (1986). James Brown: The Godfather of Soul. Macmillan: New York. ISBN 0-02517-430-4

Sometimes you struggle so hard to feed your family one way, you forget to feed them the other way, with spiritual nourishment. Everybody needs that.

Brown, J. & Tucker, B.B. (1986). James Brown: The Godfather of Soul. Macmillan: New York. ISBN 0-02517-430-4

Don't terrorize. Organize. Don't burn. Give kids a chance to learn ... The real answer to race problems in this country is education. Not burning and killing. Be ready. Be qualified. Own something. Be somebody. That's Black Power.

Statement on national TV during the 1968 riots in Washington, DC after the Martin Luther King assassination

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