It's likely that R & B singer Brown is better known to today's audiences for his lurid run-ins with the law--he served two and a half years after a 1988 arrest on drug and assault charges--than for his music. If so, that's a shame, because he was arguably the most important and influential figure in 1960s black music. Plenty of fans and critics have sung his praises, but seldom as avidly or as entertainingly as does Brown himself in these brief but beguiling memoirs. He recounts his harsh childhood in the rural South, his early days performing on the chitlin' circuit, and his breakthrough 1956 hit, "Please Please Please." In the '70s, changing musical tastes and political upheaval helped derail his career, leading him to a self-destructive turn toward addiction and domestic violence in the following decade. He now credits prison for saving his life, claiming, "I wasn't arrested--I was rescued." After his release, he returned to performing with a renewed vigor that belied his advanced age, culminating in a triumphant 2003 return to Harlem's Apollo Theatre, site of his epochal 1962 live album (see Douglas Wolk's Live at the Apollo [BKL S 15 04]). This isn't a brand-new bag--Brown covered much the same territory in a 1986 autobiography. But this second look is worthwhile, if only to hear the Godfather of Soul extol white rappers as signs of social progress. Gordon Flagg
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About the Author
Soul Brother Number One, the Godfather of Soul, the Hardest Working Man in Show Business, Mr. Dynamite-all of these titles describe just one man. James Brown is arguably the most influential African-American in popular music in the past half-century and one of the most dynamic, exhilarating performers of our time. Brown is the recipient of the American Music Awards Award of Merit, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters. When the music industry decided to create a Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, Brown was one of the first 10 musicians inducted.