James Brown, the legendary performer who influenced scores of musicians today, died today at age 73. The cause was congestive heart failure. Read what Jon Pareles of the NY Times wrote in an obituary that we believe will be updated throughout the day:
Mr. Brown's music was sweaty and complex, disciplined and wild, lusty and socially conscious. Beyond his dozens of hits, Mr. Brown forged an entire musical idiom that is now a foundation of pop worldwide.
"I taught them everything they know, but not everything I know," he wrote in an autobiography.
The funk he introduced in his 1965 hit, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," was both deeply rooted in Africa and thoroughly American. It found the percussive side of every instrument and meshed sharply syncopated patterns into kinetic polyrhythms that simply made people dance.
His innovations reverberated through the soul and rhythm-and-blues of the 1970s and the hip-hop of the next three decades. The beat of his instrumental "Funky Drummer" may well be the most widely sampled rhythm in hip-hop.
Here is the Wikipedia entry on Brown and list of his seminal hits from the AP. The Times reports that he was planning to appear at B.B. King's in Times Square for New Year's Eve performances.
Top photograph of James Brown from a 1991 concert at the Wiltern Theater in L.A. by Kevork Djansezian/AP; photograph of Brown with the Reverend Al Sharpton taken in 1982 when they visited President Ronald Reagan at the White House to advocate making Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday by Scott Applewhite/AP
