I Feel Good

Elevating imbeciles to pop culture super-stardom is nothing new, even though America’s recent saturation with all things Charlie Sheen may have clouded our perspective.

Long before there was Sheen, Paris Hilton and Snooki, there was James Brown.

The “Godfather of Soul”, “Mr. Dynamite”, “Sex Machine” and “The Minister of the New New Heavy Funk”---James Brown was born on this date in 1933.

Instead of a normal upbringing dissolving into a haze of substance abuse, spousal abuse and general bad behavior, James Brown was a story of rags-to-riches-to-rags all over again, with the actual height of his popularity never straying from that life on the edge which made him so……uh…interesting.

Here is a TV interview with what appears to be a significantly intoxicated James Brown:




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tfNhL_R_rI

Nice.

The product of a broken home, the self-proclaimed “Hardest Working Man in Show Business” literally scraped and clawed his way out of poverty. Abandoned by his mother at the age of four, Brown grew up with his aunt, who ran a brothel and sold moonshine for a living.

Between jobs of picking cotton and shining shoes, little James Brown would sing and dance to attract attention—and a few coins here and there. He was sentenced to 8 to 15 years for breaking into cars at the age of 15—and it was in prison that Brown honed his musical talents. He so impressed the warden that Brown was released after only 3 years behind bars.

He went on to become one of the most influential R&B musicians in history, selling millions of records. Throughout it all, constant brushes with the law were always part of the mix—and his personal life of three marriages, five sons and the tabloid headlines of domestic troubles, gun charges and the like constantly competed with his legitimate knack for making hit records and fronting some great live shows.

The landscape is littered with artists whose bad-boy image is fake, the product of a publicist or agent. Not James Brown.

He was the real thing.

The Godfather of Soul passed away on Christmas Day of 2006.

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