50 Fun Facts About James Brown

James Brown grew up in Georgia but was born across the Savannah River in which neighboring state?

South Carolina, in a one-room shack outside Barnwell. By his own account he was taken for stillborn at first and then revived.

Which Georgia city, where Brown grew up shining shoes, later named its arena after him?

Augusta also put up a statue of him in 2005, in the downtown where he had once danced for soldiers' pennies.

Before music took over, a young James Brown briefly pursued which sport as a career?

Boxing and baseball both looked like better bets than music to the young Brown. He spent his first years out of detention in the ring and on semipro diamonds before Bobby Byrd's vocal group claimed him.

Brown was paroled in 1952 from a youth prison at the old 'Band of Brothers' paratrooper camp near which Georgia town?

Toccoa became his first home as a free man too, when the family of local singer Bobby Byrd took him in. He stayed, married there and sang gospel with Byrd's group.

Leading a gospel quartet behind bars earned the teenage Brown which nickname from fellow inmates?

Music Box met local singer Bobby Byrd while he was still locked up. Byrd's group took him in after his release and, with Brown out front, became the Famous Flames.

Etta James said Brown built which debut hit from words Little Richard scrawled on a napkin?

"Please, Please, Please" began as a rough demo cut at a Macon radio station. A King Records talent scout signed the group on the strength of it.

Which 1958 ballad became Brown's first No. 1 R&B hit?

"Try Me" ended a run of nine flop singles that had put his record deal in danger. It was also his first record to reach the pop Hot 100.

Which single was Brown's biggest pop hit, peaking at No. 3 in 1965?

"I Got You (I Feel Good)" was as close as he ever came: for all his R&B chart-toppers, Brown never had a pop No. 1. "Living in America" reached No. 4 two decades later.

Brown headlined the Kinshasa music festival staged to promote which 1974 Ali-Foreman fight?

The Rumble in the Jungle slipped by more than a month when Foreman was cut in training. The three-day festival went ahead anyway, without the fight or its tourists.

Who paid for the October 1962 recording that became Live at the Apollo?

Brown himself put up the money after King Records balked at a live album with no new songs on it. It climbed to No. 2 on the album chart.

On 1964's The T.A.M.I. Show, Brown famously upstaged which closing act?

The Rolling Stones had to follow his set at the Santa Monica filming. Keith Richards has called going on after Brown the worst mistake of the band's career.

Which 1965 single, his first pop top ten, won Brown his first Grammy Award?

"Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" had Brown moving his band's accent from the backbeat onto the first beat of the bar. That shift is where many hear funk begin.

Which 1967 track do some critics call the first true funk song?

"Cold Sweat" lifts its horn line from the Miles Davis jazz standard "So What". Midway through, Brown calls "give the drummer some" and hands Clyde Stubblefield a solo.

Rival soul singer Solomon Burke said Brown once paid him $7,500 to give up what on a Chicago stage?

His crown and robe went with Burke's billing as the King of Rock 'n' Soul, a title Brown coveted. By Burke's telling he pocketed the fee without singing a note and went on calling himself king.

Brown's televised Boston Garden concert came the day after which event?

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. had set off a night of unrest, so Mayor Kevin White had WGBH air the show live to keep people home. Brown stood to lose about $60,000 and made the city promise to cover it.

On Brown's 1968 anthem 'Say It Loud', who shouts back the reply 'I'm black and I'm proud'?

A group of children from the Los Angeles area sang the reply. Brown wrote that he put them on the record so that children who heard it could grow up feeling pride.

Which bassist joined Brown's band as a teenager in 1970?

Bootsy Collins and his guitarist brother Catfish came from a Cincinnati band after most of Brown's road band walked out on him. They cut "Sex Machine" within months, and Bootsy went on to star in Parliament-Funkadelic.

Whose 1972 reelection campaign did Brown endorse, prompting boycotts of his shows?

A Cincinnati show that November was picketed with signs reading 'James Brown: Nixon's Clown', and he later wrote a song about Watergate.

Brown composed the score for which 1973 blaxploitation film about a Harlem crime boss?

Black Caesar earned a sequel, but its makers turned down the music Brown recorded for it. The rejected songs came out instead as his album The Payback.

What led to the six-year prison sentence Brown received in 1988?

A high-speed chase across two states ended only when officers shot out the tires of his truck. He was released early, in 1991, and went straight back to touring.

'Funky President (People It's Bad)' came out in 1974 just as which president took office?

Gerald Ford was the funky president of the title, by Brown's own account, having taken over the White House shortly before the session. Its groove resurfaced on Public Enemy's "Fight the Power".

Which opera star sang 'It's a Man's Man's Man's World' with Brown at a 2002 charity concert?

Luciano Pavarotti had him as a guest at one of his yearly benefit concerts in Modena. Brown sang the original words, and the tenor answered him in Italian.

'Living in America' featured in which film, with Brown performing at Apollo Creed's fight?

Rocky IV has him sing it as Apollo Creed makes a flag-waving ring entrance before his bout with Ivan Drago. The single climbed to No. 4, his biggest pop hit in two decades.

Brown appeared in which 1980 film?

The Blues Brothers cast him as a hollering gospel preacher, and the part began a career revival after disco had knocked him out of the Top 40.

The 1980s star Kurtis Blow called Brown's 'Give It Up or Turnit a Loose' the national anthem of what?

Hip-hop DJs had made its drum break a party staple, so Polydor later repackaged the track on the compilation In the Jungle Groove to meet the demand.

Brown appeared in the cameo-filled 1991 video for which MC Hammer single?

"2 Legit 2 Quit" runs nearly 15 minutes in its full video, in which Hammer goes to see Brown before answering rumors that he is about to quit.

Brown performed at halftime of which football game in 1997?

The Super Bowl brought him to the New Orleans Superdome for two of his hits, before ZZ Top rolled in with a procession of motorcycles.

Brown made a cameo as himself in which Jackie Chan film of 2002?

The Tuxedo has Chan's chauffeur fill in for him at a concert, where a gadget-packed suit drives him through Brown's footwork on "Sex Machine".

Brown died on which holiday in 2006?

Christmas Day found him in an Atlanta hospital with pneumonia. By his agent's account he had just won his doctor's approval to play a New Year's Eve show in New York.

Which civil rights leader served as Brown's tour manager from 1973 to 1980?

Al Sharpton has said Brown became like the father he never had. He kept his New York youth movement running between stints on the road with the singer.

Brown's will directed most of his fortune toward which cause?

Scholarships for needy children had to wait through 15 years of lawsuits over the will. The estate was finally sold to a music publisher in 2021 for an estimated $90 million.

In 1986 Brown was among the first ten inductees into which institution?

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame left out his vocal group, the Famous Flames, that night. It made amends in 2012, inducting them alongside five other overlooked backing groups.

In 1993 residents of Steamboat Springs, Colorado, voted to name what the 'James Brown Soul Center of the Universe'?

A bridge over the Yampa River took the name after a hotly contested straw vote. Brown came in person to dedicate it, greeted by a crowd of about 2,000.

In 2005 Brown's hometown changed its city slogan to what in his honor?

"We Feel Good" borrows one of his best-known choruses. A year later the city's main arena took his name as well, and his public memorial service was held there that December.

Who played Brown in the 2014 biopic Get On Up?

Chadwick Boseman was no trained dancer and at first wanted no part of the role. He got there by drilling Brown's footwork with a choreographer for hours every day.

Which rock frontman produced the 2014 documentary Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown?

Mick Jagger was a long-time fan who has acknowledged Brown's influence on his own stage act. He sat for an interview in the film as well as producing it.

Brown credited which professional wrestler as inspiration for his cape routine?

Gorgeous George was a 1950s television star famed for his flamboyant ring entrances. Seeing him on TV shaped Brown's stage wardrobe as well as the routine.

What did Brown do in the late 1960s to WRDW, the radio station where he had shined shoes as a boy?

Bought it, and by the end of the decade he owned three radio stations. His daughter says the boy had been ordered off that property and vowed to come back as its owner.

Relentless touring earned Brown the billing 'the Hardest Working Man in' what?

Show Business got five or six nights a week from him through the 1950s and 1960s. In his prime he was on the road for as many as 51 weeks of the year.

Brown flashed hand signals mid-song at band members who missed a note to tell them what?

The fine they owed was $5 for each flash of his hand, signalled with his back to the crowd. A missed note or scuffed shoes could cost them, and the fines could pile up in a single night.

Which 1966 single with a social message led Brown to a meeting with Vice President Hubert Humphrey?

"Don't Be a Drop-Out" came from a man sent home from school as a boy for "insufficient clothes". He pitched it to Humphrey as the theme for a national stay-in-school campaign.

Which Nigerian city made Brown a 'freeman of the city' when he toured the country at the start of the 1970s?

Lagos gave him the title through its traditional ruler, the Oba, during a run of five one-night stands around the country. His funk went on to shape the Afrobeat of Fela Kuti.

Brown is widely credited with which distinction among recording artists?

The most sampled artist in the world owes much of that tally to a few seconds of drumming. The break on "Funky Drummer" alone has been looped on hundreds of later records.

Brown guest-starred in a 1987 episode of which TV series?

Miami Vice cast him as a singer turned UFO lecturer in 'Missing Hours', an alien-abduction story often cited as the show's worst episode. A young Chris Rock also appears in it.

In 2004 Brown opened Hyde Park concerts in London for which band?

Red Hot Chili Peppers played three nights in the park that June with Brown as support, a funk-rock band sharing the bill with the man credited with inventing funk.

Which saxophone-playing bandleader's jump-blues hit 'Caldonia' inspired a young Brown to become an entertainer?

Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five performed the song in a 1945 short film of the same name. Seeing that band on screen convinced the boy that performing was the life for him.

Which band's 1980 song name-checks 'James Brown on the T.A.M.I. Show'?

The line appears in 'When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around'.

Who presented Brown with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2003 BET Awards?

Michael Jackson made a surprise appearance, danced briefly with Brown and wrapped a cape around his shoulders. He told the crowd that nobody had influenced him more.

A World of Warcraft boss named Bronjahm parodies which Brown nickname?

Godfather of Soul becomes "Godfather of Souls" for Bronjahm, first boss of the game's Forge of Souls dungeon. His name scrambles the singer's, and his battle grunts echo Brown's own.

In December 2003 Brown, Carol Burnett and Loretta Lynn were all celebrated in Washington with which award?

Kennedy Center Honors went that weekend to director Mike Nichols and violinist Itzhak Perlman as well. Brown had walked out of prison less than thirteen years before.