I get up in the middle of the night, full of xmas cheer and xmas chocolate, only to find upon checking The Internets that the one and only James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, the Hardest Working man in Wossname and all that good stuff, has died, aged 73.
The various feeds aren’t reporting why yet, but he was recently hospitalised for pneumonia.
I never got to see him perform, but various tracks of his work, like Super Bad, The Payback, Funky President, Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag, Cold Sweat and the seminal Make It Funky are all on heavy rotation on my ipod.
To quote the man himself …”Huh! Har! Heeeeeeeeaaaaayyyyy. Head for the turnaround (yeah!), Head for the turnaround (yeah!). Aaawwwwwooooooo! Huh, hah, Good God! … Jump back, I wanna kiss myself! Heeeeaaaaaaayyyyyyy!”
Wise words, and ones relevant even today.