History > 2006 > USA > Music

James Brown performs in New York in 2003.

Jack Vartoogian for The New York Times

James Brown, 73, Dies; ‘Godfather of Soul’         NYT        25.12.2006

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Obit-Brown.html

A Loud, Proud Send-Off

for an Icon of Soul

December 29, 2006
The New York Times
By MANNY FERNANDEZ

James Brown gave one last show in Harlem yesterday, three days after his death, in a golden coffin lined with white velvet, on the flower-bedecked stage of the famed Apollo Theater, before a crowd of thousands who had lined up for blocks to see him.

Mr. Brown’s body arrived beneath the Apollo’s red-neon sign just before 1 p.m. in a white-painted carriage pulled by two white horses with feathery plumes atop their heads. The carriage was small, with tall windows and white curtains with silver fringe. Two solemn men sat atop it, guiding the horses, and Mr. Brown’s friends and associates and Harlem dignitaries walked alongside and behind it.

Hundreds who lined 125th Street outside the theater on a chilly, overcast afternoon cheered and applauded. Helicopters hovered. Photographers aimed their cameras from the surrounding rooftops. A guy hawked commemorative T-shirts for $10. Mr. Brown’s cries and exultations filled the street, blaring from one of his concert videos playing on a beat-up television mounted above a sign for Uptown Tattoos. A chant rose up: “James Brown! James Brown! James Brown!”

When the theater’s doors finally opened, people began streaming in for a public viewing. They walked up a few stairs and stepped onto the red-carpeted stage, where Mr. Brown’s body lay in an open coffin, washed in white and gold stage lights. The coffin was made of 16-gauge steel with a gold paint finish. Mr. Brown was wearing a cobalt, sequined satin suit with white gloves and pointed silvery shoes. Loudspeakers played his breakthrough album, “Live at the Apollo,” recorded Oct. 24, 1962.

Women wearing veils approached. A man in a suit dropped to his knees and crossed his heart. One couple broke into a brief dance. “Right now,” Mr. Brown said on the loudspeakers, in a snippet of between-song banter, “I’m going to get up and do my thing.”

Mr. Brown did his thing yesterday: he put on a show. Throughout the day, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, formed two lines on 125th Street outside the Apollo, one to its east and one to its west, each one filling up 125th Street, reaching the corner and then stretching for blocks up Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, forming a giant U. Some had been waiting since midnight Wednesday.

“We’re sending him out in the style he lived,” said Nellie Williams, 58, of Greer, S.C., who stood near the front of one line. “He was a man that had to be seen and heard.” She brought her daughter, and a copy of an oil painting her brother did of Mr. Brown, his pompadour perfectly teased, his shirt open, his smile wide. “I want to show my last respects for his last show in New York,” Ms. Williams added.

Mr. Brown, 73, died of congestive heart failure early Monday in Atlanta. He was remembered, during a private ceremony for family and friends at the Apollo, and amid the lines of fans standing outside for the public viewing, as a singer, dancer, bandleader, funk pioneer, entrepreneur, black-pride icon and entertainer who many said transformed American pop music and African-American culture.

A private ceremony will be held today near Augusta, Ga., Mr. Brown’s adopted hometown, and a public service is set for tomorrow at the James Brown Arena in Augusta.

Yesterday, the somber pageantry that accompanies the death of a dignitary could be found on the streets of Harlem, retuned for the death of a showman in the nation’s black cultural capital. The spectacle — the horse-drawn hearse gliding down 125th Street, the Apollo temporarily transformed into a funeral parlor, the crowds of admirers waiting in line for up to five hours to say a prayer near the coffin — made clear this was a different kind of funeral for a different kind of man. This was a man who personified, as the headwaiter at a soul-food restaurant put it, “the outrageous expression of life.”

Mr. Brown’s journey to Harlem began in Augusta the day before. A white hearse carrying his body left the city about 9:30 p.m., accompanied by the Rev. Al Sharpton, a longtime friend who considered Mr. Brown a father figure. Fourteen hours later, about 11:30 a.m., the hearse pulled up to Mr. Sharpton’s National Action Network headquarters on West 145th Street in Harlem.

Outside the headquarters, it was impossible to tell people were waiting for a hearse. One man played a bongo drum, and someone else played the upbeat funk of “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” on a portable stereo. The carriage waited, and so did the horses, Commander and Whitey, and the man who would hold the reins, Vet Harris, 66. “It’s an honor,” Mr. Harris said. “It’s beautiful.”

When the golden coffin was removed from the hearse and placed in the carriage, there was applause. Some onlookers cried. A group of friends and dignitaries assembled behind the carriage for the march down Lenox Avenue to the Apollo, among them Mr. Sharpton; Frank Copsidas, Mr. Brown’s agent; Ali Woodson, former lead singer of the Temptations; and the Rev. Herbert Daughtry, pastor of the House of the Lord Pentecostal Church in Brooklyn.

Outside the Apollo, throughout the morning and into the evening, hordes of people assembled on both sides of 125th Street behind metal police barricades. They were a largely black crowd, young women and retired men, elderly couples and families with children. Mr. Brown’s tunes played from storefronts, and women danced to the beat and sang along to his 1968 song “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud.” His image was everywhere: On T-shirts, posters, paintings people brought from home. The computerized Apollo marquee read, “Rest in Peace Apollo Legend, The Godfather of Soul, James Brown, 1933-2006.”

Burnis Hall, 65, stood near Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard with his wife. They were on vacation from Lathrup Village, Mich. “I first saw him in 1959, in Amarillo, Tex., when I was young airman in the Air Force,” Mr. Hall said of Mr. Brown. They stood with others in the chilly wind, struggling for the words to capture the legacy of a man who worked hard to defy convention. “Here’s an old guy that’s been there since the mid-’50s, still active in 2006,” Mr. Hall said. “How can you ignore this person?”

Nearly everyone had a James Brown story. They wanted to talk about the time they jumped on stage and danced with him, or met him at a party, or, like Samuel A. Herbert of Buffalo, once shined his black boots behind the Apollo. “He gave me $5 and he touched me on my shoulder and said, ‘God bless and be in courage,’ ” said Mr. Herbert, 57, retired from his work as a cancer research technician.

Inside during the viewing, Mr. Sharpton stood near the coffin, which was flanked by sprays of white lilies, white carnations and red and white roses. One flower arrangement spelled out “J B”; another, “Godfather.” A velvet rope kept people in the fast-moving line several feet from the coffin. Mr. Brown’s friends and family members sat in the first several rows of seats.

Tomi Rae Brown was there, dressed in black, chewing gum and passing out pink roses to Mr. Brown’s relatives. Ms. Brown has described herself as Mr. Brown’s wife, but his lawyer has depicted her as the singer’s partner, and she was barred from his South Carolina home a day after his death. “He’s my husband and the father of my child,” she said. “I’m mourning.”

About 6 p.m., the public viewing was interrupted for a service for Mr. Brown’s family, friends and the news media. “One era had a Bach, another had a Beethoven, but we had Brown,” Mr. Sharpton told the few hundred who sat in the Apollo. He said that those close to Mr. Brown decided Wednesday evening that he deserved a special procession and a special coffin. “We had some 30 people offering their planes, but because of the weight of the casket, we couldn’t get an ordinary flight,” Mr. Sharpton said. “I said, ‘I’ll tell you what, we’ll drive.’ ”

Mr. Sharpton said the public viewing was being extended by an hour, to 9 p.m., to accommodate the hundreds outside who still wanted to pay their respects. At 9:20, the police announced that no one else would be allowed inside, and the few hundred people remaining moved across the street.

During the service, Mr. Sharpton called six of Mr. Brown’s children to the stage, where they held hands. Then he introduced Charles Bobbit, Mr. Brown’s personal manager, and Ms. Brown, who spoke through tears. “My name is Tomi Rae Brown,” she said. “I love that man, and I have loved that man since the day I met him.”

Mr. Bobbit was with Mr. Brown when he died in Atlanta. “Before he passed, he said, ‘I think I’m going to leave you tonight,’ ” Mr. Bobbit recalled. “I said, ‘You’re not going anywhere.’ ”

Cassi Feldman and Eric Konigsberg contributed reporting.

    A Loud, Proud Send-Off for an Icon of Soul, NYT, 29.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/29/nyregion/29brown.html

Sharpton in Mourning,

Like a Son Without a Father

December 29, 2006
The New York Times
By ALAN FEUER

The Rev. Al Sharpton was exhausted. He had just come 14 hours from Augusta, Ga., with James Brown’s hearse.

Now he stood onstage at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, wedged beside the coffin, shaking hands with several thousand mourners as they filed by. He was somber and more than slightly ashen. It was, one quickly gathered, the look and posture of a son.

For more than 20 years, Al Sharpton’s public life has been a raucous mix of politics and race, from the Tawana Brawley affair to the kinetic streets of Howard Beach, Queens. It has played out vibrantly and in many guises: preacher, power broker, social activist, divisive critic of the police.

His private life, however, is a less rehearsed event and never quite as openly proclaimed. Much of it, of course, has revolved around James Brown, his mentor and surrogate father, who introduced him to nearly everything important in his life, including his hairstyle and his wife.

Yesterday’s dramatic wake for Mr. Brown was a classic Reverend Al production, outsized and spectacular — and with a deeply felt personal edge. Mr. Sharpton led the procession. He delivered the memorial speech. He huddled with the family, planning for the funerals in Augusta.

He even found time to stroll down 125th Street, working the crowd with Mr. Brown’s two daughters, Deanna Brown Thomas and Yamma Brown Lumar.

“I’m their older brother,” he explained. “That’s what James Brown used to call me, his eldest child.”

It was about 30 years ago when a young Al Sharpton met James Brown at a concert hall in Newark. They were in the wings backstage and, as the story goes, Mr. Sharpton was so entranced by the performer that he accidentally followed him on stage.

Even now, Mr. Sharpton brings to his events a James Brown sense of style, jiving at the podium and slicking back his pompadour for maximum effect. His political persona is the Brooklyn preacher married to the chitlin’ circuit showman. In his motto, “No justice, no peace,” one can hear an activist’s echo of “I’m black and I’m proud!”

“No doubt about it, he looked at James Brown like a father,” said Sanford Rubenstein, a lawyer who has long worked with Mr. Sharpton. “And James Brown looked upon the Rev the same way — as a son.”

It is instructive to know that shortly after Mr. Brown and Mr. Sharpton met, Mr. Brown’s son Teddy died in a car crash. It cemented their relationship, awakening in both an authentic and affectionate bond.

For a short while, Mr. Sharpton traveled on the road with Mr. Brown, working as his manager. It was there he met his wife, Kathy Jordan, a singer with the band.

Yesterday was, of course, a marathon for Mr. Sharpton, a marathon that began in Georgia the night before. On Wednesday, at roughly 9:30 p.m., he, a driver and some pallbearers loaded Mr. Brown’s golden coffin into the hearse.

He did not drive (he does not have a license). Instead he talked, and his cellphone battery gave out close to Philadelphia. Somewhere before his Harlem office, he stopped to change his clothes.

By 11:30, though, he was standing behind the horse and carriage carrying Mr. Brown’s body on 145th Street, walking side by side with Ali Woodson, late of the Temptations, and Charles Bobbit, Mr. Brown’s longtime assistant. He was strangely passive, oddly subdued. It was only as he passed Sylvia’s, the soul food joint, that he smiled.

“This is some scene,” he mused to Mr. Bobbit. “It’s the only way to go.”

Later, he shook hands for at least three hours beside the coffin. Then he disappeared, but only briefly and only to advise the family, his spokeswoman said.

Suddenly he was barreling down 125th Street, waving to the crowd, cameras trailing. He stopped for the reporters and gladly shared some words.

Finally he took some rest against the stage of the Apollo, not five feet from where Mr. Brown’s body lay. For the slightest second, the air around him stilled. Then his cellphone rang, he picked it up, and the public man was back.

Sharpton in Mourning, Like a Son Without a Father, NYT, 29.12.2006,
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/29/nyregion/29sharpton.html






 

Preparations were under way Wednesday

at the Apollo Theater in Harlem for a public viewing of the body of James Brown.

Employees said they expected even larger crowds

than those Mr. Brown drew as a performer.

Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

pollo Pays Tribute to James Brown        NYT        28.12.2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/28/nyregion/28apollo.html

Apollo Pays Tribute to James Brown

December 28, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC KONIGSBERG

There were still nearly 24 hours to go, and already three television vans had parked in front, then four — two from the same station. In the back offices of the Apollo Theater in Harlem, the famous stage where stars, it is said, are born and legends are made, the top tiers of house staff huddled in conference calls and organizational meetings — with the Rev. Al Sharpton’s people, with one another, with community leaders and with a half-dozen officers from the New York Police Department’s 28th Precinct.

Today, from 1 to 8 p.m., the body of James Brown, who died of congestive heart failure on Monday morning, will lie in repose onstage at the Apollo on West 125th Street. Overnight, the line for the free public viewing, for which no tickets are being sold and no reservations taken, began to form around midnight.

It will almost undoubtedly be the largest-scale event ever at the intimate theater, which on a full night holds about 1,500.

“We have no idea how many people to expect — hundreds of thousands, I’m sure,” said Billy Mitchell, the Apollo’s manager of group sales. “We’re getting calls from Delaware, from Washington, D.C. Some people are flying in.”

All of which is appropriate, according to Mr. Mitchell, a small-framed man who cut a dashing figure in rectangular glasses and a double-breasted suit. He was holding forth in the Apollo’s period-piece of a lobby, with its etched-crystal chandeliers, a carpet of burgundy and gold medallions, and a concave popcorn-finish ceiling.

“I used to work as the Apollo’s errand boy as a teenager, and back in the ’60s, James Brown — Mr. James Brown, I should say — was always the most popular,” Mr. Mitchell said.

“My friend, they had a line going east on 125th, then up Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard to 126th Street,” he recalled. “Then you had another line — these lines were four deep, mind you, none of this single-file stuff — going west on 125th up Frederick Douglass Boulevard and around the back of the place on 126th. This was for every James Brown performance, and back then he and his band did five shows a day, six shows a week. These guys worked.”

One need not have taken a poetry tutorial with Langston Hughes to appreciate the symbolism of these days immediately following Mr. Brown’s death: the hardest-working man in show biz, who was still touring this year at age 73, on the receiving end of three official memorial ceremonies, at three different sites, over three days.

On Friday, a private funeral for family and close friends will take place at a church near his hometown, Augusta, Ga. And on Saturday, there will be a service open to the public at the James Brown Arena in Augusta, which seats 8,500.

To the uninitiated, the Apollo did not appear to be bracing for chaos. “We have a staff of about 120, 130 that works here on a show night, and we’re going to be all hands on deck, and proudly, too,” Mr. Mitchell said. “I expect people will be very respectful. I don’t think there’ll be pushing or shoving.”

Still, Tyree McWhorter, a security guard at the Apollo, envisioned a long day. “I don’t see how they’re going to have everybody out by 8 p.m.,” he said. “Most people will wait as long as they have to until they get to see him, for the fact that it’s James Brown. People got respect for him.”

An elderly woman in an ankle-length down-filled coat and a beige woolen beret began walking past Mr. McWhorter, toward the back of the theater, but he took a wide sideways step that placed him squarely in her path. “May I help you?” he said.

“I’m here to see the body,” she said.

“That’s tomorrow, 1 o’clock.”

A pained expression came over the woman’s face. “If I don’t come back, please tell James Brown I’m sorry,” she said. Mr. McWhorter said he would try.

In fact, she was hardly the only visitor to the theater with hopes of an early peek, although Mr. Brown’s body, according to an Apollo spokeswoman, was still in Augusta, along with Mr. Sharpton, who was to escort it to New York this morning.

Freddie Floyd, a 33-year-old hotel concierge who was visiting New York City from Houston — and for the first time in his life — made an entrance with his aunt, Hallie Senette. Mr. Floyd said that he and his aunt were already in New York when they learned of Mr. Brown’s death, “but this will make our trip historic. To me, James Brown is the transition of R & B into mainstream.”

At Amy Ruth’s, a restaurant on West 116th Street, DeAnte Wilson, the headwaiter, said that customers and workers had been discussing Mr. Brown’s legacy. He said Mr. Brown’s music made a profound mark on African-American culture, with its message of black empowerment. “His lyrics expressed what we were thinking, but didn’t want to say,” Mr. Wilson said.

Back on 125th Street, Olivio DuBois said he planned to attend the viewing. “He was about respect for himself and his people,” said Mr. DuBois, who described himself as a great grandnephew of W. E. B. DuBois, the scholar and civil rights activist. Of Mr. Brown’s 1968 song “Say It Loud (I’m Black and I’m Proud),” he said: “That was it right there. He didn’t really need to say any more.”

Inside the Apollo, the dissonant banging of a rehearsing rock ’n’ roll drummer could be heard. Not for a second had anybody considered postponing Wednesday’s Amateur Night competition to prepare for Mr. Brown’s memorial, an employee said.

“Putting on events is what we do, after all,” said Florence Wiley, the theater’s director of marketing and communications.

Cecil Dozier, a middle-aged man in a ski parka and Timberland boots, came into the theater to ask about the viewing schedule.

“Even if I lived way across town, I’d be here,” he said. “When I was 5 years old my oldest brother took me to a concert in Jacksonville, Fla. I saw him many times.

“Once, I took a lady friend who had a boyfriend at the time. She later became my wife,” Mr. Dozier continued. He recalled Mr. Brown’s playing the hit “Please Please Please” at that show.

“I remember all that drama, the sight of him bending down on one knee and having the cloth draped over him, then throwing it off as he kept on singing,” he said. “That explained the love he had for his woman. He didn’t want her to go.”

Manny Fernandez and Carla Baranauckas contributed reporting.

    Apollo Pays Tribute to James Brown, NYT, 28.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/28/nyregion/28apollo.html?hp&ex=1167368400&en=42dc21e7c687513a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Farewell to the ‘Godfather of Soul’

December 28, 2006
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

The body of James Brown will lie in state today at the Apollo Theater, officials there said. After a procession through Harlem by horse-drawn carriage, there will a public viewing at the theater from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m.

At 6 p.m., there will be a 30-minute program for family members, friends and the news media. The program is to include a welcome from Jonelle Procope, the theater’s president and chief executive; remarks from the Rev. Al Sharpton, a longtime friend of Mr. Brown’s; and a prayer led by the Rev. W. Franklyn Richardson, the chairman of Mr. Sharpton’s National Action Network. The public viewing will pause for the program at 6 p.m. and resume at 6:30 p.m.

A funeral service is set for Saturday at the James Brown Arena in Augusta, Ga., Mr. Brown’s adopted hometown. The 1 p.m. service is open to the public. The arena, which seats 8,500, was officially renamed for Mr. Brown in October.

A private ceremony for family and friends will be held at a church near Augusta tomorrow.

    Farewell to the ‘Godfather of Soul’, NYT, 28.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/28/nyregion/28service.html

For ‘Soul Brother No. 1,’ a Last Time on the Apollo Stage Where He Reigned

December 27, 2006
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The body of James Brown will be returned tomorrow to the site of some of his greatest triumphs — the Apollo Theater in Harlem — so that the public that saw and heard him leave a lasting impression on music can see him one last time, the Rev. Al Sharpton said yesterday.

Mr. Brown’s body will rest on the stage of the Apollo, at 253 West 125th Street, from 1 to 8 p.m., permitting one more look at a man who steered modern music toward the rhythm-and-blues, funk, hip-hop and rap beats popular today, said Mr. Sharpton, a close friend of Mr. Brown’s for decades.

“It would almost be unthinkable for a man who lived such a sensational life to go away quietly,” Mr. Sharpton told The Associated Press in an interview from Georgia, where he was making funeral arrangements with Mr. Brown’s children.

Mr. Sharpton said the public Apollo viewing would be followed by a private ceremony Friday in Mr. Brown’s hometown, Augusta, Ga., and another public service a day later at the James Brown Arena there.

“Live at the Apollo,” released in 1963, was one of Mr. Brown’s most successful albums. “His greatest thrill was always the lines around the Apollo Theater,” Mr. Sharpton said. “I felt that James Brown in all the years we talked would have wanted one last opportunity to let the people say goodbye to him and he to the people.”

Mr. Brown, 73, died of congestive heart failure on Monday morning in Atlanta. He had been scheduled to perform on New Year’s Eve at B. B. King’s blues club in Times Square.

Mr. Sharpton said that Mr. Brown always knew his place in history.

”He used to tell me, ‘There are two American originals, Elvis and me,’ ” Mr. Sharpton said. “ ‘Elvis is gone, and I’ve got to carry on.’ ”

    For ‘Soul Brother No. 1,’ a Last Time on the Apollo Stage Where He Reigned, NYT, 27.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/27/nyregion/27brown.html

Music

Godfather of Soul, and C.E.O. of His Band

December 27, 2006
The New York Times
By KELEFA SANNEH

What did James Brown do?

Even now, half a century after the release of his first single, “Please Please Please,” and days after his death of congestive heart failure, at 73, early on Christmas morning, that’s a surprisingly difficult question to answer.

He was a singer, of course, though he was perhaps better known for his grunts and his patter. “I wanna get up and do my thing. (Yeah!) Can I get into it? (Yeah!) Like a ... (What?) Like a ... (What?)” With an introduction like that, who cares if the song never starts?

He was a dancer, too, though that seemed less like the cause of his appeal and more like an effect of it. He moved as if he simply couldn’t help himself, and he toured that way too. His scheduled New Year’s Eve concert in New York was to be just one more date on his latest tour; tonight, for example, he had been scheduled for a concert in Waterbury, Conn. (Now that’s dedication.)

Most of all, he was an old-fashioned, hard-driving bandleader — which is to say, an anomaly. In an era of rock stars he often seemed like the second coming of Cab Calloway; the old big band had gotten smaller, but the man in front had only grown.

And while his rock ’n’ roll counterparts chafed at the idea of being mere entertainers, Mr. Brown never stopped bragging about being “the hardest-working man in show business.”

He was black and proud, he was a sex machine, but he was also a brilliant conductor, known for coaxing great performances out of the singers and musicians behind him. That, most of all, is what Mr. Brown did.

So celebrating the James Brown sound also means celebrating the musicians who created it. When he delayed the fourth and final beat of a measure, the drummer Clyde Stubblefield warped time in a way that helped inspire a whole constellation of rhythm-obsessed genres. Bobby Byrd (he of the famous “Yeah!” and “What?”), Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley, Bootsy Collins, Lyn Collins, Vicki Anderson: to love James Brown is to love them too. And not enough has been written about Jimmy Nolen, the visionary guitarist whose spidery licks helped inspire two generations of post-punk bands. (When people talk about “angular” guitars, they often mean “Jimmy-Nolen-ish.”)

In this sense the bandleader was also a brand leader: in the 1970s, especially, “James Brown” was not just a star, but an executive, a producer, a franchise. His name (sometimes his face too) on the record label meant you were getting a James-Brown-approved product. And if you went to see the J.B.’s, the backing band that morphed into a terrific stand-alone group, you were also seeing a reflection of Mr. Brown, even if he was nowhere near the building.

Bandleaders have always (of necessity) been businessmen too, but Mr. Brown was wise enough to be unembarrassed by the echo. There was a hint of corporate precision in the way he led those musicians onstage: each wiggle of the hip or flicker of the hand was an urgent memo from top management; each post-show conversation was a performance evaluation. Even his political program reflected this obsession; his vision of black power was in large part a vision of black spending power, and he saw no reason why a black nationalist shouldn’t also be an eager (and successful) black capitalist.

The musician as executive: this is the not-quite-new notion that defines the current musical era. Pop stars flaunt their corporate ties; rappers brag about their business acumen (real or, more often, imaginary); rock bands cheerfully acknowledge that they are brands on the run. And while some listeners may be nostalgic for a time when pop music was untainted by corporate chic, Mr. Brown’s career is a reminder that the old-fashioned bandleader and new-fangled pop-star C.E.O. really aren’t so far apart. When he called himself “the hardest-working man in show business,” the emphasis was on “working” and “business.”

If James Brown, the musician, has also been influential and enduring, it’s not just because of his evergreen hits, which still sound vigorous, even though they have been reissued and covered and sampled ad nauseam. And it’s not just because of all the styles he helped inspire, from Nigerian Afro-beat to Brazilian funk-rap.

It’s also because, decades before the rise of computer music, he proved that some virtuosos do their best work with no instruments at all. In that sense his true heirs today are producers like Timbaland: knob-twiddling masterminds who program sounds instead of conducting them, beat-obsessed visionaries who keep reinventing Mr. Brown’s propulsive templates, serial collaborators who understand the business of pop music.

No one could ever do all the things Mr. Brown did. But here is what’s more impressive: musicians are still finding new ways to do some of them.

    Godfather of Soul, and C.E.O. of His Band, NYT, 27.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/27/arts/music/27sann.html

Obituary

James Brown

Godfather of Soul became a spokesman for black America

Tuesday December 26, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

Stocky but lithe, like a street-brawling puma, James Brown, who has died aged 73 of congestive heart failure, was a dominant force in the emancipation of African-American music and culture from the 1960s onwards.

He was still performing up to his death. The day before he was hospitalised for pneumonia, he was at his annual Christmas toy giveaway in Atlanta, Georgia, and looking forward to giving a New Year's Eve concert.

Not that Brown was ever comfortable with such a politically correct notion as African-American. He was first and foremost of, and for, the US. Secondly, he remained defiantly a southerner. And, although he was unashamedly black, he had a lot more Cherokee Indian and, by his own admission, Mongol blood in him than any special connection or empathy with Africa - despite being hailed as some kind of homecoming hero when touring that continent. Latterly he saw himself as Universal James.

From the degradation and apparent hopelessness of an apparently stillborn delivery in a rural shack in the segregated southern US - he was resuscitated only when it was noticed that his body had stayed warm - he fiercely drove himself to become an internationally renowned, massively influential icon of his own invention, the Godfather of Soul.

Like other sobriquets - the Hardest Working Man in Showbusiness was an earlier claim, Minister of New Super Heavy Funk a later pitch - GOS was OTT, but it was the one that stuck and most befitted the nature of the man and his Taurean charge at life.

His career thundered or faltered more in accordance with the strengths and pitfalls of his relentless ego and determination to be somebody than any believable script. The fallout of his monumental drive "to the bridge" is a persistently resonating pulse that informs the dance of opportunity for all of us, of any creed or colour.

Brown's professional recording career lasted more than 40 years, but it was the decade from 1965 to 1974 that circumscribed his most extraordinary achievements. During that turbulent era of civil rights upheaval and war in Vietnam, he exploded from the launch-pad of "chitlin circuit" stardom (named after the characteristic dish of boiled pigs' intestines), playing the chain of "safe" black venues in the south and east, to become a national spokesman for black America.

By then independently controlling his own affairs, he hob-nobbed with politicos and cultural luminaries, was feted by the White House and was credited with helping greatly to calm the streets immediately following the assassination of Martin Luther King on April 4 1968. He bought three of the then five black-owned US radio stations, launched his own soul food restaurants and food stamps programme, entertained in Africa and for US troops in Vietnam. He commanded attention. He was on an unprecedented, socially provocative roll while all the while maintaining a punishing schedule with his frenetic stage show.

By the mid-1970s, his political and business naivety had backfired. Nonetheless, it was during those 10 years that he and, just as importantly, the changing ensembles of talented musicians he employed, inspired and bullied, created music that was challenging, exhilarating, fuelled with passion and a rhythmic intensity unlike anything before. Of the moment and of the man, it is a substantial legacy of work that remains wholly idiosyncratic and yet is repeatedly echoed around the globe.

A later defining moment in Brown's career came in January 1986, when he was inducted as one of the 10 charter members into the US music industry's Rock 'n' Roll Hall Of Fame. The other worthies were either dead or well beyond their "best before" date. Brown was concurrently riding his biggest international hit for more than a decade (Living In America, appropriately soundtracked in the bullish movie Rocky IV) at the very time his back catalogue was being plundered by an entire new international generation.

Few bravehearts have attempted to replicate organically a James Brown recording as he and his musicians spontaneously created them. But with the advent of computerised sampling technology, all and sundry were suddenly able to swipe his card into a soundtrack for their own aspirations. The beats and rhythms, screams and hollers; the energy and badassness; the catharsis and charisma; the unorthodoxy; all there for the taking. What Brown had emoted as personal expression came back around as a worldwide display of scattershot sound bites.

Whether later disciples from Tokyo to Tooting Bec fully understood where James Brown was coming from in the first place is another matter entirely. He wasn't always entirely lucid on that score himself.

Brown was born in the pine woods outside Barnwell, South Carolina, to parents who soon separated, leaving him in the care of an "aunt" who ran a brothel across the Savannah river in nearby Augusta, Georgia. A raggedy-assed waif with limited education but street nous, his early focus on sport and music was interupted by four years in jail for petty theft.

Paroled in 1952 in Toccoa, Georgia, he was taken in by the Byrd family, initially "wrecking the church" as a fervent gospeller with Sarah Byrd (an innate gift he later parodied in the 1980 movie, The Blues Brothers), then joining brother Bobby Byrd's group, the Gospel Starlighters. With their secular heads on, known as the Avons, they bounced from the early inspiration of Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five to perform the jump-jive of Joe Turner, Roy Brown and Wynonie Harris, the closeknit harmonies of groups like the Ink Spots and Orioles, and the newly emergent rhythm and blues sounds of Billy Ward's Dominoes, Clyde McPhatter and The Drifters, The Clovers and suchlike. Byrd's Avons became the Famous Flames with Brown at the forefront and relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, in pursuit of local tearaway Little Richard.

In late 1955, Richard had a hit with Tutti Frutti and decamped to Los Angeles for an incandescent, if brief, eruption of some of the greatest rock and roll records ever made. Brown temporarily emulated Richard on stage, but eschewed rock and roll when it came time for the Famous Flames to record in February 1956. Instead they cut a tortured, gospel-derived personalisation of an Orioles version of the Big Joe Williams' blues, Baby Please Don't Go. They called it Please, Please, Please. Syd Nathan, the myopic owner of Cincinnati-based King Records, to whom they were signed by the producer Ralph Bass, called it "the worst piece of shit I ever heard", but released it anyway. It has sold millions over the years and remained Brown's cape-flourishing, knee-dropping homage to his past throughout his career.

Despite their initial territorial success, Brown and a changing vocal group struggled in southern obscurity until a second hit in late 1958 (Try Me, a more romantic supplication) convinced Ben Bart, the owner of Universal Attractions booking agency, to become Brown's personal manager, business mentor and surrogate "pops". Recruiting his first small band of regular musicians, and with his teeth, hair and wardrobe made over, by 1962 Brown was breaking box office records in major black venues throughout the US with a whirlwind revue of his own creation that synthesised all of his roots into a shockingly unique new persona. Live at the Apollo,the resulting LP recorded at the top New York venue, smashed him into the face of white recognition.

What followed did not go according to anybody's plan. Brown formed his own independent company, Fair Deal Productions, and rebuilt his band into a sizeable orchestra with the intention of crossing the tracks at Tuxedo Junction. The prevailing social climate in the US, Brown's responses to the situation, and the fact that his new recruits were mostly restless young jazzers, sparked them all off into uncharted territory. It was Out of Sight, Papa Got a Brand New Bag. A Man's World bathed in Cold Sweat. He Said it Loud, was Black and Proud and danced the Popcorn. In a New Day it was Funky Now. He was Super Bad, a Sex Machine with Soul Power. He had his Thang and Papa Didn't Take No Mess, he demanded Payback. This litany of just a few of his more familiar titles does little justice to the underlying tour de force, involving three effectively different bands over 10 years, that changed the direction of black American music.

By 1975, James Brown was showing the first signs of insecurity since the 1950s. In the charts he was being outflanked by many of the younger acts he had inspired, he was on shaky ground with his record company, Polydor (a dispassionate international corporation, unlike the seat-of-the-pants operation with which he had grown strong), some of his leading musicians left him, and the Internal Revenue Service was on his case.

It was then that he apparently began smoking something rather more confusing than the occasional menthol and began rehashing his old hits; following trends instead of creating them. Nevertheless, he soldiered on, still toured the world regularly to great acclaim, came up with a hit from time to time, and seemed to be settling into his establishment-honoured role as a living legend, until 1987. That year saw him back in a southern jail again - this time for throwing a drug-fuelled tantrum brandishing a shotgun and nearly getting himself shot to death in a Keystone Cops chase around state borders.

Released in 1991, a lesser man might have deemed it prudent to retire gracefully with his multifarious awards on the sideboard. Brown dusted himself off, ordered a new spangle suit, assembled another band and charged forth once again. It was never the same as his heyday, but it was never less than an audience with a formidably dominant personality. Letting off another rifle and another car chase in 1998 led to a drug rehabilitation programme, and in 2004 he was arrested on charges of domestic violence against his fourth wife, Tomi Rae Hynie, a former backup singer. She survives him, as do their son and at least three other children.

Honours came in the form of a Grammy lifetime achievement award (1992), a Kennedy Centre Honour (2003) and entry into the UK Music Hall of Fame when he was in London for an energetic appearance in the BBC Electric Proms at the Roundhouse last November. With the spirit of one of his 1973 million-sellers, James Brown kept on Doing It To Death.

    James Brown, G, 26.12.2006, http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1978677,00.html

James Brown, the ‘Godfather of Soul,’ Dies at 73

December 26, 2006
The New York Times
By JON PARELES

James Brown, the singer, songwriter, bandleader and dancer who indelibly transformed 20th-century music, died early yesterday in Atlanta. He was 73 and lived in Beech Island, S.C., across the Savannah River from Augusta, Ga.

Mr. Brown died of congestive heart failure after being hospitalized for pneumonia, said his agent, Frank Copsidas.

Mr. Brown sold millions of records in a career that lasted half a century. In the 1960s and 1970s he regularly topped the rhythm-and-blues charts, although he never had a No. 1 pop hit. Yet his music proved far more durable and influential than countless chart-toppers. His funk provides the sophisticated rhythms that are the basis of hip-hop and a wide swath of current pop.

Mr. Copsidas said that Mr. Brown had participated in an annual Christmas toy giveaway in Atlanta on Friday but had been hospitalized on Saturday. After canceling performances planned for midweek, Mr. Brown on Sunday night got his doctor’s approval to perform on Saturday in New Jersey and on New Year’s Eve at B.B. King’s nightclub in New York.

Mr. Copsidas said Mr. Brown used one of his best-known slogans to convey his dedication to his fans: “I’m the hardest working man in show business, and I’m not going to let them down.”

Through the years, Mr. Brown did not only call himself “the hardest working man in show business.” He also went by “Mr. Dynamite,” “Soul Brother No. 1,” “the Minister of Super Heavy Funk” and “the Godfather of Soul,” and he was all of those and more.

His 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 Mr. Brown introduced in his 1965 hit “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” was both deeply rooted in Africa and thoroughly American. Songs like “I Got You (I Feel Good),” “Cold Sweat,” “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine” and “Hot Pants” found the percussive side of every instrument and meshed sharply syncopated patterns into kinetic polyrhythms that made people dance.

Mr. Brown’s innovations reverberated through the soul and rhythm-and-blues of the 1970s and the hip-hop of the next three decades. The beat of a 1970 instrumental “Funky Drummer” may well be the most widely sampled rhythm in hip-hop.

Mr. Brown’s stage moves — the spins, the quick shuffles, the knee-drops, the splits — were imitated by performers who tried to match his stamina, from Mick Jagger to Michael Jackson, and were admired by the many more who could not. Mr. Brown was a political force, especially during the 1960s; his 1968 song “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud” changed America’s racial vocabulary. He was never politically predictable; in 1972 he endorsed the re-election of Richard M. Nixon.

Mr. Brown led a turbulent life, and served prison time as both a teenager and an adult. He was a stern taskmaster who fined his band members for missed notes or imperfect shoeshines. He was an entrepreneur who, at the end of the 1960s, owned his own publishing company, three radio stations and a Learjet (which he would later sell to pay back taxes). And he performed constantly: as many as 51 weeks a year in his prime.

Mr. Brown was born May 3, 1933, in a one-room shack in Barnwell, S.C. As he would later tell it, midwives thought he was stillborn, but his body stayed warm, and he was revived. When his parents separated four years later, he was left in the care of his aunt Honey, who ran a brothel in Augusta, Ga. As a boy he earned pennies buck-dancing for soldiers; he also picked cotton and shined shoes. He was dismissed from school because his clothes were too ragged.

He was imprisoned for petty theft in 1949 after breaking into a car, and paroled three years later. While in prison he sang in a gospel group. After he was released, he joined a group led by Bobby Byrd, which eventually called itself the Flames. At first, Mr. Brown played drums with the group and traded off lead vocals with other members. But with his powerful voice and frenzied, acrobatic dancing, he soon emerged as the frontman.

In 1955 the Flames recorded “Please Please Please” in the basement studio of a radio station in Macon, Ga. A talent scout heard it on local radio and signed the Flames to a recording contract with King Records. A second version, recorded in Cincinnati in 1956, became a million-selling single.

Nine follow-up singles were flops until, in 1958 a gospel-rooted ballad, “Try Me,” went to No. 1 on the rhythm-and-blues chart. Mr. Brown followed up with more ballads, although the Flames’ stage shows would turn them into long, frenzied crescendos. His trademark routine of collapsing onstage, having a cape thrown over him and tossing it away for one more reprise, again and again, would leave audiences shouting for more.

In 1960 Mr. Brown’s version of “Think” put a choppy, Latin-flavored beat — hinting at the funk to come — behind a sustained vocal and pushed him back into the R&B Top 10 and the pop Top 40.

Mr. Brown had his first Top 20 pop hit in 1963 with “Prisoner of Love,” a ballad backed by an orchestra. But before those sessions he had done a series of shows at the Apollo Theater in Harlem and the one on Oct. 24, 1962, was recorded. His label had not wanted to record the shows; Mr. Brown insisted. Released in 1963, “Live at the Apollo” — with screaming fans and galvanizing crescendos — revealed what the rhythm-and-blues circuit already knew, and became the No. 2 album nationwide.

James Brown and the Famous Flames toured nonstop through the 1960s. They were filmed in California for the “The T.A.M.I. Show,” released in 1965, which shows Mick Jagger trying to pick up Mr. Brown’s dance moves.

By the mid-1960s Mr. Brown was producing his own recording sessions. In February 1965, with “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” he decided to shift the beat of his band: from the one-two-three-four backbeat to one-two-three-four. “I changed from the upbeat to the downbeat,” Mr. Brown said in 1990. “Simple as that, really.”

Actually it wasn’t that simple; drums, rhythm guitar and horns all kicked the beat around from different angles. “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” won a Grammy Award as best rhythm-and-blues song, and it was only the beginning of Mr. Brown’s rhythmic breakthroughs. Through the 1960s and into the ’70s, Mr. Brown would make his funk ever more complex while stripping harmony to a bare minimum in songs like “Cold Sweat.” He didn’t immediately abandon ballads; songs like “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World,” a No. 1 R&B hit in 1966, mixed aching, bluesy lines with wrenching screams.

Amid the civil rights ferment of the 1960s Mr. Brown used his fame and music for social messages. He released “Don’t Be a Dropout” in 1966 and met with Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey to promote a stay-in-school initiative. Two years later “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud” insisted, “We won’t quit movin’ until we get what we deserve.”

When the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968, Mr. Brown was due to perform in Boston. Instead of canceling his show, he had it televised. Boston was spared the riots that took place in other cities. “Don’t just react in a way that’s going to destroy your community,” he urged.

By the late 1960s Mr. Brown’s funk was part of pop, R&B and jazz: in his own hits, in songs by the Temptations and Sly and the Family Stone, and in the music of Miles Davis. It was also creating a sensation in Africa, where it would shape the Afrobeat of Fela Kuti, the juju of King Sunny Ade and the mbalax of Youssou N’Dour.

Musicians who left Mr. Brown’s bands would also have a direct role in 1970s and 1980s funk; the saxophonist Maceo Parker, the trombonist Fred Wesley and the bassist Bootsy Collins were part of George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic, and Mr. Parker also worked with Prince.

Through the early 1970s Mr. Brown’s songs filled dance floors. His self-described “super heavy funk” gave him No. 1 R&B hits and Top 20 pop hits with “Give It Up or Turnit a Loose” and “Mother Popcorn” in 1969, “Super Bad Pts. 1 & 2” in 1970, “Hot Pants” and “Make It Funky” in 1971, “Get on the Good Foot Pt. 1” in 1972 and “The Payback Pt. 1” in 1974. He provided soundtracks for blaxploitation movies like “Black Caesar” and “Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off,” and performed at the 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle” boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Zaire.

The rise of disco — a much simplified version of Mr. Brown’s funk — knocked him out of the Top 40 in the late 1970s. But an appearance in “The Blues Brothers” in 1980 started a career resurgence, and in 1985 Mr. Brown had a pop hit, peaking at No. 4, with “Living in America,” the song he performed in the movie “Rocky IV.” It won him his second Grammy Award for Best Rhythm and Blues Recording. That year he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of its first members.

Meanwhile hip-hop had arrived, with Mr. Brown’s music often providing the beat. LL Cool J, Public Enemy, De La Soul and the Beastie Boys are among the more than 100 acts that have sampled Clyde Stubblefield’s drumming on “Funky Drummer” alone. In 1984 Mr. Brown collaborated with the influential rapper Afrika Bambaataa on the single “Unity.” He kept recording into the 21st century, including a 2002 studio album, “The Next Step.”

Mr. Brown maintained a nearly constant touring schedule despite a tumultuous personal life. During the 1970s the Internal Revenue Service demanded $4.5 million in unpaid taxes; the jet and radio stations were sold. His oldest son, Teddy, died in a car accident in 1973.

In 1987, intoxicated on PCP, he burst into an insurance seminar adjoining his own office in Augusta, then led police on a car chase across the South Carolina border. He was sentenced to prison for carrying a deadly weapon at a public gathering, attempting to flee a police officer and driving under the influence of drugs, and was released in 1991.

In 1998 after discharging a rifle and another car chase, he was sentenced to a 90-day drug rehabilitation program. He was officially pardoned by South Carolina in 2003, but arrested again in 2004 on charges of domestic violence against his fourth wife, Tomi Rae Hynie, a former backup singer. “I would never hurt my wife,” he said in a statement at the time. “I love her very much.”

She survives him, along with their son, James Brown II, and at least five other children.

In 1999, Mr. Brown made a deal to receive more than $25 million in bonds against advance publishing royalties. This year, however, he sought to refinance the bonds with a new loan. The banker who had made the original deal, David Pullman, objected to the terms, and Mr. Brown filed a lawsuit against him in July.

But Mr. Brown’s status as an American archetype had long since been assured. A definitive collection, “Star Time” (Universal), was released in 1991. He received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992 and a Kennedy Center Honor in 2003, the same year that Michael Jackson presented him with a BET Award for lifetime achievement. In a 1990 interview with The New York Times, he said, “I was always 25 years ahead of my time.”

John O’Neil contributed reporting.

    James Brown, the ‘Godfather of Soul,’ Dies at 73, NYT, 26.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/arts/music/26brown.html?hp&ex=1167195600&en=c55a4bacd4872b92&ei=5094&partner=homepage

For Half a Century, a Legend Who Worked Up a Sweat

December 26, 2006
The New York Times
By ALAN FEUER

They mourned James Brown the James Brown way yesterday: took his promotional poster and turned it into a shrine.

There it stood outside B. B. King’s nightclub on 42nd Street, a makeshift icon with the astral smile, the soul glow, the standing waves of anti-gravity hair.

Where once the poster read, “Appearing Live on New Year’s Eve,” it now said, “In Memory of.”

The fine print listing sets was papered over, “Rest in Peace.”

Mr. Brown, godfather, entertainer, hardest-working man, was supposed to have performed at B. B. King’s next week, but now strangers stopped outside the club to pause and pay respects.

“Papa’s got a brand-new bag,” someone had scribbled just below his chin.

“The Day the Funk Stood Still,” another wrote.

“It’s like they said — he’s the Godfather of Soul, the hardest working man in show business,” said Samaiyah Engram, who had happened by. “He means a lot. Michael Jackson learned his moves from James Brown, and we all learned our moves from Michael Jackson.”

It would border only slightly on hyperbole to say the nation stepped back yesterday at the news of the death.

Outside the Motown Historical Museum in Detroit, Carl Rodgers, 48, said, “I listen to his music and I just want to get up.” At the White House, President Bush released a statement saying, “For half a century, the innovative talent of the Godfather of Soul enriched our culture and influenced generations of musicians.” At Junior’s restaurant, the famed cheesecake emporium on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, a radio was tuned to a station playing one of Mr. Brown’s live performances, and word of his death percolated through the dining room in fits and starts.

“James Brown? For real?” asked Mike Henderson, 20 and a student. “He was a legend — a legend. The dance moves, his way of singing. He had an impact on all cultures of music, not just black music.”

Gary James, a 43-year-old correction officer, said Mr. Brown “did with music what Martin Luther King did with laws.”

“It just made you want to go and do things for yourself,” Mr. James said.

Gary Carroll, 53, a Detroit native who was waiting for a bus on the steps of the historic First Congregational Church there, laughed at the near-ridicule he had sustained when trying some of Mr. Brown’s electric dance moves.

“The women all looked at me and said, ‘You ain’t James Brown,’ ” Mr. Carroll recalled. “When I was a kid, he was the one saying, ‘I’m black and I’m proud.’ That impressed me.”

Deborah Mitchell, who was posing for photographs with three friends outside the Motown museum, said she was saddened by the death. “But they are jammin’ in heaven,” she added.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, a longtime friend of Mr. Brown, said that he and Mr. Brown had shared a passion for social justice — and a hair stylist.

“James Brown literally changed music,” Mr. Sharpton said. “He made soul an international music genre. There would never have been a Michael Jackson or a Prince without James Brown. He used to tell me that Elvis and him were the only American originals.”

The Rev. Jesse Jackson released a statement, too, saying that Mr. Brown had been a showman to the end, dying on Christmas Day.

“With all of the focus on war and politics,” the statement read, “James Brown will be center stage all week.”

In New York, backstage between two sold-out Christmas concerts at the Museum of Jewish Heritage downtown, Joshua Nelson and his Kosher Gospel Choir commiserated about Mr. Brown’s death.

“We’re performing for a Jewish crowd here,” said Mr. Nelson, the bandleader, “and when you announce that James Brown died, you hear shrieks because James Brown spoke to everybody.”

Later in the afternoon, Mr. Nelson dedicated the prayer “Adon Olam” (Hebrew for “Lord of the World”) to Mr. Brown.

At B. B. King’s, the reaction was slightly more specific, given that the club will now have to find someone to fill a very large pair of musical shoes. And quickly.

Mr. Brown was scheduled to headline there on New Year’s Eve, as he had at least a half-dozen times, including last year.

“We’re currently looking for another performer of the same caliber,” said Eric Gunther, a manager. Seconds after saying that, Mr. Gunther recognized the statement as absurd.

Reporting was contributed by Nicholas Confessore, Manny Fernandez, Seth Schiesel, Brad Webber and Timothy Williams.

    For Half a Century, a Legend Who Worked Up a Sweat, NYT, 26.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/26/nyregion/26react.html

'Godfather of Soul' James Brown dies at 73

Updated 12/25/2006 11:06 PM ET
USA Today
By Steve Jones

James Brown — the Godfather of Soul — whose hard-driving rhythms and impassioned vocals put millions of fans on the good foot, was one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century.

His sweat-drenched, testosterone-fueled jams fired the imagination of generations of musicians that followed him, including such icons as George Clinton, Michael Jackson, David Bowie, Prince and The Who, and helped fuel rap's popularity.

"He was not only the Godfather of Soul but the Godfather of Funk and Rap," hip-hop star Ice Cube told allhiphop.com. "Music will never be the same."

Brown, a charter member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, died Christmas morning of heart failure after a brief hospital stay to treat pneumonia. He had suffered a number of health problems in recent years, including prostate cancer and diabetes.

BET Networks Chairman and CEO Debra Lee said: "We have lost the most inspirational force the music world has ever known. James Brown's impact across all genres of music — especially funk, soul, disco and rock — is immeasurable and will never be duplicated."

Brown's career spanned more than five decades, and he had well over 100 hit singles.

His vocals were fiery declarations embellished by screams and squeals, grunts and "good gawds." His songs were punctuated by horns that irresistibly drew people to the dance floor, where the wicked grooves from the guitars and drums commanded people to move. He once told USA TODAY, in a rare interview at his home in Beech Island, S.C.: "My music wasn't written by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach or Schubert. It's written by God and me. They go 'a one and a two and up.' We start on the downbeat. Bam! And that's where we got them."

More than music

Brown was the ultimate showman and a frenetic dancer. Crowds at his concerts anticipated his pirouettes, splits and other antics as much as they did the songs themselves. His signature move near the end of his show was to be helped from the stage, seemingly exhausted, only to throw off his cape and race back to the microphone for more.

But Brown was about more than just music.

The self-proclaimed "Hardest-Working Man in Show Business" also was a powerful political voice in the black community. He had the ear of the common man, but also knew presidents and kings.

Brown ran his own multimedia empire that included TV and radio stations and an extensive stable of acts. He was active in the civil rights movement in the '60s and '70s, helping to fan the Black Power movement with powerful anthems such as Say It Loud — I'm Black and I'm Proud.

He helped quell the riots that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., making a live broadcast on his radio stations on the night of King's shooting asking his audience to avoid a violent response.

The next day, in Boston, he was asked by Mayor Kevin White to televise a concert performance to keep people at home.

At the same time he was writing soul-power anthems, he performed for troops in Vietnam, and he later raised eyebrows in the black community by supporting President Richard Nixon's re-election campaign in 1972.

Roots in rhythm and blues

Born in Barnwell, S.C., in 1933, he served a reform-school sentence for breaking into cars before his musical career began. He then teamed with singer Bobby Byrd's Ever Ready Gospel Singers, which soon evolved into the R&B group The Flames (later the Famous Flames) in 1953. They were signed to King Records in 1956 and scored an immediate rhythm-and-blues hit with the pleading Please, Please, Please.

Further R&B hits and constant tours on the R&B concert circuit followed, and gradually he made inroads into the pop market with such hits as 1962's Night Train and a tormented cover of the pop ballad Prisoner of Love in 1963.

That year also saw the release of Live at the Apollo, one of the first massively successful live albums in any musical genre and a landmark recording that captured the inimitable intensity and legendary stop-on-a-dime musical precision of a James Brown show.

Building on that success, in 1964 he released Out of Sight, a new sort of R&B hit based on rhythmic grooves rather than traditional pop song structures. It was a crossover hit, and he refined the style further with hits such as Papa's Got a Brand New Bag, I Got You (I Feel Good) and Cold Sweat, stripping his sound down to its essential propulsive elements and paving the way for the funk and disco sounds that would define the '70s and much of the '80s.

He maintained his "Minister of New New Super Heavy Funk" status through the first half of the '70s, creating funk classics the likes of Mother Popcorn, Super Bad, Get Up (I Feel Like Being Like a Sex Machine), the prophetic Brother Rapp, and Get on the Good Foot.

But acts such as Parliament and Funkadelic (which included former Brown band members such as Bootsy Collins and Fred Wesley) took over R&B's center stage, and Brown's supple grooves didn't fit the more metronomic disco style.

His last major hit was 1985's Living in America, from the movie Rocky IV (a film with which Brown, a former boxer and a lifetime self-motivated striver, certainly could identify).

Hard-working to the end

His later life proved problematic. Tax problems had dismantled much of his business empire, and a PCP-related 1988 police chase brought him tabloid notoriety and a six-year prison sentence, commuted to 15 months plus 10 months in a work-release program.

His third wife, Adrienne, brought domestic violence charges against him; in 1996, she died after complications from a cosmetic surgery procedure. Brown was arrested in 2004 on domestic-violence charges filed by his fourth wife, Tomi Rae; they subsequently reconciled and the charges were dropped. He had his seventh child, James Joseph Brown II, with her in 2001; the couple later separated amicably.

Through it all, he continued to record (his last new album was 2002's The Next Step) and perform — he was planning a show Dec. 31 at B.B. King's Blues Club and Grill in New York.

"He was dramatic to the end — dying on Christmas Day," said Jesse Jackson, a longtime friend. "He'll be all over the news all over the world today. He would have it no other way."

One of Brown's many Christmas songs was titled Let's Make Christmas Mean Something This Year.

This year, it means American culture has lost a true giant.

    'Godfather of Soul' James Brown dies at 73, UT, 25.12.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/life/people/2006-12-25-brown-obit_x.htm

James Brown, civil rights icon, peacemaker

Mon Dec 25, 2006 4:41 PM ET
Reuters
By Dean Goodman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, James Brown. The "Godfather of Soul," who died in Atlanta on Monday aged 73, was one of the most important leaders of America's civil rights movement during the second half of the 20th Century.

He communed with presidents and elected officials of all political stripes, recorded groundbreaking black-pride anthems, and may have saved Boston from being burned by rioters in the days following the assassination of Martin Luther King.

He took hits from both sides. The white establishment was terrified that a seventh-grade school dropout from South Carolina might be fomenting a revolution. Black radicals were appalled that he would sing a tune like "America is My Home," dine at the White House and employ white band members.

His funky 1968 anthem "Say it Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud" preached economic self-reliance and taught generations of hard-working blacks it was time to "get our share."

"We'd rather die on our feet than be livin' on our knees," he sang.

"Back then, black folks were called negroes, but James said you can say it loud, that being black is a great thing instead of something you have to apologize for," rapper Chuck D. of the group Public Enemy said in 2003.

Brown recorded the song live during an all-night session in a Hollywood studio. He sent out for help from some neighborhood children who answered, "I'm black and I'm proud," every time he called out, "Say it Loud." Brown later recalled that most of the kids were white or Asian.

He had mixed emotions about the song, describing it as "obsolete," if necessary for the times, and said he shouldn't have to teach people they should be proud. Many whites stopped coming to his shows.

A few months before that, King was assassinated and cities across America engulfed by riots. Brown may have singlehandedly saved Boston from burning. A day after the April 4 murder, he was scheduled to play a concert there. Nervous city fathers proposed canceling the show until wiser heads pointed out that angry ticket buyers would definitely cause mayhem.

Brown arranged with the local public television station to broadcast the concert live, and he went on the radio to urge fans to stay home and watch it for free. The city's black neighborhoods were eerily quiet as a moist-eyed Brown took to the stage of the Boston Garden and punctuated his funky soul tunes with remembrances of King and appeals for calm.

The day after the Boston show, Brown flew to Washington D.C., which had been badly hit by riots. Once again, he took to the airwaves to appeal for restraint and to declare that education and ownership were better ways to seek justice.

    James Brown, civil rights icon, peacemaker, R, 25.12.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-12-25T214055Z_01_N25301835_RTRUKOC_0_US-BROWN-DEATH-RIGHTS.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-2

James Brown, 73, Dies; ‘Godfather of Soul’

December 25, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 8:44 a.m. ET
The New York Times

ATLANTA (AP) -- James Brown, the dynamic, pompadoured ''Godfather of Soul,'' whose rasping vocals and revolutionary rhythms made him a founder of rap, funk and disco as well, died early Monday, his agent said. He was 73.

Brown was hospitalized with pneumonia at Emory Crawford Long Hospital on Sunday and died around 1:45 a.m. Monday, said his agent, Frank Copsidas of Intrigue Music. Longtime friend Charles Bobbit was by his side, he said.

Copsidas said the cause of death was uncertain. ''We really don't know at this point what he died of,'' he said.

Along with Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and a handful of others, Brown was one of the major musical influences of the past 50 years. At least one generation idolized him, and sometimes openly copied him. His rapid-footed dancing inspired Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson among others. Songs such as David Bowie's ''Fame,'' Prince's ''Kiss,'' George Clinton's ''Atomic Dog'' and Sly and the Family Stone's ''Sing a Simple Song'' were clearly based on Brown's rhythms and vocal style.

If Brown's claim to the invention of soul can be challenged by fans of Ray Charles and Sam Cooke, then his rights to the genres of rap, disco and funk are beyond question. He was to rhythm and dance music what Dylan was to lyrics: the unchallenged popular innovator.

''James presented obviously the best grooves,'' rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy once told The Associated Press. ''To this day, there has been no one near as funky. No one's coming even close.''

His hit singles include such classics as ''Out of Sight,'' ''(Get Up I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine,'' ''I Got You (I Feel Good)'' and ''Say It Loud -- I'm Black and I'm Proud,'' a landmark 1968 statement of racial pride.

''I clearly remember we were calling ourselves colored, and after the song, we were calling ourselves black,'' Brown said in a 2003 Associated Press interview. ''The song showed even people to that day that lyrics and music and a song can change society.''

He won a Grammy award for lifetime achievement in 1992, as well as Grammys in 1965 for ''Papa's Got a Brand New Bag'' (best R&B recording) and for ''Living In America'' in 1987 (best R&B vocal performance, male.) He was one of the initial artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, along with Presley, Chuck Berry and other founding fathers.

He triumphed despite an often unhappy personal life. Brown, who lived in Beech Island near the Georgia line, spent more than two years in a South Carolina prison for aggravated assault and failing to stop for a police officer. After his release on in 1991, Brown said he wanted to ''try to straighten out'' rock music.

From the 1950s, when Brown had his first R&B hit, ''Please, Please, Please'' in 1956, through the mid-1970s, Brown went on a frenzy of cross-country tours, concerts and new songs. He earned the nickname ''The Hardest Working Man in Show Business'' and often tried to prove it to his fans, said Jay Ross, his lawyer of 15 years.

Brown would routinely lose two or three pounds each time he performed and kept his furious concert schedule in his later years even as he fought prostate cancer, Ross said.

''He'd always give it his all to give his fans the type of show they expected,'' he said.

With his tight pants, shimmering feet, eye makeup and outrageous hair, Brown set the stage for younger stars such as Michael Jackson and Prince.

In 1986, he was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And rap stars of recent years overwhelmingly have borrowed his lyrics with a digital technique called sampling.

Brown's work has been replayed by the Fat Boys, Ice-T, Public Enemy and a host of other rappers. ''The music out there is only as good as my last record,'' Brown joked in a 1989 interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

''Disco is James Brown, hip-hop is James Brown, rap is James Brown; you know what I'm saying? You hear all the rappers, 90 percent of their music is me,'' he told the AP in 2003.

Born in poverty in Barnwell, S.C., in 1933, he was abandoned as a 4-year-old to the care of relatives and friends and grew up on the streets of Augusta, Ga., in an ''ill-repute area,'' as he once called it. There he learned to wheel and deal.

''I wanted to be somebody,'' Brown said.

By the eighth grade in 1949, Brown had served 3 1/2 years in Alto Reform School near Toccoa, Ga., for breaking into cars.

While there, he met Bobby Byrd, whose family took Brown into their home. Byrd also took Brown into his group, the Gospel Starlighters. Soon they changed their name to the Famous Flames and their style to hard R&B.

In January 1956, King Records of Cincinnati signed the group, and four months later ''Please, Please, Please'' was in the R&B Top Ten.

Pete Allman, a radio personality in Las Vegas who had been friends with Brown for 15 years, credited Brown with jump-starting his career and motivating him personally and professionally.

''He was a very positive person. There was no question he was the hardest working man in show business,'' Allman said. ''I remember Mr. Brown as someone who always motivated me, got me reading the Bible.''

While most of Brown's life was glitz and glitter -- he was the singing preacher in 1980's ''The Blues Brothers'' -- he was plagued with charges of abusing drugs and alcohol and of hitting his third wife, Adrienne.

In September 1988, Brown, high on PCP and carrying a shotgun, entered an insurance seminar next to his Augusta office. Police said he asked seminar participants if they were using his private restroom.

Police chased Brown for a half-hour from Augusta into South Carolina and back to Georgia. The chase ended when police shot out the tires of his truck.

Brown received a six-year prison sentence. He spent 15 months in a South Carolina prison and 10 months in a work release program before being paroled in February 1991. In 2003, the South Carolina parole board granted him a pardon for his crimes in that state.

Soon after his release, Brown was on stage again with an audience that included millions of cable television viewers nationwide who watched the three-hour, pay-per-view concert at Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles.

Adrienne Brown died in 1996 in Los Angeles at age 47. She took PCP and several prescription drugs while she had a bad heart and was weak from cosmetic surgery two days earlier, the coroner said.

More recently, he married his fourth wife, Tomi Raye Hynie, one of his backup singers. The couple had a son, James Jr.

Two years later, Brown spent a week in a private Columbia hospital, recovering from what his agent said was dependency on painkillers. Brown's attorney, Albert ''Buddy'' Dallas, said the singer was exhausted from six years of road shows.

Brown was performing to the end, and giving back to his community.

Three days before his death, he joined volunteers at his annual toy giveaway in Augusta, and he planned to perform on New Year's Eve at B.B. King Blues Club in New York.

''He was dramatic to the end -- dying on Christmas Day,'' said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a friend of Brown's since 1955. ''Almost a dramatic, poetic moment. He'll be all over the news all over the world today. He would have it no other way.''

    James Brown, 73, Dies; ‘Godfather of Soul’, NYT, 25.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Obit-Brown.html?hp&ex=1167109200&en=7b2c52eb394d9620&ei=5094&partner=homepage

James Brown, 73, Dies; ‘Godfather of Soul’

December 25, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:10 a.m. ET
The New York Times

ATLANTA (AP) -- James Brown, the dynamic, pompadoured "Godfather of Soul," whose rasping vocals and revolutionary rhythms made him a founder of rap, funk and disco as well, died early Monday, his agent said. He was 73.

Brown was hospitalized with pneumonia at Emory Crawford Long Hospital on Sunday and died around 1:45 a.m. Monday, said his agent, Frank Copsidas of Intrigue Music. Longtime friend Charles Bobbit was by his side, he said.

Copsidas said Brown's family was being notified of his death and that the cause was still uncertain. "We really don't know at this point what he died of," he said.

Along with Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and a handful of others, Brown was one of the major musical influences of the past 50 years. At least one generation idolized him, and sometimes openly copied him. His rapid-footed dancing inspired Mick Jagger and Michael Jackson among others. Songs such as David Bowie's "Fame," Prince's "Kiss," George Clinton's "Atomic Dog" and Sly and the Family Stone's "Sing a Simple Song" were clearly based on Brown's rhythms and vocal style.

If Brown's claim to the invention of soul can be challenged by fans of Ray Charles and Sam Cooke, then his rights to the genres of rap, disco and funk are beyond question. He was to rhythm and dance music what Dylan was to lyrics: the unchallenged popular innovator.

"James presented obviously the best grooves," rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy once told The Associated Press. "To this day, there has been no one near as funky. No one's coming even close."

His hit singles include such classics as "Out of Sight," "(Get Up I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine," "I Got You (I Feel Good)" and "Say It Out Loud -- I'm Black and I'm Proud," a landmark 1968 statement of racial pride.

"I clearly remember we were calling ourselves colored, and after the song, we were calling ourselves black," Brown said in a 2003 Associated Press interview. "The song showed even people to that day that lyrics and music and a song can change society."

He won a Grammy award for lifetime achievement in 1992, as well as Grammys in 1965 for "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" (best R&B recording) and for "Living In America" in 1987 (best R&B vocal performance, male.) He was one of the initial artists inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, along with Presley, Chuck Berry and other founding fathers.

He triumphed despite an often unhappy personal life. Brown, who lived in Beech Island near the Georgia line, spent more than two years in a South Carolina prison for aggravated assault and failing to stop for a police officer. After his release on in 1991, Brown said he wanted to "try to straighten out" rock music.

From the 1950s, when Brown had his first R&B hit, "Please, Please, Please" in 1956, through the mid-1970s, Brown went on a frenzy of cross-country tours, concerts and new songs. He earned the nickname "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business."

With his tight pants, shimmering feet, eye makeup and outrageous hair, Brown set the stage for younger stars such as Michael Jackson and Prince.

In 1986, he was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And rap stars of recent years overwhelmingly have borrowed his lyrics with a digital technique called sampling.

Brown's work has been replayed by the Fat Boys, Ice-T, Public Enemy and a host of other rappers. "The music out there is only as good as my last record," Brown joked in a 1989 interview with Rolling Stone magazine.

"Disco is James Brown, hip-hop is James Brown, rap is James Brown; you know what I'm saying? You hear all the rappers, 90 percent of their music is me," he told the AP in 2003.

Born in poverty in Barnwell, S.C., in 1933, he was abandoned as a 4-year-old to the care of relatives and friends and grew up on the streets of Augusta, Ga., in an "ill-repute area," as he once called it. There he learned to wheel and deal.

"I wanted to be somebody," Brown said.

By the eighth grade in 1949, Brown had served 3.5 years in Alto Reform School near Toccoa, Ga., for breaking into cars.

While there, he met Bobby Byrd, whose family took Brown into their home. Byrd also took Brown into his group, the Gospel Starlighters. Soon they changed their name to the Famous Flames and their style to hard R&B.

In January 1956, King Records of Cincinnati signed the group, and four months later "Please, Please, Please" was in the R&B Top Ten.

While most of Brown's life was glitz and glitter, he was plagued with charges of abusing drugs and alcohol and of hitting his third wife, Adrienne.

In September 1988, Brown, high on PCP and carrying a shotgun, entered an insurance seminar next to his Augusta office. Police said he asked seminar participants if they were using his private restroom.

Police chased Brown for a half-hour from Augusta into South Carolina and back to Georgia. The chase ended when police shot out the tires of his truck.

Brown received a six-year prison sentence. He spent 15 months in a South Carolina prison and 10 months in a work release program before being paroled in February 1991. In 2003, the South Carolina parole board granted him a pardon for his crimes in that state.

Soon after his release, Brown was on stage again with an audience that included millions of cable television viewers nationwide who watched the three-hour, pay-per-view concert at Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles.

Adrienne Brown died in 1996 in Los Angeles at age 47. She took PCP and several prescription drugs while she had a bad heart and was weak from cosmetic surgery two days earlier, the coroner said.

More recently, he married his fourth wife, Tomi Raye Hynie, one of his backup singers. The couple had a son, James Jr.

Two years later, Brown spent a week in a private Columbia hospital, recovering from what his agent said was dependency on painkillers. Brown's attorney, Albert "Buddy" Dallas, said singer was exhausted from six years of road shows.

    James Brown, 73, Dies; ‘Godfather of Soul’, NYT, 25.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Obit-Brown.html?hp&ex=1167109200&en=7b2c52eb394d9620&ei=5094&partner=homepage

"Godfather of Soul" James Brown Dies: CNN

December 25, 2006
By REUTERS
Filed at 3:29 a.m. ET
the New York Times

ATLANTA (Reuters) - Singer James Brown, the self-proclaimed ''Godfather of Soul,'' who billed himself as the hardest working man in show business, has died at age 73, CNN reported on Monday.

Brown had been admitted to Emory Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta over the weekend for treatment of severe pneumonia, his agent, Super Frank, told CNN.

The singer, also known as ``Mr Dynamite'' is credited with bringing the word ``funk'' into mainstream musical vernacular and influencing a new generation of black music that spawned rap and hip-hop.

Brown's hit ``Say it Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)'' became a civil rights anthem during the turbulent 1960s and he performed the song at Richard Nixon's inaugural in 1968 -- an act that temporarily hurt his popularity among young blacks.

He had more than 119 charting singles and recorded over 50 albums, was inducted into the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame and received a lifetime achievement award from the Grammys in 1992.

    "Godfather of Soul" James Brown Dies: CNN, NYT, 25.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/arts/entertainment-brown-death.html

James Brown, 73, Dies; ‘Godfather of Soul’

December 25, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:56 a.m. ET
The New York Times

ATLANTA (AP) -- James Brown, the legendary singer known as the "Godfather of Soul," has died, his agent said early Monday. He was 73.

Brown was hospitalized Sunday at Emory Crawford Long Hospital with pneumonia and died around 1:45 a.m. Monday, said his agent, Frank Copsidas of Intrigue Music. Longtime friend Charles Bobbit was by his side, Copsidas said.

The agent said Brown's family was being notified of his death and that the cause was still uncertain. "We really don't know at this point what he died of," Copsidas said.

    James Brown, 73, Dies; ‘Godfather of Soul’, R, 25.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Obit-Brown.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Fan Asks Hard Questions About Rap Music

December 24, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIK ECKHOLM

CHICAGO — Byron Hurt takes pains to say that he is a fan of hip-hop, but over time, says Mr. Hurt, a 36-year-old filmmaker, dreadlocks hanging below his shoulders, “I began to become very conflicted about the music I love.”

A new documentary by Mr. Hurt, “Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes,” questions the violence, degradation of women and homophobia in much of rap music.

Scheduled to go on the air in February as part of the PBS series Independent Lens, the documentary is being shown now at high schools, colleges and Boy’s Clubs, and in other forums, as part of an unusual public campaign sponsored by the Independent Television Service, which is based in San Francisco and helped finance the film.

The intended audiences include young fans, hip-hop artists and music industry executives — black and white — who profit from music and videos that glorify swagger and luxury, portray women as sex objects, and imply, critics say, that education and hard work are for suckers and sissies.

What concerns Mr. Hurt and many black scholars is the domination of the hip-hop market by more violent and sexually demeaning songs and videos — an ascendancy, the critics say, that has coincided with the growth of the white audience for rap and the growing role of large corporations in marketing the music.

Ronald F. Ferguson, a black economist and education expert at Harvard, said that the global success of hip-hop had had positive influences on the self-esteem of black youths but that children who became obsessed with it “may unconsciously adopt the themes in this music as their lens for viewing the world.”

With the commercial success of gangsta rap and music videos, which portray men as extravagant thugs and women as sex toys, debate has simmered among black parents, community leaders and scholars about the impact of rap and the surrounding hip-hop culture.

“There’s a conversation going on now; a lot more people are trying to figure out a way to intervene that’s productive,” said Tricia Rose, a professor of Africana studies at Brown University.

At one extreme are critics, both black and white, who put primary blame for the failures and isolation of urban black youth on a self-destructive subculture, exemplified by the worst of hip-hop. But many of those critics, Dr. Rose said, fail to acknowledge the deeper roots of the problems. At the other extreme are people who reflexively defend any artistic expression by young blacks, saying the focus must remain on the economic and political structures that hem in minorities.

“That’s the real catch,” Dr. Rose said. “The public conversation about hip-hop is pinned by two responses, neither of them productive.”

Among blacks, to criticize rap, especially in front of the wider society, is to risk being called disloyal, said William Jelani Cobb, a historian at Spelman College in Atlanta, at a recent screening of the film in Newark. But the exaggerated image of male aggression, said Dr. Cobb, who also speaks in the documentary, actually reflects male insecurity and longstanding powerlessness, while the image of women resembles that held by 19th century slave owners.

Chris Bennett, 36, took his daughters, ages 15 and 11, to see Mr. Hurt’s film in Chicago because he said he wanted them to think about the music. Mr. Bennett, a school security guard, said he saw the effects of gangsta rap in his job. “Everyone wants to be tough now,” he said. “Everyone wants to be hard, and education has taken the background.”

The event in Chicago drew some 250 people, including several high school groups. Many of the boys were skeptical about the supposed dire influences of rap. Jock Lucas, 16, hotly argued with female students about the prevalence of lyrics that denigrate women, asserting, as many of the boys did, that a girl who dressed provocatively deserved such labels and might even like them.

“I don’t think rap is a bad influence,” Jock said. “They’re just speaking about how it goes where they come from. If the people who listen go out and do these things, it’s their own fault.”

Another high school student at the Chicago event, Vasawa Robinson, 19, said rap showed “real life” and that “if you try to show a different picture, the kids won’t want to listen.” The more political, socially conscious rap, Vasawa said, was for an older generation.

Mr. Hurt’s film includes clips from a music video by the rapper 50 Cent, from his album “Get Rich or Die Tryin’, ” in which the singer re-enacts a drive-by shooting he survived and boasts in crude terms of his power and readiness to kill his enemies.

It also includes portions of the video “Tip Drill,” an extended fantasy of male sexual domination by the rap star Nelly, who has won praise by promoting literacy and bone marrow donations, but, as the film notes, also markets a drink called Pimp Juice.

Mr. Hurt, who grew up in a black neighborhood of Central Islip, N.Y., in modest circumstances, was quarterback of the Northeastern University football team and said he had been a fanatical “hip-hop head.”

“It was music created by people your age who looked like you , talked like you, dressed like you and weren’t apologetic about it,” he said.

His views changed, he said, when, after college, he worked in a program teaching male athletes about violence against women.

“Here’s the conflict,” Mr. Hurt said. “You still love hip-hop and you love to see the artists doing well, but then you ask, ‘What are they saying? What is the image of manhood?’ ”

White males may be major customers, Mr. Hurt said, “but it influences black kids the most.”

“They’re the ones who order their days around it,” he said, “who try to conform to the script.”

    Fan Asks Hard Questions About Rap Music, NYT, 24.12.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/24/us/24hiphop.html

Nashville Journal

Project Brings Disharmony to Music City

November 19, 2006
The New York Times
By THEO EMERY

NASHVILLE, Nov. 18 — Nashville’s honky-tonk heart beats loudest along lower Broadway, where the wide avenue passes blocks of neon-draped bars on its way toward the Cumberland River. Country music spills from the doors, hopeful buskers strum on the sidewalk, and at Hatch Show Print, tourists can buy Roy Acuff for Governor posters, reproduced from those of 1948.

Country music lovers talk about the area with reverence. It was here that Patsy Cline, Hank Williams, Kris Kristofferson and countless others achieved fame. Before the Grand Ole Opry moved across the river, Opry stars dropped in after hours at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge. And aspiring musicians can still find what they need at Gruhn Guitars.

Now a proposal by developers to demolish most of a block of buildings on Broadway and replace them with a complex including a Westin hotel tower has the city pondering the future of its nostalgic main street, with its boot-and-hat stores, Dixieland flavor and country kitsch so retro it never lost its hipness in the first place. The debate between the project’s supporters and its opponents has been polite but passionate.

If approved, the 19-floor tower, on the south side of Broadway between Second and Third Avenues South, will loom over three- and four-story brick buildings that line the thoroughfare. Besides the 375-room hotel, plans call for condominiums and stores in low-rise buildings at the tower’s base.

The Trail West Building, so called because of the Western shop on the ground floor, would be preserved, the block’s only building that lies within an existing downtown historic district. But four others would be taken down, including three that the city’s Historical Commission has deemed eligible for historic preservation.

The developers and their supporters estimate that the $105 million, eco-friendly project, on a block that is among lower Broadway’s least sparkling, would generate $25.5 million annually in room, food and retail sales and add $1.1 million a year to the city’s tax revenue. They note that a nearby office high-rise, the BellSouth Building, already towers over the area, and say the appearance there is much like what it would be at the hotel.

But the BellSouth Building, unlike the proposed hotel, is set back from Broadway behind a row of existing low-rises. Opponents say the project, fronting directly on Broadway, would fundamentally change the area’s character and bring on other large upscale developments that over time would suffocate Nashville’s funky downtown strip and drive out mom-and-pop stores.

“The main thing is it sets a terrible precedent that would open the door for any number of projects like this, and eventually what’s left of our historic downtown would be destroyed,” said Patrick McIntyre Jr., executive director of the Tennessee Preservation Trust, a private advocacy group.

The project cleared a big hurdle Tuesday when it was approved by the city’s Planning Commission despite a contrary recommendation by the commission’s staff reviewers. The next step, a vote by the 40-member Metro Council, is expected in January, the last significant milestone before ground can be broken.

Brandon Rains, project manager for one of the developers, the Barber Group of Springdale, Ark., said they had worked hard to incorporate changes sought by city officials.

“We believe that the hotel is at the right height,” Mr. Rains said. “We think that we’ve done the necessary things to not interrupt the historic fabric and scale of lower Broadway. We think our development can coexist with what’s been there before.”

George Gruhn, whose guitar shop has been at Broadway and Fourth Avenue North, several blocks from the project site, since 1970, said he had invested heavily in his business and had seen Broadway change for the better from its time as a seedy, violent district of pawnshops and peep shows. But the developers’ plan would improve it still more, Mr. Gruhn said at the hearing Tuesday.

“If you look at the buildings in question,” he said, “they are no architectural gems. They are some of the ugliest buildings on Broadway.”

Another merchant who would be happy to see the Westin is Dave Liston, general manager at Ernest Tubb Record Shop, where the rotating sign still boasts a “Mid-nite Jamboree With Top Opry Stars.”

“What’s in its place now?” Mr. Liston said. “Some old barely used or vacant smaller brick buildings?” The new hotel, he said, would “just be something nicer to look at walking down Broadway.”

But John Summers, a member of the Metro Council, said the hotel would drain the area of its vitality and so prove neither attractive nor, over the long term, economically beneficial.

“You can put lipstick on a pig, and it’s still a pig,” Mr. Summers told the Planning Commission on Tuesday. “That’s what this is. It’s a pig.”

Among the businesses that would be displaced by the demolition is Kelly’s Western Wear and Leather, which opened a few blocks away in the 1940s and began renting its current lower Broadway location 10 years ago. Country music twanged over the radio as Randall Kelly, son of the owners, helped one customer select new jeans. Mr. Kelly shook his head when asked about the future of the store, which will most likely be done in by Broadway’s revival.

“When you allow the Westin to come in here and build like they want to build,” he said, “then where’s it going to stop?”

Preservationists say they sometimes feel as if they are fighting a losing battle in Nashville and elsewhere in Tennessee, where recent demolition of notable buildings has been highly publicized.

Ann Roberts, executive director of the city’s Historical Commission, said she too worried that the Westin project would set a precedent, leading to other developments that would force out old businesses that give the area its character, in essence replacing grit and funk with glitz.

“Broadway is incredibly important to the city,” Ms. Roberts said, “and we’re going to continue to try to preserve its uniqueness and its very special character. This all isn’t resolved yet.”

    Project Brings Disharmony to Music City, NYT, 19.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/us/19nashville.html

Ruth Brown, 78, a Queen of R&B, Dies

November 18, 2006
The New York Times
By JON PARELES

Ruth Brown, the gutsy rhythm and blues singer whose career extended to acting and crusading for musicians’ rights, died on Friday in Las Vegas. She was 78 and lived in Las Vegas.

The cause was complications following a heart attack and a stroke she suffered after surgery, and Ms. Brown had been on life support since Oct. 29, said her friend, lawyer and executor, Howell Begle.

“She was one of the original divas,” said the singer Bonnie Raitt, who worked with Ms. Brown and Mr. Begle to improve royalties for rhythm and blues performers. “I can’t really say that I’ve heard anyone that sounds like Ruth, before or after. She was a combination of sass and innocence, and she was extremely funky. She could really put it right on the beat, and the tone of her voice was just mighty. And she had a great heart.”

“What I loved about her,” Ms. Raitt added, “was her combination of vulnerability and resilience and fighting spirit. It was not arrogance, but she was just really not going to lay down and roll over for anyone.”

Ms. Brown sustained a career for six decades: first as a bright, bluesy singer who was called “the girl with a tear in her voice” and then, after some lean years, as the embodiment of an earthy, indomitable black woman. She had a life of hard work, hard luck, determination, audacity and style. Sometimes it was said that R&B stood as much for Ruth Brown as it did for rhythm and blues.

As the 1950s began, Ms. Brown’s singles for the fledgling Atlantic Records — like “(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean” and “5-10-15 Hours” — became both the label’s bankroll and templates for all of rock ’n’ roll. She could sound as if she were hurting, or joyfully lusty, or both at once. Her voice was forthright, feisty and ready for anything.

After Ms. Brown’s string of hits ended, she kept singing but also went on to a career in television, radio and movies ( including a memorable role as the disc jockey Motormouth Maybelle in John Waters’s “Hairspray”) and on Broadway, where she won a Tony Award for her part in “Black and Blue.” She worked clubs, concerts and festivals into the 21st century.

“Whatever I have to say, I get it said,” she said in an interview with The New York Times in 1995. “Like the old spirituals say, ‘I’ve gone too far to turn me ’round now.’ ”

Ms. Brown was born Ruth Weston on Jan. 12, 1928, in Portsmouth, Va., the oldest of seven children. She made her debut when she was 4, and her father, the choir director at the local Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, lifted her onto the church piano. In summers, she and her siblings picked cotton at her grandmother’s farm in North Carolina. “That made me the strong woman I am,” she said in 1995.

As a teenager, she would tell her family she was going to choir practice and perform instead at U.S.O. clubs at nearby naval stations. She ran away from home at 17, working with a trumpeter named Jimmy Brown and using his last name onstage. She married him, or thought she did; he was already married. But she was making a reputation as Ruth Brown, and the name stuck.

The big-band leader Lucky Millinder heard her in Detroit late in 1946, hired her for his band and fired her in Washington, D.C. . Stranded, she managed to find a club engagement at the Crystal Caverns. There, the disc jockey Willis Conover, who broadcast jazz internationally on Voice of America radio, heard Ms. Brown and recommended her to friends at Atlantic Records.

On the way to New York City, however, she was seriously injured in an automobile accident and hospitalized for most of a year; her legs, which were smashed, would be painful for the rest of her life. She stood on crutches in 1949 to record her first session for Atlantic, and the bluesy ballad “So Long” became a hit.

She wanted to keep singing ballads, but Atlantic pushed her to try upbeat songs, and she tore into them. During the sessions for “Teardrops From My Eyes,” her voice cracked upward to a squeal. Herb Abramson of Atlantic Records liked it, called it a “tear,” and after “Teardrops” reached No. 1 on the rhythm and blues chart, the sound became her trademark for a string of hits.

“If I was getting ready to go and record and I had a bad throat, they’d say, ‘Good!’,” she once recalled.

Ms. Brown was the best-selling black female performer of the early 1950s, even though, in that segregated era, many of her songs were picked up and redone by white singers, like Patti Page and Georgia Gibbs, in tamer versions that became pop hits. The pop singer Frankie Laine gave her a lasting nickname: Miss Rhythm.

Working the rhythm and blues circuit in the 1950s, when dozens of her singles reached the R&B Top 10, Ms. Brown drove a Cadillac and had romances with stars like the saxophonist Willis (Gator Tail) Jackson and the singer Clyde McPhatter of the Drifters. (Her first son, Ronald, was given the last name Jackson; decades later, she told him he was actually Mr. McPhatter’s son, and he now sings with a latter-day lineup of the Drifters.)

In 1955 Ms. Brown married Earl Swanson, a saxophonist, and had a second son, Earl; the marriage ended in divorce. Her two sons survive her: Mr. Jackson, who has three children, of Los Angeles, and Mr. Swanson of Las Vegas. She is also survived by four siblings: Delia Weston of Las Vegas, Leonard Weston of Long Island and Alvin and Benjamin Weston of Portsmouth.

Her streak of hits ended soon after the 1960s began. She lived on Long Island, raised her sons, worked as a teacher’s aide and a maid and was married for three years to a police officer, Bill Blunt. On weekends she sang club dates in the New York area, and she recorded an album in 1968 with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Big Band. Although her hits had supported Atlantic Records — sometimes called the House That Ruth Built — she was unable at one point to afford a home telephone.

The comedian Redd Foxx, whom she had once helped out of a financial jam, invited her to Los Angeles in 1975 to play the gospel singer Mahalia Jackson in “Selma,” a musical about civil rights he was producing.

She went on to sing in Las Vegas and continued a comeback that never ended. The television producer Norman Lear gave her a role in the sitcom “Hello, Larry.” She returned to New York City in 1982, appearing in Off Broadway productions including “Stagger Lee,” and in 1985 she went to Paris to perform in the revue “Black and Blue,” rejoining it later for its Broadway run.

Ms. Brown began to speak out, onstage and in interviews, about the exploitative contracts musicians of her generation had signed. Many hit-making musicians had not recouped debts to their labels, according to record company accounting, and so were not receiving royalties at all. Shortly before Atlantic held a 40th-birthday concert at Madison Square Garden in 1988, the label agreed to waive unrecouped debts for Ms. Brown and 35 other musicians of her era and to pay 20 years of retroactive royalties.

Atlantic also contributed nearly $2 million to start the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, which pushed other labels toward royalty reform and distributed millions of dollars directly to musicians in need, although it has struggled to sustain itself in recent years.

“Black and Blue” revitalized Ms. Brown’s recording career, on labels including Fantasy and Bullseye Blues. Her 1989 album “Blues on Broadway” won a Grammy Award for best jazz vocal performance, female. She was a radio host on the public radio shows “Harlem Hit Parade” and “BluesStage.” In 1995 she released her autobiography, “Miss Rhythm” (Dutton), written with Andrew Yule; it won the Gleason Award for music journalism. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

She toured steadily, working concert halls, festivals and cabarets. This year she recorded songs for the coming movie by John Sayles, “Honeydripper,” and was about to fly to Alabama to act in it when she became ill.

Ms. Brown never learned to read music. “In school we had music classes, but I ducked them,” she said in 1995. “They were just a little too slow. I didn’t want to learn to read no note. I knew I could sing it. I woke up one morning and I could sing.”

    Ruth Brown, 78, a Queen of R&B, Dies, NYT, 18.11.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/18/arts/music/18brown.html?hp&ex=1163912400&en=87229196dc07f38a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

R&B crooner Gerald Levert dies, 40

Updated 11/11/2006 1:39 AM ET
AP
USA Today

NEW YORK (AP) — Gerald Levert, the fiery singer of passionate R&B love songs and the son of O'Jays singer Eddie Levert, died on Friday. He was 40. His label, Atlantic Records, confirmed that Levert died at his home in Cleveland, Ohio.

"All of us at Atlantic are shocked and deeply saddened by his untimely death. He was one of the greatest voices of our time, who sang with unmatched soulfulness and power, as well as a tremendously gifted composer and an accomplished producer," the statement read.

Dan Bomeli, public relations manager at University Hospitals Geauga Medical Center in suburban Cleveland, said Levert had been brought to the hospital. Bomeli said Levert had died but he had no further details.

Patti LaBelle, who had worked and recorded with Levert, said he "was like a son" to her. "He was such a great entertainer. It's not for real to me that he is gone ... Nobody was prepared for this."

LaBelle added that she hopes to sing at Levert's funeral.

"It's very sad. He was an amazing talent, obviously," friend and fellow R&B singer Will Downing told The Associated Press. "Gerald was a hard worker. He would go out there and do his thing, and be in places where the folks were. He would touch the people, and that's really what it's all about."

Over his two-decade music career, Levert sold millions of albums and had numerous R&B hits.

Levert first gained fame in 1986 as a member of the R&B trio LeVert, which also included his brother, Sean, and childhood friend Marc Gordon. They quickly racked up hits like (Pop, Pop, Pop, Pop) Goes My Mind, Casanova, and Baby I'm Ready.

But Gerald Levert's voice — powerful and soulful, almost a carbon copy of his father's — was always the focal point, and in 1991, he made his solo debut with the album Private Line, which included a hit duet with his dad, Baby Hold on to Me. His father also recorded the successful album Father & Son.

Levert was known for his sensual, romantic songs, but unlike a Luther Vandross, whose voice and songs were more genteel, Levert's music was explosive and raw — his 2002 album was titled The G Spot.

"When we would do shows together, we would get on stage and battle for the hearts of women. Every night, that was our thing," Downing said.

Though Levert was successful as a solo singer, in 1997 he got into group mode again — joining with R&B singers Johnny Gill and Keith Sweat for the supergroup of LSG. The self-titled album sold more than two million copies, and their hits included the sensual My Body. Levert also worked with other artists as a songwriter and producer.

His most recent album was 2005's Voices.

Levert had four children.

    R&B crooner Gerald Levert dies, 40, UT, 11.11.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2006-11-10-levert-obit_x.htm

CBGB Brings Down the Curtain

With Nostalgia and One Last Night of Rock

October 16, 2006
The New York Times
By BEN SISARIO

She had played there many times over the last three decade, but last night, before making her last appearance there, Patti Smith made sure to snap a picture of CBGB.

“I’m sentimental,” she said as she stood on the Bowery and pointed an antique Polaroid toward the club’s ragged, soiled awning, and a mob of photographers and reporters gathered around her.

Last night was the last concert at CBGB, the famously crumbling rock club that has been in continuous, loud operation since December 1973, serving as the casual headquarters and dank incubator for some of New York’s most revered groups — Ms. Smith’s, the Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads, Television, Sonic Youth — as well as thousands more whose blares left less of a mark on history but whose graffiti and concert fliers might still remain on its walls.

After a protracted real estate battle with its landlord, a nonprofit organization that aids the homeless, CBGB agreed late last year to leave its home at 313 and 315 Bowery at the end of this month. And Ms. Smith’s words outside the club, where her group was playing, encapsulated the feelings shared by fans around the city and around the world: CBGB is both the scrappy symbol of rock’s promise and a temple that no one wanted to see go.

“CBGB is a state of mind,” she said from the stage in a short preshow set for the news media whose highlight was a medley of Ramones songs.

“There’s new kids with new ideas all over the world,” she added. “They’ll make their own places — it doesn’t matter whether it’s here or wherever it is.”

Crowds had been lined up outside since early yesterday morning for a chance to see Ms. Smith and bid farewell to the club, in an event that was carefully orchestrated to maximize media coverage. Television news vans were parked on the Bowery as fans with pink hair, leather jackets and — the most popular fashion statement of the night — multicolored CBGB T-shirts (but not necessarily tickets) waited to be let in and Ms. Smith’s band played a short set for the assembled press.

Curiosity about the club’s last night was mingled with harsh feelings about its fate.

“It’s the cultural rape of New York City that this place is being pushed out,” said John Nikolai, a black-clad 36-year-old photographer from Staten Island whose tie read “I quit.”

Added Ms. Smith outside the club, “It’s a symptom of the empty new prosperity of our city.”

Ms. Smith was CBGB’s last booking as well as one of its first. In the 1970’s, she was the oracular poet laureate of the punk scene, and her seven-week residency in 1975 is still regarded by connoisseurs as the club’s finest moment. With an open booking policy, its founder, Hilly Kristal, nurtured New York rock’s greatest generation, and in turn those groups made CBGB one of the few rock clubs known by name around the world.

“When we first started there was no place we could play, so we ended up on the Bowery,” said Tom Erdelyi, better known as Tommy Ramone, the group’s first drummer and only surviving original member. “It ended up a perfect match.”

It has been a long and painful denouement for CBGB. After settling in 2001 with its landlord, the Bowery Residents’ Committee, over more than $300,000 in back rent, Mr. Kristal, a plucky, gray-bearded 75-year-old, landed back in court last year. The committee, which has an annual budget of $32 million and operates 18 shelters and other facilities throughout the city, said the club owed an additional $75,000 in unpaid rent increases.

Celebrities including David Byrne of Talking Heads and Steven Van Zandt of the E Street Band and “The Sopranos” lined up to help mediate, but an agreement was never reached. Last December, three months after the club’s 12-year lease had expired, it agreed, at the prodding of Justice Carol R. Edmead of State Supreme Court in Manhattan, to finally close.

Muzzy Rosenblatt, the executive director of the Bowery Residents’ Committee, has said that a new tenant has been found for the space. Both Mr. Kristal and the committee also say that CBGB’s accounts have been settled and that there are no outstanding debts.

CBGB (its full name was CBGB & OMFUG, for Country, Bluegrass and Blues and Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers) is the latest and highest-profile rock club to vanish from Lower Manhattan in recent years as rents and other expenses have continued to skyrocket. Last year the Bottom Line closed over a debt of $185,000 to its landlord, New York University, and Fez and the Luna Lounge shut down because of development. The Continental, another ragged temple of punk on Third Avenue in the East Village, quit live music last month. Other clubs have sprouted up in Manhattan, but the center of gravity of the city’s club scene has gradually been shifting to Brooklyn.

Mr. Kristal is looking as far as Las Vegas. With the help of the mayor’s office there, he has been inspecting spaces in that city’s Fremont East district, a zone that the city intends to make into “a walkable live entertainment area like Bourbon Street or Beale Street,” according to a statement from the mayor’s office.

The office of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg helped find a new space in New York but the space it offered, on Essex Street on the Lower East Side, would have taken a prohibitive $5 million to prepare for use, Mr. Kristal said. Calls to the mayor’s office for comment were not returned late last week.

“I’d love to have the place here,” Mr. Kristal said. “If not here, then I’d love to have it in Vegas. I’m going to keep it active no matter what.”

The club’s interior — a narrow corridor with a bar to the right, the stage to the back, stalactites of grime dangling from the ceiling and miles of ancient posters and graffiti all around — is almost as cherished as its music.

“It’s like it’s grown its own barnacles,” said Lenny Kaye, Ms. Smith’s guitarist and a longtime rock critic and historian. “You couldn’t replicate the décor in a million years, and dismantling all those layers of archaeology of music in the club is a daunting task.”

The club’s architectural history stretches back much further than the Ramones era. Marci Reaven, the managing director of City Lore, a nonprofit arts group in Manhattan that studied CBGB in a joint project with the Municipal Arts Society, said it is a rare example of the Bowery’s long past as an entertainment mecca.

“When you get beyond the layers of interior decoration that is CBGB,” she said, “the architecture of the structure probably evokes the 19th and early 20th century years of the Bowery better than any other building on the strip that we know of.”

Mr. Kristal said he planned to preserve as much of the interior as possible and transport it to a new club, wherever that might be.

But CBGB’s symbolic legacy may far outweigh the value of its graffiti and its notorious urinals.

“When I go into a rock club in Helsinki or London or Des Moines, it feels like CBGB to me there,” Mr. Kaye said. “The message from this tiny little Bowery bar has gone around the world. It has authenticated the rock experience wherever it has landed.”

    CBGB Brings Down the Curtain With Nostalgia and One Last Night of Rock, NYT, 16.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/16/arts/music/16cbgb.html?_r=1&hp&ex=1160971200&en=5774c0b5de8bbecb&ei=5094&partner=homepage&oref=slogin

Barbra Streisand Launches First U.S. Tour Since '94

October 5, 2006
By REUTERS
Filed at 2:37 a.m. ET
The New York Times

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Barbra Streisand opened her first U.S. tour in 12 years on Wednesday with a polished show filled with crowd-pleasing classics, more than a touch of nostalgia and a healthy dose of her liberal politics.

Before a capacity crowd of some 16,000 at South Philadelphia's Wachovia Center, Streisand gave assured renditions of standards from her long career as a singer and actress including ``Funny Girl,'' ``Come Rain or Come Shine,'' ''Love Soft as an Easy Chair,'' and ``Somewhere.''

Streisand, 64, told an adoring audience her career had lasted 46 years and she now relies on a teleprompter to make sure she doesn't forget the words to her songs.

She said she had been so traumatized by forgetting the words to three songs at a 1967 concert in New York she had stopped giving live concerts for more than 20 years.

Wearing a black sequin outfit with a slit skirt for the first half of the show and a black gown and shawl with gold trim after the interval, Streisand sat at a tall swivel chair at the front of the stage and at different times during the two and a half hour show moved upstage on a series of walkways around the orchestra.

Streisand, who declared six years ago she wasn't playing live any more, is America's highest-selling female recording artist of all time with 71 million albums sold, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.

Despite her long break from touring, Streisand appeared at ease with the audience, and took time during the show to read some written questions from audience members, including one asking why she had decided to give live shows again.

She responded that she wanted to raise money for her foundation, which supports a range of causes related to the environment, education, health care and other issues.

The show also featured a skit with an actor playing President Bush, who was made to look foolish by speaking lines such as, ``I'm concerned about the national debt, so I'm selling Canada,'' and ``If I cared about the polls I would have run for president of Poland.''

Ron Long, 62, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, said he had been a fan of Streisand's for 45 years and this was the first time he had seen her in concert. ``Her voice is just as good as it was in the early '60s. She is godly,'' said Long, who paid $750 for two tickets and was happy the money was going to the foundation.

Dave Vignola, 55, from Gibbstown, New Jersey, paid $750 apiece for three tickets and called it a unique opportunity to see the singer he had been following for decades.

``She may never come around again,'' he said.

    Barbra Streisand Launches First U.S. Tour Since '94, NYT, 5.10.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/arts/entertainment-leisure-streisand-tour.html

Listening With Ornette Coleman

Seeking the Mystical Inside the Music

September 22, 2006
The New York Times
By BEN RATLIFF

THE alto saxophonist and composer Ornette Coleman, one of the last of the truly imposing figures from a generation of jazz players that was full of them, seldom talks about other people’s music. People generally want to ask him about his own, and that becomes the subject he addresses. Or half-addresses: what he’s really focused on is a set of interrelated questions about music, religion and the nature of being. Sometimes he can seem indirect, or sentimental, or thoroughly confusing. Other times he sounds like one of the world’s killer aphorists.

In any case, other people’s music was what I wanted to talk to him about. I asked what he would like to listen to. “Anything you want,” he said in his fluty Southern voice. “There is no bad music, only bad performances.” He finally offered a few suggestions. The music he likes is simply defined: anything that can’t be summed up in a common term. Any music that is not created as part of a style. “The state of surviving in music is more like ‘what music are you playing,’ ” he said. “But music isn’t a style, it’s an idea. The idea of music, without it being a style — I don’t hear that much anymore.”

Then he went up a level. “I would like to have the same concept of ideas as how people believe in God,” he said. “To me, an idea doesn’t have any master.”

Mr. Coleman was born, in 1930, and raised in Fort Worth, where he attained some skill at playing rhythm and blues in bars, like any decent saxophonist, and some more skill at playing bebop, which was rarer. He arrived in New York in 1959, via Los Angeles, with an original, logical sense of melody and an idea of playing with no preconceived chord changes. Yet his music bore a tight sense of knowing itself, of natural form, and the records he made for Atlantic with his various quartets, from 1959 to 1961, are almost unreasonably beautiful.

Following that initial shock of the new came a short period with a trio, then a two-year hiatus from recording in 1963 and 1964, then the trio again, then a fantastic quartet from 1968 to 1972 with the tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman (who died three weeks ago), then a period of funk-through-the-looking-glass with his electric band, Prime Time. Mr. Coleman is still moving, now with a band including two bassists, Greg Cohen and Tony Falanga, and his son, Denardo Coleman, on drums.

He has a kind of high-end generosity; he said that he wouldn’t think twice about letting me go home with a piece of music he had just written, because he would be interested in what I might make of it. But there is a great pessimism in his talk, too. He said he believes that most of human history has been wasted on building increasingly complicated class structures. “Life is already complete,” he said. “You can’t learn what life is. And the only way you die is if something kills you. So if life and death are already understood, what are we doing?”

A week later we met for several hours at his large, minimal-modernist loft in Manhattan’s garment district. Mr. Coleman is 76 and working often: he is making music with his new quartet that, at heart, is similar to what he made when he was 30. On “Sound Grammar,” his new live album (on his new record label, of the same name), it is a matter of lines traveling together and pulling apart, following the curve of his melodies, tangling and playing in a unison that allows for discrepancies between individual sound and intonation and, sometimes, key.

Unison is one of his key words: he puts an almost mystical significance in it, and he uses it in many ways. “Being a human, you’re required to be in unison: upright,” he said.

Mr. Coleman draws you into the chicken-and-egg questions that he’s asking himself. These questions can become sort of the dark side of Bible class. Many of them are about what happens when you put a name on something, or when you learn some codified knowledge.

Though he is fascinated by music theory, he is suspicious of any construct of thought. Standard Western notation and harmony is a big problem for him, particularly for the fact that the notation for many instruments (including his three instruments — alto saxophone, trumpet and violin) must be transposed to fit the “concert key” of C in Western music.

Mr. Coleman talks about “music” with care and accuracy, but about “sound” with love. He doesn’t understand, he says, how listeners will ever properly understand the power of notes when they are bossed around by the common Western system of harmony and tuning.

He’s not endorsing cacophony: he says making music is a matter of finding euphonious resolutions between different players. (And much of his music keeps referring to, if not actually staying in, a major key.) But the reason he appreciates Louis Armstrong, for example, is that he sees Armstrong as someone who improvised in a realm beyond his own knowledge. “I never heard him play a straight chord in root position for his idea,” he said. “And when he played a high note, it was the finale. It wasn’t just because it was high. In some way, he was telling stories more than improvising.”

MR. COLEMAN’S first request was something by Josef Rosenblatt, the Ukrainian-born cantor who moved to New York in 1911 and became one of the city’s most popular entertainers — as well as a symbol for not selling out your convictions. (He turned down a position with a Chicago opera company, but was persuaded to take a small role in Al Jolson’s film “The Jazz Singer.”) I brought some recordings from 1916 and we listened to “Tikanto Shabbos,” a song from Sabbath services. Rosenblatt’s voice came booming out, strong and clear at the bottom, with miraculous coloratura runs at the top.

“I was once in Chicago, about 20-some years ago,” Mr. Coleman said. “A young man said, ‘I’d like you to come by so I can play something for you.’ I went down to his basement and he put on Josef Rosenblatt, and I started crying like a baby. The record he had was crying, singing and praying, all in the same breath. I said, wait a minute. You can’t find those notes. Those are not ‘notes.’ They don’t exist.”

He listened some more. Rosenblatt was working with text, singing brilliant figures with it, then coming down on a resolving note, which was confirmed and stabilized by a pianist’s chord. “I want to ask something,” he said. “Is the language he’s singing making the resolution? Not the melody. I mean, he’s resolving. He’s not singing a ‘melody.’ ”

It could be that he’s at least singing each little section in relation to a mode, I said.

“I think he’s singing pure spiritual,” he said. “He’s making the sound of what he’s experiencing as a human being, turning it into the quality of his voice, and what he’s singing to is what he’s singing about. We hear it as ‘how he’s singing.’ But he’s singing about something. I don’t know what it is, but it’s bad.”

I wonder how much of it is really improvised, I said. Which up-and-down melodic shapes, and in which orders, were well practiced, and which weren’t.

“Mm-hmm,” he said. “I understand what you’re saying. But it doesn’t sound like it’s going up and down; it sounds like it’s going out. Which means it’s coming from his soul.”

MR. COLEMAN grew up loving Charlie Parker and bebop in general. “It was the most advanced collective way of playing a melody and at the same time improvising on it,” he said. Certainly, he was highly influenced by Parker’s phrasing.

He saw Parker play in Los Angeles in the early 1950’s. “Basically, he had picked up a local rhythm section, and he was playing mostly standards. He didn’t play any of the music that I liked that I’d heard on a record. He looked at his watch and stopped in the middle of what he was playing, put his horn in his case and walked out the door. I said, ohh. I mean, I was trying to figure out what that had to do with music, you know? It taught me something.”

What did it teach him? “He knew the quality of what he could play, and he knew the audience, and he wasn’t impressed enough by the audience to do something that they didn’t know. He wasn’t going to spend any more time trying to prove that.”

We listened to “Cheryl,” a Parker quintet track from 1947. “I was drawn to the way Charlie Parker phrased his ideas,” he said. “It sounded more like he was composing, and I really loved that. Then, when I found out that the minor seventh and the major seventh was the structure of bebop music — well, it’s a sequence. It’s the art of sequences. I kind of felt, like, I got to get out of this.”

He talks a lot about sequences. (John Coltrane, he said, was a good saxophone player who was lost to them.) With regard to his Parker worship, he kept the phrasing but got rid of the sequences. “I first tried to ban all chords,” he said, “and just make music an idea, instead of a set pattern to know where you are.”

I SUGGESTED gospel music, and he was enthusiastic. I brought something I felt he might like: sacred harp music — white, rural, choral music, about 100 voices in loose unison. We listened to “The Last Words of Copernicus,” written in 1869 and recorded by Alan Lomax in Fyffe, Ala., in 1959.

“That’s breath music,” he said, as big groups of singers harmonized in straight eighth-note patterns, singing plainly but with character. “They’re changing the sound with their emotions. Not because they’re hearing something.” But then we were off on another topic — whether a singer should seek a voicelike sound for his voice. “Isn’t it amazing that sound causes the idea to sound the way it is, more than the idea?” he asked.

Finally the listening experiment broke down. It’s hard to keep Mr. Coleman talking about anyone else’s music. His mystical-logical puzzles are too interesting to him.

He is writing new pieces for each concert, and was leaving for European shows. “Right now, I’m trying to play the instrument,” he said, “and I’m trying to write, without any restrictions of chord, keys, time, melody and harmony, but to resolve the idea eternally, where every person receives the same quality from it, without relating it to some person.”

He told a childhood story about his mother, who, he kept reminding me, was born on Christmas Day. After he received his first saxophone, he would go to her when he learned to play something by ear. “I’d be saying: ‘Listen to this! Listen to this!’ ” he remembered. “You know what she’d tell me? ‘Junior, I know who you are. You don’t have to tell me.’ ”

    Seeking the Mystical Inside the Music, NYT, 23.9.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/arts/music/22cole.html

Acoustics, they are a-changin', complains unhappy Dylan

Legend derides 20 years of 'atrocious' recordings - including his own

Thursday August 24, 2006
Guardian
Oliver Burkeman in New York

Forty years ago, at a Manchester concert, an outraged folk music purist yelled "Judas!" at Bob Dylan when he put down his acoustic guitar and plugged in an electric one. Now, though, it is Dylan's turn to berate modern music technology: in an interview published this week, the 65-year-old songwriter dubs modern recordings "atrocious" and claims no one in the past 20 years has released a record that has sounded any good.

"You do the best you can, you fight technology in all kinds of ways, but I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really," Dylan tells the novelist Jonathan Lethem for Rolling Stone magazine.

Responding to claims by record companies and some artists that illegal downloading starves them of income, he says: "It was like, 'everybody's gettin' music for free'. I was like, 'well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway'."

In the 20-year period he condemns Dylan has released eight studio albums, but he makes no attempt to exempt his own work from his critique. Speaking of his latest CD, released in the US next week, he says: "Even these songs probably sounded 10 times better in the studio when we recorded 'em."

The singer-songwriter's ambivalent feelings about recording his songs are already well known. Sean Wilentz, the Princeton historian and Dylan expert, told the Guardian: "He's never really been happy in the studio anyway - he goes in and gets out as quickly as he can. Partly it's a reaction against overproduction, and I think he wanted to move towards an older and crisper sound ... but [also] I think he likes to think of himself as a spontaneous performer, and he's always said what you're getting on a record is just more concise - each of those versions is what it is, but it's not the perfect recording. That's not possible."

Dylan made clear his yearning for the music of the past when he began a weekly show on US satellite radio this year. His first playlist was a wide-ranging tour through the history of American music, encompassing Fats Domino, Judy Garland, Stevie Wonder, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Muddy Waters.

His main criticism of contemporary CDs is the lack of sound clarity arising when producers try to make each strand of a recording as uniformly loud as possible. "You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just, like ... static."

Dylan has therefore decided to produce his latest album, entitled Modern Times, himself. "I felt like I've always produced my own records anyway, except I just had someone there in the way. I feel like nobody's gonna know how I should sound except me anyway ... I can do that in my sleep."

But his despair about new recording techniques does not mean he rejects new musicians out of hand. One track on the new album has a glowing reference to the R&B singer Alicia Keys. "I remember seeing her on the Grammys. I think I was on the show with her, I didn't meet her or anything. But I said to myself, 'There's nothing about that girl I don't like'."

Referring to sound technology, Mike Howlett, who chairs the Music Producers Guild, said: "If there is a problem then it lies with the quality of the music; therefore Dylan seems to be confusing quality of performance with sound quality. The top end of digital equipment gives a highly accurate reproduction of the signal coming in, so it is neither helping nor hindering the sound." But he said the sound of analogue equipment gave "some interesting distortions", which lent music "a certain character".

Sound bites

1887 Thomas Edison uses a tinfoil cylinder phonograph to record the human voice (singing Mary had a little lamb) for the first time. The original is said to be missing, but a 1927 re-enactment can now be downloaded in MP3 format

1925 Research pioneered by Western Electric benefits from advancements in microphone and loudspeaker technology. The first electrically recorded discs go on sale, with recordings of whole orchestras

1948 The first series of 12-inch vinyl LPs is introduced by Columbia Records, offering 20 minutes a side and more durability than previous formats. Within decades, stereo recordings, based on the work of the scientist AD Blumlein in the 1930s, are challenging mono sound

1963 Philips demonstrates the first compact audio cassettes that rely on high-quality polyester tape, but they are originally marketed for dictation. Three years later, car stereos are equipped with eight-track stereo tape cassette players. In 1969 Dolby B noise reduction is introduced

1982 Sony and Philips launch the five-inch compact disc. Digital technology opens the door to new sampling techniques in music studios. Within six years, CD sales overtake LP sales - in a decade, CDs become the dominant form of recorded music

1997 Tomislav Uzelac develops the first successful MP3 player, which uses compressed digital audio files. Four years later Apple Computer uses MP3 technology to launch the iPod

    Acoustics, they are a-changin', complains unhappy Dylan, G, 24.8.2006, http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1856897,00.html

Hippie hero Arthur Lee dies aged 61

Saturday August 5, 2006
Guardian
Duncan Campbell

One of the central figures of the 60s psychedelic rock scene, Arthur Lee of the Love, has died in Memphis at the age of 61. After surviving drug problems and a spell in jail for firearms offences, the singer finally succumbed to leukaemia after a long battle with the disease.

The news spread swiftly yesterday over the internet among Lee and Love's hardcore base of loyal fans, some of whom had first come across the singer when the band was formed in 1965 in Los Angeles. "Arthur Lee died with his wife, Diane, by his side," said his manager, Mark Linn, on a fan website. "This is still very much a shock for me, as I had hoped Arthur would recover."

With its trademark logo in familiar wavy psychedelic lettering, Love was associated with the innovative music of California, at a time when the Byrds, the Mamas and the Papas, and the Doors were flourishing.

Lee, who once described himself as "the first so-called black hippie", was born in Tennessee but moved with his family to Los Angeles as a child.

The band with which he found fame was initially called Grass Roots but became Love, which fitted the mood of the time, to avoid confusion with another group of the same name. Like a number of other bands of the time, they used several different musical styles. They had an early hit with My Little Red Book from their first album, Love.

Its 1968 third album, Forever Changes - with A House is Not a Motel and Alone Again Or - brought them greatest critical kudos and still appears on many musicians' and rock writers' favourites lists. He drifted out of the music business in the 1970s but returned with new musicians in the 80s and 90s and would play Forever Changes live in its entirety with a full orchestral backing.

Lee was convicted on drugs-related charges in the 80s.

This came back to haunt him in 1996 when he fired a gun into the air after an argument with a neighbour. He was given an automatic jail sentence of eight to 12 years under California's draconian three-strikes laws.

Released in 2001, he resumed his music career with different musicians before being diagnosed with leukaemia. Several musicians, including Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin, played benefit concerts for him when it became clear how serious his illness was. He was also the subject of a biography, Arthur Lee: Alone Again Or, by the music writer, Barney Hoskyns.

    Hippie hero Arthur Lee dies aged 61, G, 5.8.2006, http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1837893,00.html

Shine on you crazy diamond

Syd Barrett, the most famous recluse in rock, is dead.
It would be easy to mourn the founder of Pink Floyd as a casualty of drugs and mental illness, says Nick Kent
- but his songs will inspire musicians for generations

Wednesday July 12, 2006
Guardian
Nick Kent

Syd Barrett's musical career lasted barely seven years - from 1965 to early '72 - and the past 32 years saw him resolutely refusing to record new music or venture near a concert stage. But Barrett, who died of cancer last Friday at the age of 60, will go down in history as one of the most uniquely inspired creative talents to have sprung up from the pop revolution that gripped Britain in the late 20th century. More specifically, he was the golden boy of the mind-melting late-60s psychedelic era, its brightest star and ultimately its most tragic victim.

Like many other questing spirits who came to age in the mid-60s, he was inspired by taking LSD to create truly daring, other-wordly music - first for the original incarnation of Pink Floyd, then as a solo singer/songwriter - but the drug ended up fatally fracturing his psyche and turning him into a solitary recluse unable to function within the music industry and society in general. The story of his personal meltdown has been told and retold as a cautionary tale for indiscriminate druggies to the point where Barrett's status as rock's most illustrious casualty often threatens to outweigh his actual creative contributions to the form. This is not as it should be.

Barrett started making music in his early teens, not long after the death of his father, an esteemed doctor. He became a regular fixture at Cambridge folk clubs but was generally more attracted by music involving electric instruments. He played in several amateurish blues bands around Cambridge until he won a scholarship to a prestigious London art school in 1964. The following year Barrett started playing with a former Cambridge schoolfriend, Roger Waters, who was studying architecture at London's Regent Street polytechnic, and two of Waters' fellow students, Richard Wright and Nick Mason. Although he was the youngest member of the group, Barrett quickly became its leader and key driving force. He wrote the songs. He sang them, too - as well as playing guitar. He even came up with the name: Pink Floyd, taken from a blues album he owned involving two obscure musicians known as Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.

Live, Barrett's Floyd quickly earned a reputation as London's most radical musical experience. The four-piece invented a new way for a rock band to express themselves, with eccentric pop songs suddenly melting into long, spaced-out improvisations that would directly open the door first to the UK psychedelia movement and later to the oft-derided form we now call prog-rock. Barrett's guitar-playing was singular enough, always opting for spine-tingling "eerie noise" over virtuoso string-bending, but he was most gifted as a songwriter.

This became abundantly clear when the group released their first single at the outset of 1967. Arnold Layne was a Barrett composition that was both light-heartedly mischievous and creepingly sinister, evoking a figure from his Cambridge past, a disturbed individual who often stole women's underclothing from local washing lines. David Bowie - then a struggling singer/songwriter - was just one among many who found Barrett's groundbreaking blending of "light" and "dark" subject matter in popular song lyrics deeply liberating for his own personal muse. Last May, Bowie took the stage with David Gilmour, Barrett's Floyd replacement, to perform Arnold Layne as a homage to Syd -and also a personal thank-you for the considerable influence Barrett's music has had on him.

Barrett continued his masterful marriage of light and dark emotions on the group's next single, See Emily Play, and also alchemised the whimsical new bohemian spirit of the summer of love into an entire album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. But the dark aspects of his art soon eclipsed the light and euphoric side of his vision. In the late summer of '67 he wrote several disturbing new songs, one of which, Jugband Blues, appeared to be a stark autobiographical cry for help from a man desperately struggling with schizophrenia. The rest of the Floyd refused to release the other compositions and stood on horrified as they watched their guiding light turn int a catatonic human train-wreck. In early 1968, they booted him out of his own group.

This should have been a wake-up call for Barrett, but instead he sank even further into a world of drug-induced dislocation. Yet he continued to write songs that more and more sounded like open psychic sores, as this illuminated but desperately isolated soul struggled to make sense of his condition. He made two albums from this material - The Madcap Laughs (1970) and Barrett (1971) - with considerable assistance in the studio from his ex-Floyd cohorts Waters, Wright and Gilmour. But neither record sold many copies when released and Barrett returned to his mother's house in Cambridge to live like a hermit. He briefly played concerts with a local band called Stars in early 1972 but a negative review of one show caused him to jettison any further musical ambitions and become a full-time social recluse.

Yet his ghost has continued to exert an ever-more potent fascination over rock musicians of all generations. That Pink Floyd themselves were haunted by the tortured spectre is confirmed by Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall, their three most momentous post-Syd recordings. David Bowie re-channelled Barrett's dislocated, quintessential English style of vocal projection into songs such as The Bewlay Brothers. In early 1976, just before John Lydon joined the Sex Pistols, Malcolm McLaren tried (unsuccessfully) to convince the band to perform a couple of Syd's songs in their repertoire. The Damned, meanwhile, attempted - in vain - to get Barrett to produce their second album. Then came the new-wave bands such as the Soft Boys who feverishly appropriated the Madcap's surreal take on the modern pop-song aesthetic. He became a spiritual pied piper of 80s indie rock and by the 90s his madly spellbinding music was being referenced by everyone from Blur to the Brian Jonestown Massacre. In the new millennium, one needs to look no further than the recorded works of the Libertines and Babyshambles to hear that Syd's crazy diamond music is still bewitching and informing the creative choices of rock's latest generation of bohemian spirits.

A private funeral is apparently being planned that will pointedly exclude all Barrett's past musical compadres. No matter. All of us who were ever deeply touched by his unique gifts and his tragic life story should bow our heads and offer up a minute's silence to this remarkable individual for the way he enriched our lives. And pray that he is finally fully at peace.

    Shine on you crazy diamond, G, 12.7.2006, http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,,1818250,00.html

Syd Barrett, a Founder of Pink Floyd, Dies at 60

July 12, 2006
The New York Times
By JON PARELES

Syd Barrett, the erratically brilliant songwriter and singer who created the psychedelic rock of Pink Floyd only to leave the band in 1968 with mental problems, died on July 7 at his home in Cambridgeshire, England. He was 60.

His death was confirmed by a spokesman for his former band, Doug Wright of LD Communications, who did not give a cause. Mr. Barrett had long suffered from diabetes.

A statement from Mr. Wright said: “The band are very naturally upset and sad to hear of Syd Barrett’s death. Syd was the guiding light of the early band lineup and leaves a legacy which continues to inspire.”

With Pink Floyd, and on two haunting solo albums, Mr. Barrett became a touchstone for experimental pop musicians. He was also renowned both as an LSD casualty and as a symbol of how close creativity can be to madness.

Mr. Barrett wrote most of the songs on Pink Floyd’s debut album, “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.” In Mr. Barrett’s songs like “Astronomy Domine,” whimsy and wordplay merged with a playful sense of structure and sound. “Let’s try it another way/You’ll lose your mind and play,” he wrote in “See Emily Play.”

He also helped to conceive the band’s performances as spectacles. “We have only just started to scrape the surface of effects and ideas of lights and music combined,” Mr. Barrett told the trade newspaper Melody Maker in 1967.

But under the pressures of rock stardom and after frequent use of LSD, Mr. Barrett had a breakdown in the late 1960’s and spent most of his life as a recluse. Pink Floyd, with its bassist, Roger Waters, taking over as songwriter, went on to become a multimillion-selling arena-rock band in the 1970’s. Pink Floyd sang about Mr. Barrett in one of its hits, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.”

Roger Keith Barrett, nicknamed Syd as a teenager, was born in Cambridge, England, on Jan. 6, 1946. He played the piano as a child and then took up the guitar, joining his first band at 16.

Pink Floyd began with boyhood friendships. Mr. Barrett attended the same elementary school as Mr. Waters. David Gilmour, who eventually replaced him as Pink Floyd’s guitarist, was another teenage friend.

In 1965, while Mr. Barrett studied painting and fine art at Camberwell art school in South London, Mr. Waters, the drummer Nick Mason and the keyboardist Rick Wright were studying architecture at Regent Street Polytechnic. They recruited Mr. Barrett to join their blues band. Mr. Barrett combined the first names of two bluesmen, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council, to name the group Pink Floyd.

Blues-rock soon receded in Pink Floyd’s music, giving way to songs that built on the Beatles’ pop innovations and the expanded perceptions of the 1960’s. The music followed Mr. Barrett’s lyrics through meter changes, improbable interludes and the otherworldly sound effects the band was generating onstage at London clubs like UFO, a bastion of psychedelia. Mr. Barrett used an echo machine and slid a Zippo lighter along his guitar strings to create one of Pink Floyd’s sonic signatures.

In early 1967, Pink Floyd signed to EMI Records. Its first two singles — “Arnold Layne,” a fond song about a transvestite, and “See Emily Play” — reached the British Top 20. Pink Floyd made its debut album at Abbey Road Studios, as the Beatles worked on “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” next door. “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn” was a definitive psychedelic album. Its songs mixed childlike wonder with portents of disaster, and its music veered off on exuberant tangents before returning to pop choruses.

Onstage, the music was more free-form and anarchic. Band members have said Mr. Barrett was unstable even before he began extensive drug use, and he developed a reputation for odd behavior. For one show, he tried to slick down his hair with a combination of Brylcreem and crushed Mandrax tranquilizer pills, which were melted by stage lights and started to ooze down his face as he played. Playing the Fillmore West on Pink Floyd’s 1967 American tour, Mr. Barrett stood staring into space and detuning the strings on his guitar. The band cut short its American tour.

During 1967, Mr. Barrett was taking LSD every day, and that often left him incapable of performing. Mr. Gilmour joined Pink Floyd late in 1967, and by the spring of 1968, Mr. Barrett was out of the band. He wrote the song that closes “A Saucerful of Secrets,” Pink Floyd’s second album: “Jugband Blues,” which includes a Salvation Army band playing on one section. “It’s awfully considerate of you to think of me here,” he sang, “and I’m most obliged to you for making it clear/that I’m not here.”

Without Mr. Barrett, Pink Floyd’s music changed. Whimsy gave way to majestic anthems on best-selling albums like “Dark Side of the Moon,” a concept album about insanity.

Mr. Barrett was treated in psychiatric hospitals and quietly began recording songs and fragments of songs. Some were solo recordings with an acoustic guitar that other musicians were brought in to accompany; others were recorded with fellow musicians in the studio, or with Mr. Barrett working over finished backup tracks. The irregular structures of Mr. Barrett’s songs frustrated studio musicians and various producers, but Mr. Waters and Mr. Gilmour eventually took over production and completed “The Madcap Laughs,” released in January 1970.

Mr. Gilmour and Mr. Barrett returned to the studio to make “Barrett,” released in November 1970. On both albums, Mr. Barrett sounds fragile but oddly serene, following his rhymes whether they lead to nonsense or revelation.

Mr. Barrett appeared on BBC Radio and played one brief show at the London Olympia in 1970 (accompanied by Mr. Gilmour), walking offstage after four songs. In 1972, he made a last attempt to lead a band, Stars, which played a half-dozen shows in England before disbanding. Recording sessions in 1974 were unproductive.

Since then, Mr. Barrett lived quietly, spending some of his time painting. He showed up at unlikely moments: he appeared unannounced, for instance, at a 1975 Pink Floyd session as the band recorded “Shine On, You Crazy Diamond.” A British magazine reported that he was institutionalized for two years in the early 1980’s. Outtakes from his solo albums were released in 1988 as “Opel,” and a boxed set collecting all three solo albums, “Crazy Diamond,” was released in 1993. He learned he had Type II diabetes in 1998.

Mr. Barrett’s survivors include a brother, Alan, and a sister, Rosemary.

For someone with such a brief career, Mr. Barrett has never been forgotten. Indie-rockers have long tried to emulate his twisted craftsmanship, paying tribute in songs like Television Personalities’ “I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives.” Sir Tom Stoppard’s new play, “Rock ’n’ Roll,” invokes him as a lost free spirit.

    Syd Barrett, a Founder of Pink Floyd, Dies at 60, NYT, 12.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/arts/music/12barrett.html?hp&ex=1152763200&en=c5473fcd4ffb8f39&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Man Who Wrote 'Mama Said' Dies at 69

July 4, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:56 a.m. ET
The New York Times

COLUMBUS, Ga. (AP) -- Singer and songwriter Willie Denson, perhaps best known for the hit ''Mama Said,'' has died at the age of 69.

Denson, who died Saturday of lung cancer at his Columbus home, published more than 250 songs, some recorded by artists such as Aretha Franklin, Gene Pitney and the Ronettes. He also appeared on television shows such as ''American Bandstand'' and ''Soul Train.''

''Mama Said,'' co-written by Luther Dixon and sung by the Shirelles, who recorded four of his other pieces, reached No. 4 on the national charts in 1961.

Denson wrote the lyrics in memory of his deceased mother, Lillie. In a 1996 interview, he recalled her as someone ''always happy, always smiling.''

His family recalls him the same way.

''He was the kind of man who kept everyone's spirits up,'' said Ann Denson, his wife since 1960 and mother of his four children. ''He loved to write poetry. He played the keyboard by ear and banged on his bongo drums when working on a song.''

Denson also worked more than 30 years for the U.S. Postal Service in New York City, returning to Columbus in 1995.

In 2001, he won a $3 million Lotto Georgia jackpot, taking a $1.29 million cash option.

''Winning didn't change him a bit,'' said his daughter, Danette Powell. ''There was no difference.''

    Man Who Wrote 'Mama Said' Dies at 69, NYT, 4.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-Obit-Denson.html

Music Review | Bruce Springsteen With the Seeger Sessions Band

Folk Revival as Only Springsteen Can Do It

June 24, 2006
The New York Times
By JON PARELES

Every so often during his concert with his Seeger Sessions Band at Madison Square Garden on Thursday night, Bruce Springsteen footnoted his songs like the authenticity-obsessed characters who made the folk revival so easy to ridicule.

Before he sang "Jesse James," he credited the originator, Billy Gashade, and mentioned Woody Guthrie's rewrite; he said he'd be following the original. With a smile, he added, "It holds to the maxim, 'When the legend becomes fact, write the legend.' " And then he led his band in a version like a tall tale.

It started with banjo picking, picked up a hoedown beat, tossed in a Tex-Mex accordion and a western-swing fiddle, and wound up with some razzing Dixieland-style horns. It was tough-minded and fun; it was also about as authentic as a covered wagon with chrome wheels.

The Seeger Sessions Band is Mr. Springsteen's uninhibited take on the folk revival, spearheaded by Pete Seeger and others, that peaked in the 1950's and 60's. They wanted to let America and the world hear the music made by ordinary people in out-of-the-way places. In hindsight, they were about half right. The folkies understood that the old songs were a trove of melody, history, poetry and anonymous genius; they were also, for a few decades, good tools for organizing the labor movement and the civil rights movement. But the folkies' garbled notions of authenticity — rewriting lyrics as agitprop was fine, but using an electric guitar was not — led the folk revival to self-parody and obsolescence when rock started taking itself just as seriously.

Mr. Springsteen's album "We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions" (Columbia), revisits songs that Mr. Seeger recorded. Mr. Springsteen chose them, as Mr. Seeger had, for their visions of working Americans ("John Henry," "Pay Me My Money Down") and hard times ("My Oklahoma Home"), for a spirit of resistance ("We Shall Overcome" and "Eyes on the Prize," an old song rewritten for the civil rights movement) and for antiwar conviction (the 19th-century Irish song, "Mrs. McGrath," which says, "All foreign wars I do proclaim/Live on blood and a mother's pain.")

The album doesn't include any of Mr. Seeger's own topical songs. But the concert did, when Mr. Springsteen performed "Bring 'Em Home," which Mr. Seeger wrote during the Vietnam War. (It's available free on www.brucespringsteen.net.)

Mr. Springsteen's band grew to 19 members during the concert, including a 6-member horn section. Nearly all the instruments were acoustic. The band didn't simply strum and pick in the hootenanny style of folk-revival acts like the New Christy Minstrels (although a 1960's group, the Village Stompers, had some similar string-band-to-Dixieland arrangements). The Seeger Sessions Band played a boisterous kaleidoscope of styles, never sticking to just one a song: Appalachian music, gospel, jump-blues, Irish reels, New Orleans R & B, mariachi, Cajun music, even some acoustic funk for a version of Mr. Springsteen's own "Johnny 99." Credit the lasting impact of the folk revival for letting Mr. Springsteen find musicians in New York who are adept in so many regional styles.

Mr. Springsteen, as always, had serious intentions. He sang the version of Blind Alfred Reed's "How Can a Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live" that he rewrote with New Orleans in mind, as well as his hymnlike version of "When the Saints Go Marching In." He introduced "We Shall Overcome" as a song about issues that have still not been resolved, and played it in a slow-building version that moved deliberately from solitude to camaraderie.

But the concert never bogged down in self-righteousness. There was always another turn in the arrangements, another startlingly timely old lyric, another happy anachronism. "What can a poor boy do, 'cept play in a ragtime band?" Mr. Springsteen rasped as the band played "You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)," with a zydeco rubboard ratcheting away.

And if the spirit of the folk revival was in its singalongs, then Mr. Springsteen was definitely carrying it on. His fans have long filled arenas with verse-and-chorus singalongs on his songs, and they had already learned the material on the new album. Now they were raising their voices to sing old songs revived one more time.

Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band perform tonight at 7:30 at PNC Bank Arts Center, Holmdel, N.J.; (732) 335-8698.

    Folk Revival as Only Springsteen Can Do It, NYT, 24.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/24/arts/music/24bruc.html

MOVIE REVIEW

'Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man':

A Documentary Song of Praise

June 21, 2006
The New York Times
By STEPHEN HOLDEN

When Leonard Cohen speaks, the elevated cadences of language are strewn with poetic images so precisely articulated in a rumbling bass-baritone voice that they all but erase the distinction between his song lyrics and personal conversation. Each word is carefully chosen and pronounced with oratorical flourish. Even when his sepulchral drone isn't bending itself around a melody, its sound is musical.

Here is one sample of his conversational style, from Lian Lunson's wonderful documentary portrait, "Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man." Reflecting on the inspiration for his song "The Traitor," he muses that it is about "failing or betraying some mission you were mandated to fulfill and being unable to fulfill it and then coming to understand that the real mandate was not to fulfill it but to stand guiltless in the predicament in which you found yourself."

If a strain of gallows humor didn't underlie many of Mr. Cohen's pronouncements, such observations might sound insufferably pretentious. But he continually undercuts his own solemnity. Here is he is on his own mystique as a silver-tongued Casanova: "My reputation as a ladies' man was a joke. It caused me to laugh bitterly the 10,000 nights I spent alone."

"Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man" combines pieces of an extended interview with this Canadian singer-songwriter, poet and author, now 71, with a tribute concert organized by Hal Willner at the Sydney Opera House in January 2005. Titled "Came So Far for Beauty" (after a Cohen song), the event featured performances of many of Mr. Cohen's best-known songs by Nick Cave, Rufus Wainwright, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Martha Wainwright and Antony (of Antony and the Johnsons), among others.

Some of the performers offer pungent personal comments. Mr. Cave recalls discovering Mr. Cohen's "Songs of Love and Hate" album while living in a remote Australian town and suddenly "feeling like the coolest person in the world because it separated me from everyone and everything I detested."

Bono and Edge from U2, who did not participate in the Sydney event, offer extravagant tributes and near the end of the film are shown accompanying Mr. Cohen in a New York club performance of "Tower of Song." Edge likens him to "the man coming down from the mountaintop with tablets of stone having been up there talking to the angels."

Bono observes, "As dark as he gets, you still sense that beauty is truth."

Mr. Wainwright, who performs more songs than any other guest, sings "Everybody Knows," "Chelsea Hotel No. 2" (Mr. Cohen's self-deprecating and indiscreet reminiscence of a sexual encounter with Janis Joplin), and "Hallelujah" (the Cohen song Mr. Wainwright and Jeff Buckley have made something of a downtown standard).

He locates the dark humor at the bottom of "Everybody Knows," a bleak prophecy about the end of the world as we know it. Backstage he recalls the first time he met Mr. Cohen, who was in his underwear, cooking soba noodles and feeding bits of sausage on a toothpick to revive a baby bird. It wasn't until Mr. Cohen disappeared and returned wearing an Armani suit, Mr. Wainwright said, that he realized he was in the presence of a legend.

Two of the other more memorable performances come from Antony, who cries out "If It Be Your Will" in an eerie, shivering falsetto, and Teddy Thompson (son of Richard and Linda), who stamps the more obscure Cohen song "Tonight Will Be Fine" with the concert's most intense vocal.

Reflecting on his life and work, Mr. Cohen recalls first encountering poetry in the Jewish liturgy at a synagogue. Some of his more recent recollections are of a purgative sojourn in a Zen monastery during the 1990's on Mount Baldy, where he studied with a Japanese Zen master.

But a Zen-like austerity has always been present in his writing. A Zen spirit also informs his modest self-assessment of his life's work.

"I had the title poet, and maybe I was one for a while," he says. "Also the title singer was kindly accorded me, even though I could barely carry a tune."

"Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It contains some strong language.

Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man

Opens today in Manhattan

Directed by Lian Lunson; directors of photography, Geoff Hall and John Pirozzi; edited by Mike Cahill; music by Leonard Cohen, performed by Nick Cave, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright, Antony, Linda Thompson, the Handsome Family, Beth Orton, Teddy Thompson, Jarvis Cocker, Perla Batalla, Julie Christensen, Joan Wasser and U2; produced by Ms. Lunson, Mel Gibson and Bruce Davey; released by Lionsgate. At the Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Avenue of the Americas, South Village. Running time: 104 minutes.

    'Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man': A Documentary Song of Praise, NYT, 21.6.2006, http://movies2.nytimes.com/2006/06/21/movies/21leon.html

So Paul McCartney Is 64. Now What?

June 17, 2006
The New York Times
By SAM ROBERTS

In 1942, when James Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool, the average life expectancy of a British infant boy was 63 years. Notwithstanding those expectations and the greatly exaggerated rumors of his death decades ago, Mr. McCartney turns 64 on Sunday, Father's Day.

He was a teenager when he wrote the tune for "When I'm Sixty-Four," and only 24 when the Beatles recorded it in 1967 for "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." But just as George Orwell's "1984" proved to be an abiding prophecy of a dystopic future for so many impressionable readers, Mr. McCartney's lyrics delivered to a self-consciously youthful generation an enduring if satirical definition of what their golden age might be like "many years from now."

Today, many of those who embraced that quaint vision of enduring love, caring, knitting and puttering in retirement — "Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm 64?" — couldn't have been more wrong.

And judging by his personal life, Mr. McCartney missed the mark, too. The song's promise of retirement with a longtime partner has proved, at best, bittersweet for him. Last month, he announced his separation from his second wife, Heather Mills, who is 38. "Will you still need me?" indeed. Since 1967, American divorce rates per capita have more than doubled (three-quarters of men married in the late 1950's celebrated their 20th wedding anniversaries with their first wife, compared with about half who married in the early 1970's).

A smaller proportion of Americans older than 65 are poor today, but more delay retirement because they want to, or have to. More of the better-off own their vacation homes outright (never mind renting "a cottage in the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear"), while the less well-off who own homes have the newly popular option of reverse mortgages.

Americans live longer today (technically, no one has died of old age since 1951, when the government dropped that official cause). They also age more slowly, or so they say. Half the over-65 population define themselves as middle-aged or even young, though a greater proportion today are likely to be perilously overweight.

Yet the song still resonates. Julian Lennon, John's son, sang it in an Allstate Insurance commercial in 2002. When Paul Simon turned 64 last year, Mr. McCartney called and serenaded him with it.

According to most accounts, Mr. McCartney wrote the lyrics for his father (his mother had died of breast cancer when he was 13) and the song was recorded not long after the elder McCartney turned 64.

"While it may have been done tongue in cheek," said Bruce Spizer, a Beatles biographer, "life began to imitate art."

Mr. McCartney's first wife, Linda, died in 1998 at 56, of breast cancer; they had been married 29 years. "The bliss of being with a lifelong partner, as expressed in 'When I'm Sixty-Four,' was shattered by Linda's tragic death," Mr. Spizer said. "The little things expressed in the song, such as working the garden and going for a Sunday morning drive, were part of his life with Linda."

The writer Gail Sheehy, who, at 68, is still guiding readers through life's passages, said today's 64-year-olds have a "360-degree view of life." They may believe in yesterday, but they also can't stop thinking about tomorrow. Thanks to seasoning (and Viagra), males are not necessarily half the men they used to be.

Mr. McCartney, who recently appeared on the cover of AARP magazine, does not appear to be losing his hair yet, despite the song's augury. He has three grandchildren (not the song's "Vera, Chuck and Dave"). He is also the father of a 2-year-old daughter. And while he may not be living his own lyrical vision, Mr. McCartney seems closer to fulfilling Bob Dylan's "Forever Young" than Pete Townshend's "Hope I die before I get old."

Now a billionaire, he has said he has no plans to retire, either as a rock star or as an animal-rights advocate (although, at 65, he will be entitled to a basic pension from the British government, at least $156 a week, and a free transit pass).

This year, the first baby boomers turned 60. About 2.7 million other Americans observe their 64th birthdays in 2006, including Muhammad Ali, Erica Jong, Larry Flynt, Garrison Keillor, Michael Bloomberg, Harrison Ford, Ted Kaczynski and Barbra Streisand. (Ringo Starr, the only other surviving member of the Fab Four, will be 66 next month; John Lennon was murdered at 40 in 1980; George Harrison died of cancer at 58 in 2001.)

"The slogan back then was 'Never trust anyone over 30,' " recalled Jeff Greenfield, the CNN commentator, who is 63. "We thought people would be dead or in a home by their 60's."

Today, on average, 64-year-olds can expect to live more than 16 years, about 4 years longer than 64-year-olds could expect in 1967, according to government statisticians (and, hey, an editor of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Jude Rutledge, was named for another of Mr. McCartney's songs).

"The new 64," Ms. Sheehy said, "is more like 84."

    So Paul McCartney Is 64. Now What?, NYT, 17.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/arts/music/17paul.html?hp&ex=1150603200&en=463f683a663cfc66&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Blowing up a storm . . . Paris (second from right) with his group, Johnny and the Hurricanes,
at the height of their popularity in the US and British charts

Photograph: Redferns

 Johnny Paris, Obituary        G        p. 36        9.5.2006
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/obituary/0,,1770620,00.html

Obituary

Johnny Paris

American pop musician who led from the saxophone

Tuesday May 9, 2006
Guardian
Alan Clayson

Johnny Paris, the tenor saxophonist who led the American instrumental group Johnny and the Hurricanes into the British pop charts in the early 1960s, has died of leukaemia, aged 65. They scored four Top 30 entries at home in the US, and nearly twice that number in Britain, where they were on terms of fluctuating equality with the Shadows.

Their main hits - principal among them Red River Rock and Beatnik Fly -evoke an era of provincial youth clubs with soft drinks, ping-pong and with-it vicars. More importantly, the group was innovative for using other lead instruments than guitar.

Paris was born into a musical family, the Pocisks, in Walbridge, near Toledo, Ohio. He listened to modern jazz before the arrival of rock'n'roll, when he chose to model himself on Rudi Pompelli, the saxophonist with Bill Haley and the Comets. In 1957, at Rossford Catholic high school, Toledo, he formed a five-strong group called the Orbits. They enjoyed a long residency at a local dance hall, and appeared on regional television prior to moving to Detroit to become an all-purpose backing combo for such vocalists as rockabilly entertainer Mack Vickery, with whom they first recorded.

The group was renamed Johnny and the Hurricanes - largely on the strength of Paris's visual appeal - for its debut single, the sax-dominated tune Crossfire. Over the summer of 1959, it reached the national Top 30, and a follow-up, the million-selling Red River Rock, made the Top 10 in both the US and Britain.

Reveille Rock and 1960's Beatnik Fly were smaller hits. Like Red River Rock - based on a traditional campfire song of the old frontier - they were overhauls of well-known ditties on which the original melody was easily discernible on a shrill electric organ as prominent as Paris's saxophone. Despite producing some quite adventurous B-sides, the group stuck otherwise to the established strategy of rocking up the likes of When the Saints Go Marching In (as Revival) and the evangelist hymn Bringing in the Sheaves (as Salvation).

By the end of 1960, however, there were perceptible signs of commercial danger. While climbing the British Top 10, Down Yonder struggled in the lower reaches of the US Hot 100 - as did Rockin' Goose, although it broke the formula, being an original composition that featured the apposite, if unchallenging, squawk of Paris's mouthpiece. It was the group's biggest UK hit, peaking at No 3 during an autumn week in 1960 when instrumentals accounted for nine of the Top 30 entries. After the 1961 double A-side, Old Smokey/High Voltage, fell from the charts, the group disbanded.

Paris himself recruited new personnel to continue a relentless touring schedule, notably performing a season at Hamburg's Star-Club in December 1962, headlining over the Beatles. This prefaced a well-received visit to Britain in the new year. "I don't feel alive until I get on a stage," Paris told an interviewer at the time, "Music is what I live for."

During the later half of his career, however, he ran an estate agency, an antiques shop and a vending machine business in Toledo, as well as coping with booking commitments, mostly on the European rock'n'roll nostalgia circuit, touring Scandinavia as recently as last November. "Over in Europe, he was still popular," said his son Jeffrey. "He liked that he could come home, have his own peace and be a regular guy, and then go some place else and be a star." Paris is survived by Jeffrey, daughters Sheri and Monica, and his second wife, Sonja.

· Johnny Paris (John M Pocisk), musician, born August 29 1940; died May 3 2006

    Johnny Paris, Obituary, G, 9.5.2006, http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/obituary/0,,1770620,00.html

What Happened to the Fortune Michael Jackson Made?

May 14, 2006
The New York Times
By TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN

This article was reported by Jeff Leeds, Andrew Ross Sorkin and Timothy L. O'Brien and written by Mr. O'Brien.

SEATED in a $9,000-a-night luxury suite in the sail-shaped Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, Michael Jackson played the role of a wealthy pop star as he met with two senior executives of the Sony Corporation last December. From the opulent setting to Mr. Jackson's retinue of advisers, there was little indication that Sony's troops were paying a visit because they were concerned that he was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy proceedings.

Sony was worried because Mr. Jackson was the company's partner in a lucrative music publishing business that included songs by the Beatles and other musicians. If Mr. Jackson became insolvent, his 50 percent share of that $1 billion business would be up for grabs to the highest bidder, leaving Sony to confront the uncomfortable possibility that it would be forced into a new, unpredictable partnership not of its own choosing.

With the waters of the Persian Gulf and a teeming, prosperous emirate splayed out far beneath them, the group got down to business. According to those who attended the meeting and requested anonymity because confidential financial matters were discussed, Mr. Jackson was pensive and cooperative, seemingly well aware of the gravity of his situation despite the grandeur of his surroundings. He only chirped up occasionally to remark on what a wonderful investment the catalog had been.

After listening to Mr. Jackson, Robert S. Wiesenthal, a senior Sony executive, eventually proposed that Sony would help the singer find a bank to lend him more than $300 million to pay off his debts. In exchange, Mr. Jackson would possibly forfeit a portion of his half of the Beatles catalog.

Just last month, Mr. Jackson — still swamped in debt, with his musical career in stasis and his personal life limned by scandal — agreed to that financial overhaul. It is likely to strip him of about half of his remaining stake in the catalog, which he has relied on as a financial lifeline for about a decade. According to executives involved in the restructuring talks, Mr. Jackson used the catalog, as well as copyrights to his own songs, as collateral for roughly $270 million in bank loans he took out to fund a spending spree that includes upkeep for his sprawling California ranch, Neverland, and other exotic luxuries.

Given how precarious Mr. Jackson's financial situation appears to be, it is unclear how long he will be able to retain his remaining stake in his prized music catalog. A reckoning appears near, and Mr. Jackson's ability to hold onto his fortune has proven to be as fleeting as stardom itself.

The arc of Mr. Jackson's career, and his management of his business and financial affairs, tracks some of the timeworn truisms about the realities of the entertainment industry and those who inhabit its upper tiers: a child star unwittingly beholden to others who control his bank account; a more mature adult who is savvy about packaging and marketing himself but who grows increasingly undisciplined about his spending; and, finally, a reclusive caricature locked inside a financial and emotional fantasyland of his own making.

For those without access to Mr. Jackson's personal accounts, assessing exactly how much money has passed through his hands over a career that spans decades is impossible. Sales of his recordings through Sony's music unit have generated more than $300 million in royalties for Mr. Jackson since the early 1980's, according to three individuals with direct knowledge of the singer's business affairs. Revenues from concerts and music publishing — including the creation of a venture with Sony that controls the Beatles catalog — as well as from endorsements, merchandising and music videos added, perhaps, $400 million more to that amount, these people believe.

WHATEVER portion of those earnings actually ended up in Mr. Jackson's wallet is also difficult to assess because it would have to account for hefty costs like recording and production expenses, taxes and the like that would have reduced income from his business endeavors. Mr. Jackson could not be reached for comment.

"I think that Michael never had any concept of fiscal responsibility, or logical fiscal responsibility. He was an individual that had been overindulged by those that represented him or worked for him for all of his life," said Alvin Malnik, a former financial adviser to Mr. Jackson and a former lawyer for Meyer Lansky, the late mob kingpin. "There was no planning in terms of allocations of how much he should spend. As a businessman, you can forecast your spending for the next six months to a year. For Michael, it was whatever he wanted at the time he wanted.

"Millions of dollars annually were spent on plane charters, purchases of antiques and paintings," Mr. Malnik continued. "If you want to take a trip to London, that's one thing. If you want to continue that trip and have your entourage of 15 or 20 people go with you, it gets expensive."

Others close to Mr. Jackson say that the performer's finances have not deteriorated simply because he is a big spender. They say that until the early 1990's, he paid relatively close attention to his accounting and kept an eye on the cash that flowed through his business and creative ventures. After that, they say, Mr. Jackson became overly enamored of something that ensnares wealthy people of all stripes: bad advice.

"Some people can go to a person like Michael and say, 'Listen, this is out of hand.' Other people would much rather say, 'Whatever you want,' and they don't care," said Frank Dileo, who was Mr. Jackson's manager from 1984 to 1989. "I think after me, there were a lot of people that didn't care. All they were interested in was what they were getting. And they killed the golden goose."

Michael Jackson has spent a lifetime surprising people, in recent years largely because of a surreal personal life, lurid legal scandals, serial plastic surgeries and erratic public behavior that have turned him — on his very best days — into the butt of late-night talk-show jokes and tabloid headlines. But when his career began to take off nearly four decades ago as a member of the pop group the Jackson 5, fans and entertainment industry veterans recognized something else about the pint-size musical dynamo that was unusual: He was in possession of an outsize, mesmerizing talent.

Deke Richards, a writer and producer who worked closely with Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records, in shaping the earliest stages of Mr. Jackson's career, recalls watching the singer in one of his earliest performances in Los Angeles. It was 1969 at the Daisy Club, a Beverly Hills venue located on Rodeo Drive, and while the entire Jackson entourage impressed Mr. Richards, Michael was the star.

"It was almost evident that it was something special, it was like the reincarnation of Frankie Lyman," said Mr. Richards, referring to the 1950's teenage vocalist who turned "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" into a hit. "Nobody had seen anything like that since Frankie, a kid with chops like that who could sing like that. It was like a 30-year-old man was inside this little boy."

Although Mr. Gordy promoted Mr. Jackson as an 8-year-old wunderkind in advance of the Daisy Club appearance, the singer was just weeks shy of his 11th birthday when he performed there. Even so, he had already spent years in talent shows and performing in seedy Midwestern clubs under the aegis of Joe Jackson, his dictatorial and ambitious father. Joe Jackson and Mr. Gordy were the singer's twin mentors during Michael's early career; neither of them could be reached to comment for this article.

Despite Michael Jackson's youth, Mr. Gordy and others recognized that in addition to the singer's talent he also was an observant, diligent understudy keen to learn all that he could about the workings of the music business.

"Michael had a knowingness about him," Mr. Gordy recalled in a 1994 interview with Billboard magazine. "He paid close attention to every single thing I said. Even when my back was turned, I knew he'd be watching me like a hawk. The other kids might have been playing or doing whatever they were doing, but Michael was dead serious. And he stayed that way."

Mr. Jackson had his own recollections of those years. "When you're a show-business child, you really don't have the maturity to understand a great deal of what is going on around you. People make a lot of decisions concerning your life when you're out of the room," he wrote in "Moon Walk," his 1988 autobiography. "Berry insisted on perfection and attention to detail. I'll never forget his persistence. This was his genius. Then and later, I observed every moment of the sessions where Berry was present and never forgot what I learned. To this day, I use the same principles."

Mr. Gordy paid many of Motown's most successful acts, including the Jackson 5, far stingier royalty rates on their albums than they might have earned in a later era, and certainly lower than what Mr. Jackson himself earned during his heyday in the mid-to-late 1980's. According to J. Randy Taraborrelli's 1991 biography, "Michael Jackson: The Magic and the Madness," Motown paid the Jackson 5 a royalty rate that was just a fraction of what Mr. Jackson secured for himself later in his career.

"There was a lot of pressure on Michael as a youngster to perform for the family," said Shelly Finkel, a former rock 'n' roll promoter who currently manages professional boxers and who periodically intersected with the Jackson family when Mr. Jackson was a child. "You get a kid like Michael Jackson and he's unsophisticated with his money and people take advantage. It's not a real upbringing. He didn't mature as a human in all directions."

The Jackson 5 jumped from Motown to CBS Records in 1975, and the company rewarded them with better contracts. They also received guaranteed fees of at least $350,000 per album, according to Mr. Taraborrelli's book, well above their Motown fees but still not approaching the stratospheric, multimillion-dollar guarantees Mr. Jackson would begin getting in the 1980's. Concerts offered another source of income, but it was still income that Mr. Jackson shared with his siblings and upon which his father kept a tight rein.

Mr. Jackson eventually broke with his father and the Jackson 5, a move toward creative and financial independence marked by his collaborations with Quincy Jones on a trio of albums. The most memorable of those is 1982's "Thriller," which eventually racked up sales of 51 million copies globally, according to the Guinness World Records, making it the best-selling album in history. Yet "Thriller" took a heavy toll, Mr. Jackson's associates say, setting a benchmark of success that the entertainer never stopped chasing.

Mr. Jackson's pre-expense share of the "Thriller" bounty — including the album, singles and a popular video — surpassed $125 million, according to a former adviser who requested anonymity because of the confidential nature of Mr. Jackson's finances. Those who counseled him in the "Thriller" era credit the pop star with financial acumen and astute business judgment, evidenced by his $47.5 million purchase of the Beatles catalog in 1985 (a move that served to alienate him from Paul McCartney, the Beatles legend who imparted the financial wisdom of buying catalogs to Mr. Jackson during a casual chat, only to see Mr. Jackson then turn around and buy rights to many of Mr. McCartney's own songs).

John Branca, an attorney who structured the purchase for Mr. Jackson and represented him from 1980 to 1990 and periodically after 1993, said he saw no signs of wayward financial behavior in the years straddling the release of "Thriller." "I think Michael was brilliant for a good part of his career — savvy, involved, on top of everything," Mr. Branca said. "I also think he was a marketing genius."

In the midst of the "Thriller" phenomenon, Mr. Jackson's appetites were still relatively modest by celebrity standards, and he had just begun to experience the possibilities of riches he had never known in his childhood. Acquaintances from that period say that he would occasionally borrow gas money, and he still lived in the Jackson family home in the suburban Encino section of Los Angeles.

Although he made an unsuccessful attempt in 1987 to buy the bones of Joseph Merrick, more famously known as "The Elephant Man," for $1 million, it wasn't until the end of the 1980's that he began to exhibit more baronial tendencies. In 1988, he made his $17 million purchase of property near Santa Ynez, Calif., that became Neverland.

At the same time, Mr. Jackson was redefining the concept of spectacle in pop music. He hired Martin Scorsese, the film director, to direct a video for his album "Bad," a clip that one adviser with direct knowledge of the production budget said cost more than $1 million. The same adviser said that Mr. Jackson netted "way north" of $35 million from a yearlong "Bad" tour that began in 1987, and that heading into the 1990's Mr. Jackson was in sound shape financially.

While Mr. Jackson began to routinely rotate through different teams of advisers in the 90's, and pour more of his own money into pricey projects like videos, at least one of his advisers from the period contends that Mr. Jackson kept a lid on his spending until even the late 1990's.

"I didn't ever see him take all kinds of people all around the world," said James Morey, who served as one of Mr. Jackson's personal managers from 1990 to 1997 (when Mr. Jackson fired him and turned for advice instead to the Saudi sheik Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal). "Michael is very bright, and Michael pretty much knew — even when he was advised something was too expensive — if he felt it was right for the art, he had the means to pay for it. He wasn't oblivious to what budgets were."

Other events, however, suggest that Mr. Jackson's finances were already under strain by the mid-90's. He retreated from working regularly after the release of "Dangerous" in 1991 and settled a child-molestation lawsuit for about $20 million. More significantly in terms of his finances, he had to sell Sony a 50 percent stake in the Beatles catalog in 1995 for more than $100 million, which one adviser said helped shore up the singer's wobbling accounts.

Mr. Jackson wouldn't produce another studio album of completely new material until 2001, yet whenever he surfaced with other works that were compilations of previously released material he still expected promotions and spectacles beyond anything done before. For his 1995 album, "HIStory," for example, he sought to shoot an extravagant "teaser" video to promote it. He shot the video in Hungary for millions of dollars and hired Hungarian soldiers to march in it.

"When they were shooting this thing in Hungary, the production company would call me in the middle of the night and say, 'Michael wants more troops,' " said Dan Beck, a senior marketing executive who worked on the video. "He dreamed the big dream. It was P. T. Barnum."

MR. JACKSON indulged in other pricey vanity projects, including what one adviser believes to be the most expensive — a 35-minute film called "Ghosts" that he co-wrote with the novelist Stephen King and shot in 1997 with Stan Winston, a special-effects whiz that cost well above $15 million. One person with direct knowledge of Mr. Jackson's spending said that the star paid a substantial portion of as much as $65 million on video projects in the mid-90's — outlays that contributed significantly to his financial problems.

Mr. Jackson also came under the sway of an assorted rotation of new advisers who apparently convinced him to make heavy bets on risky investments that never panned out. In late 1996, according to court papers, he met Myung Ho Lee, a Korean adviser who emerged as a central figure in the performer's debt binge.

Documents indicate that by late 1998, Mr. Jackson had already taken out and depleted a $90 million bank loan and Mr. Lee arranged a new, $140 million loan from Bank of America that was collateralized by the Beatles catalog and used to pay off earlier debts. Just several months later, the $140 million had evaporated and Mr. Jackson, fresh off of his divorce settlement with Lisa Marie Presley, obtained another $30 million line of credit from Bank of America. Mr. Lee said in court papers that in late 2000 he raised the original $140 million bank loan to $200 million, using part of that loan to pay down the $30 million credit line, which had been entirely tapped.

Although documents indicate that Mr. Lee brought at least two risky investment opportunities to Mr. Jackson, Mr. Lee still managed to castigate the performer in court papers for a lack of financial discipline in 1999 and 2000. "Jackson became fixated on obtaining expensive possessions and feeding his ego by listening to the advice of hucksters and imposters," Mr. Lee noted.

All the while, Mr. Jackson's spending ramped up. As described by several of Mr. Jackson's former associates, he routinely borrowed large sums of cash to pay for things he may not have been able to afford. Marc Schaffel, who formerly served as an adviser on Mr. Jackson's television projects, alleges in a lawsuit scheduled for trial next month that Mr. Jackson failed to reimburse him for outlays of more than $2.2 million, much of it in cash.

THESE expenses included $46,075 in August 2001 for appraisals and architectural work done as Mr. Jackson considered buying a home in Beverly Hills; a $1 million fee paid to Marlon Brando in September 2001 so that the film star would appear at a Madison Square Garden event and in a video honoring Mr. Jackson; more than $380,000 for the purchase of a Bentley Arnage sport sedan and a custom Lincoln Navigator sport-utility vehicle; and $250,000 in June 2003 for antique shopping in Beverly Hills.

Mr. Malnik, who began advising Mr. Jackson a few years ago, said in an interview that the entertainer had spent about $8 million annually on plane charters, antiques, paintings, hotel rooms, travel and other personal expenses, and that the annual upkeep for Neverland and its staff was about $4 million. A forensic accountant who testified in Mr. Jackson's criminal trial last year said that the singer's annual budget in 1999 included about $7.5 million for personal expenses and $5 million to maintain Neverland. None of this explains the scale of Mr. Jackson's borrowing, however, or the rapidity with which he burned through those funds.

The leading drain on Mr. Jackson's ample resources may have been monumentally unwise investments that apparently produced equally colossal losses. Mr. Malnik estimates that some of Mr. Jackson's advisers squandered $50 million on deals that never panned out — what he describes as amusement-park ideas and "bizarre, global kinds of computerized Marvel comic-book characters bigger than life." Mr. Malnik said that he had loaned Mr. Jackson $7 million, part of which was used to settle various lawsuits related to deals gone awry.

It's possible that Mr. Jackson's biggest costs may have shifted in early 2000 away from his shopping sprees to simply shouldering enormous monthly interest payments on his debt. According to one executive involved in his affairs, Mr. Jackson was making monthly payments of about $4.5 million in 2005 on $270 million in debt. That works out to an annual interest rate of about 20 percent, a toll more familiar in the worlds of credit cards, subprime lending and loan sharks and not commonly encountered by wealthy people with substantial assets. But Mr. Jackson's wildly errant spending had forced him to confront harsher realities.

By the time Mr. Jackson finally met with the Sony executives in Dubai last December, his onerous interest payments had left him in a bind. Fortress Investment Group, a New York-based investment group that specializes in distressed debt, bought Mr. Jackson's loans from Bank of America in 2003 after the singer missed some payments. It then began levying high interest rates. Fortress, which did not respond to an interview request, threatened to call its loan on Dec. 20 last year because of Mr. Jackson's delinquency. What especially concerned Mr. Jackson about that, said one person familiar with the talks, was that it was just five days before Christmas.

TO keep Mr. Jackson afloat, Sony arranged an extension with Fortress and brought in Citigroup and other potential lenders to arrange new financing at a lower rate. At a meeting in London on Valentine's Day earlier this year, Citigroup offered Mr. Jackson a new loan with a 6 percent rate. Citigroup struck a deal because Mr. Jackson agreed to give Sony the right to buy half of Mr. Jackson's 50 percent stake in the Beatles catalog at a future date for about $250 million, providing a backstop for Citigroup if Mr. Jackson defaulted.

To the amazement of others involved in the talks, Fortress then offered Mr. Jackson the same terms — a measure of how desirable the Beatles catalog has been and continues to be to the various financiers and advisers who have hovered around Mr. Jackson since he bought it two decades ago. By April, a final deal was in place. Citigroup ended up providing a $25 million mortgage on Neverland, most of which Mr. Jackson used to buy back a 5 percent stake in the catalog held by one of his early advisers, Mr. Branca.

For his part, Mr. Malnik said he thought Mr. Jackson might have been able to continue to afford his lifestyle and errant spending if he had continued to work, but, of course, Mr. Jackson chose to work less and less. "For Michael, it was, whatever he wanted at the time he wanted," Mr. Malnik said. "This was perpetuated over a great number of years. Ultimately, if you don't change the course of things, you get to the end of the day."

Even at the end of the day, however, some people still remember the beginning. When put on hold, telephone callers to Mr. Gordy's office are treated to the 1971 ballad "Got to Be There," Mr. Jackson's hit on his first album as a solo artist for Motown.

    What Happened to the Fortune Michael Jackson Made?, NYT, 14.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/business/yourmoney/14michael.html

An Organ Recital for the Very, Very Patient

May 5, 2006
The New York Times
By DANIEL J. WAKIN

HALBERSTADT, Germany, May 4 — If you miss Friday's musical happening at St. Burchardi Church in this eastern German town, no worries. There is always 2008. And the next year. And the one after that.

In fact, you have about six more centuries to hear developments in the work being performed, a version of a composition by John Cage called "As Slow as Possible." A group of musicians and town boosters has given the title a ridiculously extreme interpretation, by stretching the performance to 639 years.

Like the imperceptible movement of a glacier, a chord change was planned for Friday. Two pipes were to be removed from the rudimentary organ (which is being built as the piece goes on, with pipes added and subtracted as needed), eliminating a pair of E's. Cage devotees, musicians and the curious have trickled in to Halberstadt, a town about two and a half hours southwest of Berlin by train known as the birthplace of canned hot dogs and home to a collection of 18,000 stuffed birds.

"In these times, acceleration spoils everything," said Heinz-Klaus Metzger, a prominent musicologist whose chance comments at an organ conference nine years ago sparked the project. "To begin a performance with the perspective of more than a half-millennium — it's just a kind of negation of the lifestyle of today."

The only limitations on the length of the performance are the durability of the organ and the will of future generations.

For anyone keeping records, the performance is probably already the world's longest, even though it has barely begun. The organ's bellows began their whoosh on Sept. 5, 2001, on what would have been Cage's 89th birthday. But nothing was heard because the musical arrangement begins with a rest — of 20 months. It was only on Feb. 5, 2003, that the first chord, two G sharps and a B in between, was struck. Notes are sounding or ceasing once or twice a year — sometimes at even longer intervals — always on the fifth day of the month, to honor Cage, who died in 1992.

There are eight movements, and Cage specified that at least one be repeated. Each movement lasts roughly 71 years, just four years shy of the life expectancy of the average German male. There is no need to wait for the end of a movement for late seating: St. Burchardi is open six days a week, and the notes have been sounding continuously.

A whine can be faintly hard outside the front door of the church, a 1,000-year-old building that was once part of a Cistercian monastery and served as a pigsty when Halberstadt was a neglected industrial town in East Germany.

A cool blast of air comes through the open door, and the sound grows louder. After one spends some time within the bare stone walls, the urge to hum in unison proves irresistible. An electric bellows — about the size of three double beds in a row — sits in the left transept. Underground piping brings air to the organ in the right transept, which at this point is a wooden frame with six pipes. Small weights hold down wooden tabs: the keys. A plexiglass case muffles the sound. Neighbors complained that they could not sleep after the first notes sounded.

The place attracts people seeking a peaceful moment or communion with Cage's spirit. One student from the Juilliard School asked to spend a night in the church, said Georg Bandarau, the town's marketing director and manager of the Cage project. A Canadian writer who is going blind and making journeys to experience his other senses arrived Thursday.

The project's spirit is firmly in keeping with the proclivities of Cage, whose works pushed the boundaries of music and sought to meld life and art. One of his cardinal principles was to give the performer wide leeway. His most famous work may be "4' 33" " — in which the performer or performers sit silently for 4 minutes 33 seconds. Some consider him as much a philosopher as a musician.

Indeed, the Cage organ project is part serious musical endeavor, part intellectual exercise and part tourist attraction, the sort of thing that happens when the local worthies of a European town join with ambitious artists. And it has come to mean different things to different people.

For Christof Hallegger, it is a statement more about time than about music, and a reminder of mortality. "It's man-made, and it's longer than your own life," said Mr. Hallegger, the town's leading architect and a board member of the foundation behind the project.

Mr. Bandarau sees the performance as a tourist draw. "This town can profit from this project," he said.

Hans-Ola Ericsson, a Swedish organ professor who helped arrange the score, called it a symbol of possibility to a depressed region. "It brought hope, to very many people, of a future," he said.

But its signifcance is lost on some. Rainer Neugebauer, another member of the foundation, said it was hard to convince some local people of the project's value. "It doesn't sound like Beethoven," he said.

With German reunification, the government poured money into Halberstadt's renovation, but the East's economic problems continue to dog the town. Unemployment runs at more than 20 percent.

Cage wrote the piece for piano as "As Slow as Possible," or "ASLSP," in 1985, then adapted it for organ two years later, when it became known as "Organ2/ASLSP." The idea for the latest version was born in 1997, at an organ conference in the Black Forest town of Trossingen.

At a panel before a performance of "ASLSP," Mr. Metzger posed a question: since, in theory, an organ note can sound indefinitely, as long as a key is pressed, what is the limit for a piece like "ASLSP"? Days? Weeks? Years? Cage had not specified a length. "I mentioned that almost as a joke," he said.

Organists took up the discussion. "It means as long as an organ lives," Mr. Ericsson shouted, according to others present. Some suggested 1,000 years, but that idea was quashed.

"We have not had a good experience with 'a thousand years' in Germany," said the composer Jakob Ullman, referring to Hitler's Reich.

The other question was where to perform the piece. Mr. Ullman had an idea. As a boy, he would visit churches with his father, and he remembered clambering over the ruins of St. Burchardi. He knew Johann-Peter Hinz, a prominent sculptor in Halberstadt, and took the idea to him. Mr. Hinz, who suffered a stroke and fell into a coma shortly after the first chord sounded, agreed to push for it. A core group of organizers was formed, and the town let them use the church.

But the question remained: How long should the piece be? The first organ performance was 29 minutes. A recent recording lasts 71 minutes.

The group hit on a serendipitous fact: Michael Praetorius, a composer of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, had written that an organ with the first modern keyboard arrangement had been built in Halberstadt's cathedral in 1361. Subtract that number from the millennial year 2000, and the result is 639. Voilà. Problem solved.

The project has not been without disagreements. Some supporters wanted to build the organ all at once. Others wanted to pursue major contributors. Individuals can now sponsor one year of the piece for 1,000 euros and receive a plaque; nearly 100,000 euros ($127,000) have been raised, including other donations. A local businessman on the board was ousted for trying to take over the project, Mr. Hallegger said.

Others objected to what they saw as commercialization, and even to the establishment of the John Cage Academy, a center for the study of contemporary music, next door. "Only John Cage's piece is the thing that should be realized," said Mr. Ullman, who dropped out of the project early on. "I did a lot of work to think about what this performance could mean. Nobody read my papers."

All agree that nothing should interfere with the music. Solar power cells and a backup generator are on hand in case the electricity is interrupted. So far, the notes have flowed unimpeded.

"It's very important," Mr. Bandarau said. "It's what John Cage wrote."

    An Organ Recital for the Very, Very Patient, NYT, 5.5.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/05/arts/music/05cage.html?hp&ex=1146888000&en=9b1fa6165ce0e91a&ei=5094&partner=homepage

A Cajun Craftsman Preserves the Hallowed Ping of History

April 30, 2006
The New York Times
By JON PARELES

SCOTT, La., April 26 — The triangle may seem like a humble instrument: nothing more than a bent steel rod hit with a steel stick, merrily clanging away behind the fiddle and accordion of a traditional Cajun band. Visitors here in the bayou country of Acadiana often buy them as souvenirs at tourist stops.

But there are triangles, and then there are the triangles made by Dieu Donné Montoucet, an 80-year-old Cajun who goes by Don and whose hand-forged, antique-steel, virtually indestructible triangles are prized by musicians for the way they ring.

"They have a lot of volume, they have a lot of clarity and they have a lot of sustain," said Barry Ancelet, a professor of Francophone studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette who is a historian of Cajun music and a triangle player. "On a final note they'll continue ringing like a church bell."

The simple triangle paces traditional Cajun music, and its peal echoes beyond the bayou. While Cajun music's stronghold is around Lafayette, about 130 miles west of New Orleans, its two-step beat and high, tense vocal style have made their way into American music like country and New Orleans rhythm and blues.

Cajun music is a staple of the annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. [The 37th edition started on Friday and runs through next Sunday.] Advance ticket sales alone have topped 100,000. Among its headliners are Bruce Springsteen, Paul Simon and Dave Matthews. But the lineup also includes hundreds of Louisiana bands, among them traditionalist Cajun bands like Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, who use Mr. Montoucet's triangles.

Hurricane Katrina did not reach Acadiana, and Cajun music may be making new inroads in the 21st century, since many New Orleans residents — musicians included — evacuated west into Cajun country.

A small printed sign on Mr. Montoucet's workshop reads, "Don Montoucet, Lafayette — Lafayette Parish, Triangles — Cajun." His workbench and his office occupy one corner of his son-in-law's furniture warehouse. Inside, a dozen triangles hang on the wall; there's also a deer head, a stuffed raccoon and some birdhouses made from old license plates. A larger sign announces that Mr. Montoucet does Louisiana state vehicle inspections, his day job.

Mr. Montoucet has never had just one job. He drove a school bus for 45 years and began fixing cars at his own Don's Garage in 1940. From 1968 to 1996 he played accordion in his own Cajun band, Don Montoucet and the Wandering Aces. It changed its name to Don Montoucet and the Mulate Playboys when it became the house band at the well-known Mulate's restaurants in Breaux Bridge, Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

There's history in Mr. Montoucet's triangles. It's an old instrument; Mr. Ancelet says that triangles are described in accounts of medieval and Renaissance music. His triangles have a distinctive tight, flat loop at each end. He copied the design from a set — triangle and beater — that he inherited from his grandfather, a blacksmith who came to Louisiana from France. He made his first set around 40 years ago for a friend who knew he did ironwork.

Soon word got around, not just to Acadiana but to Canada and beyond. He sells the triangles himself in his workshop; they are also sold at the Savoy Music Center in Eunice, La., a stronghold of Acadian traditional music founded in 1960 by the musician and accordion builder Marc Savoy. They cost $35.

Mr. Montoucet makes the triangles from the U-shaped tines of salvaged old hayrakes: huge wheeled contraptions pulled by horses or tractors. The tines are springy and patinaed with rust from sitting in wet fields. He does not shine them up. "They can't be too rusty," he said. "The first thing that people ask me is, 'Is that the old iron?' They don't want to hear nothing else."

With an acetylene torch — he used to use a coal furnace — Mr. Montoucet heats the tines to straighten them, then cuts them to the right length. (One tine makes a triangle and its beater.) He heats them again to bend them into shape and keeps them red-hot to make the loops at the end. "It takes 250 licks of that big forge hammer to make one," he said.

The key to the sound, he says, is in the final stage: the tempering that heats and cools the steel for strength. He said: "If you heat them too hot, or not enough, it makes a difference. I can show you how to temper them, but if you don't have it here ..." He pointed to his head.

The hayrakes were collected through the years by a friend who works as a trucker. There is no new supply. "The iron is getting scarce," Mr. Montoucet said. "A lot of these farmers, they were glad to get rid of these hayrakes and glad to get them out of the way. But they got no more, pardner. I have a few of them left. My oldest son says, 'Dad, what you going to do when you can't get any more steel?' I say, 'Don't you think it's time for me to retire?' "

The triangles are guaranteed for life against the walloping a Cajun musician will give them. In the days before amplification, the triangle might have been the only thing heard by dancers at the far edges of a party. Mr. Montoucet knows of only one of his triangles that has broken: one that he made for Christine Balfa, the daughter of the great Cajun fiddler Dewey Balfa. After a forensic examination of the pieces, Mr. Montoucet found that there had been a hairline crack in the original hayrake tine.

Although Mr. Montoucet makes triangles in set sizes — usually from 8 to 12 inches on a side — they are anything but standardized. Mr. Montoucet played a few of his 9-inch triangles: each had a different note and a different ring.

"One day a lady came in and said: 'How come they're all different sounds? Why can't you make them all the same sound?' We were five or six men here, and I said, 'Lady, it's like this: if all us men liked the same woman, it wouldn't work.' Everybody likes different things. Some people like gumbo, some people don't like gumbo, but I don't know too many people who don't like gumbo."

Cajun musicians do not simply hit the triangle. A Cajun two-step or waltz is defined by a quick-changing ping and clank that vary depending on how the triangle is gripped: with a few fingers, an open palm, a closed fist. Mr. Montoucet smiled as a visitor attempted to coordinate the rhythmic tapping, clasping and unclasping.

"You ought to see my little 18-month-old great-grandchild doing that," he said. "He comes, and he gets all my tools, and then he picks up the triangle. His father says, 'He's probably going to be a mechanic.' And I say, 'He might be a musician too.' "

    A Cajun Craftsman Preserves the Hallowed Ping of History, NYT, 30.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/us/30trian.html?hp&ex=1146456000&en=3969f1713126b901&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Obituary

June Pointer

The youngest of the four sisters who achieved stardom with a string of early 1980s soul dance hits.

Saturday April 15, 2006
Guardian
Dave Laing


The Pointer Sisters made some of the most popular soul dance records of the first half of the 1980s. The lead singer on many of their most dynamic performances was June Pointer, the youngest of the four sisters, who has died of cancer aged 52.
She was born in Oakland, California, the youngest of six children of Elton and Sarah Pointer. Her parents were ministers of the West Oakland Church of

God where their offspring sang in the choir, but at home they enforced a strict ban on dancing, listening to the radio and secular music. Nevertheless, the children would wait till their parents left the house and, as June told an interviewer in 1981, "get in the back room and beat pie pans with spoons, making that rhythm and jamming together".

The punishment for doing what Elton Pointer called "the devil's work" was a whipping. Despite (or because of) this, June and her sister Bonnie began to perform in the nightclubs of San Francisco in the late 1960s. They and a third sister, Anita, attracted the attention of local rock impresario Bill Graham and record producer David Rubinson. Graham became the sisters' manager and Rubinson used them as backing singers on records by Boz Scaggs, Taj Mahal, Dave Mason and others. In 1972, the eldest sister, Ruth, left her job as a keypunch operator to join the group after they had signed a contract with Atlantic Records. The resulting album, Don't Try to Take the Fifth, was commercially unsuccessful, but the following year the quartet recorded The Pointer Sisters album which became a top 20 hit, together with the single Yes We Can Can.

Rubinson later said that the Pointers "weren't the typical black women singers. They were very independent-minded and they shopped at thrift shops and had a whole '40s look". That look, with floral dresses, feather boas and wide-brimmed hats brought frequent television appearances and a further hit with Fairytale, composed by Anita and Bonnie.

Its country music sound won a Grammy award for best country vocal group performance and earned them a booking at the Grand Ole Opry, the Nashville radio show. The Pointer Sisters were the first black female artists to appear there, an experience June described as "very scary. They had heard the song on the radio and asked us to perform without having seen us".

In contrast, they appeared in the disco musical Car Wash in 1976. In the mid 1970s the Pointers reverted to a more conventional soul style for the hit How Long (Betcha' Got a Chick On the Side), which they co-wrote with Rubinson. They became disco favourites with the 1979 million-selling version of Fire, a song by Bruce Springsteen.

By then Bonnie had left the group to go solo with Motown and the remaining trio was being produced by Richard Perry, a fashionable music business figure who had worked with Carly Simon and Barbra Streisand. Perry was responsible for six Pointer Sisters albums, plus June's 1983 solo record, Baby Sister.

His production skills and a judicious choice of songs were vital to the sisters' early 1980s success. He's So Shy (1980), the lubricious Slow Hand (1981), Automatic (1984) and Jump (For My Love) (1985) were all top 10 hits in the US and all but the first sold equally well in Britain. June was the lead vocalist on He's So Shy and Jump.

In 1985 June and her sisters won a second Grammy for Jump and were acknowledged as members of the pop elite when they participated in the USA for Africa charity recording, We Are The World. The following year they sang on actor Bruce Willis's hit version of the Staple Singers' Respect Yourself and joined Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan and Eddie Murphy in concerts to mark the first celebration of Martin Luther King Jr's birthday as a national holiday. June released a second solo album in 1989, having duetted with Dionne Warwick on the latter's album Reservations For Two in 1987.

In 1990 the sisters' career took a different turn when they signed a contract with Motown and made the album Right Rhythm. This was poorly received by critics and fans, but the group continued to tour. They also starred in the 1995 Broadway production of Ain't Misbehavin'.

Throughout her career, June had been a heavy user of drugs and alcohol and in 2000 she told People magazine that drugs had been part of her life since the age of 13 and in the mid-1970s she had suffered a nervous breakdown. At the time of the interview, June had conquered her addiction but soon relapsed and was expelled from the group in 2003. Her replacement was Ruth's daughter Issa.

Subsequently, June was arrested for drug possession and assault on her boyfriend. She was sentenced to 18 months in rehab last year, but in February she suffered a stroke and was diagnosed with the cancer that killed her.

She is survived by her mother, her sisters and two brothers.

· June Pointer, singer, born November 30 1953; died April 11 2006

    The youngest of the four sisters who achieved stardom with a string of early 1980s soul dance hits., G, 15.4.2006, http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/obituary/0,,1754437,00.html

Michael Jackson Bailout Said to Be Close

April 13, 2006
The New York Times
By JEFF LEEDS and ANDREW ROSS SORKIN

Michael Jackson, the onetime pop-music king who has endured a lengthy slide toward insolvency, is close to a deal that would keep him from bankruptcy by refinancing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, people briefed on the plan said last night.

As part of the transaction, he will also agree at some point in the future to give up a part of a prized asset — a song catalog that includes Beatles' hits — to the Sony Corporation, people briefed on the plan said.

Mr. Jackson, who spent years racking up debt to underwrite his lifestyle even as his music career faded, has appeared to teeter on the brink of ruin several times in recent years. Last month, he all but closed his sprawling California ranch called Neverland, a move that came after the California authorities threatened to sue over unpaid wages to ranch employees.

Mr. Jackson used his stake in the song catalog as part of the collateral for about $270 million in loans from Bank of America. The bank sold the loans last year to Fortress Investment Group, a New York-based investment company that buys distressed debt. The entire catalog, of which Mr. Jackson owns 50 percent, has been valued around $1 billion, the people briefed said.

As part of the new agreement, Fortress has agreed to provide a new $300 million loan and reduce the interest payments Mr. Jackson must make.

Under the deal he has been negotiating, Mr. Jackson would agree to provide Sony — which is co-owner of the Sony/ATV Music catalog with him — with an option to buy half his stake, or about 25 percent of the catalog, at a set price, according to the people briefed on the deal.

Should Sony execute its option on the music catalog, it would ensure that Mr. Jackson was able to pay his debts, these people said.

Executives involved in the deal cautioned last night that some details had yet to completed and that the agreement could still collapse.

Representatives for Sony and Fortress declined to comment last night. A representative for Mr. Jackson did not return a call.

But executives involved in the deal said it came after months of talks that spanned the globe, with meetings from Los Angeles to New York to London to Bahrain, where Mr. Jackson has been living at the hospitality of Sheik Abdullah, the ruler's son.

The deal also comes after years of efforts by an eclectic parade of financial advisers including the California billionaire Ronald W. Burkle and the Florida entrepreneur Alvin Malnik to offer Mr. Jackson guidance for extricating himself from his woes. Mr. Jackson's financial managers had been pressing him to shed a part of his stake in the Sony/ATV venture since before he stood trial last year on charges of child molestation. He was acquitted last summer.

Many people close to Mr. Jackson have maintained that he could raise money to repay his loans — or at least stay afloat — by touring internationally or working out a series of television and book deals. But the consensus among his advisers was that he would face bankruptcy if he did not refinance.

Sony has a longstanding interest in keeping Mr. Jackson solvent. If Fortress had moved to foreclose on Mr. Jackson, he might have been forced into bankruptcy protection, where his stake in the publishing company could be put up for auction.

In negotiating the deal, Sony seeks to avoid the prospect that another bidder could gain ownership of the stake, which the company has long hoped to control.

Sony has been trying to organize financial partners that could prop up Mr. Jackson's wobbly finances. In the fall, a Sony representative flew to Dubai to meet with Mr. Jackson and an adviser, Gaynell Lenoir, daughter of the late Gerald Lenoir, a lawyer who was a mentor to the lawyer Johnnie Cochran.

Originally, they had tried to hammer out a deal in which Citigroup would acquire the loans, and offer Mr. Jackson a more favorable interest rate, around 6 percent, these executives said. Mr. Jackson had been paying more than 20 percent in monthly interest payments.

Rather than sell the loans to Citigroup, Fortress agreed to match the bank's terms, the executives said.

The various parties had agreed to the deal in principle a few weeks ago, the executives said, but the final pact was held up while the companies involved tried to address questions about potential exposure linked to Mr. Jackson's remaining legal problems.

Prescient Capital, a New Jersey company that said it helped Mr. Jackson secure the original financing from Fortress, has sued him for breach of contract, accusing him of failing to pay millions of dollars in fees for providing financial advice.

As a result, Mr. Jackson has finally been forced to loosen his grip on one of the richest of song catalogs.

He paid $47.5 million in 1985 to acquire the ATV catalog, which had roughly 4,000 songs — among them more than 200 tunes written by members of the Beatles. After 10 months of negotiations with ATV's owner, the Australian tycoon Robert Holmes à Court, Mr. Jackson bested other suitors including the music executives Charles Koppelman and Martin Bandier, the London-based Virgin Records and the real estate entrepreneur Samuel J. Lefrak.

In 1995, as he confronted early financial woes, Mr. Jackson struck a deal to merge ATV with Sony's publishing arm. The arrangement also provided Mr. Jackson with a stake in new songs acquired by the venture, like "No Such Thing" by John Mayer.

Aside from the Beatles songs, the venture has a vast archive including "Blowin' in the Wind" by Bob Dylan, "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond and "E-Pro" by Beck

The catalog also includes the works of songwriters including Stevie Nicks, Sarah McLachlan, Destiny's Child, Garth Brooks and Richie Sambora of Bon Jovi. The venture is also a big force in country music, having acquired the catalog of Roy Acuff and Fred Rose for $157 million in 2002. An archive of songs from the likes of Hank Williams and Roy Orbison is also included.

    Michael Jackson Bailout Said to Be Close, NYT, 13.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/13/business/media/13music.html?hp&ex=1144987200&en=ef570087d9219dc4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

In a First, the Stones Rock China, but Hold the Brown Sugar

April 9, 2006
The New York Times
By HOWARD W. FRENCH

SHANGHAI, April 8 — After nearly 30 years of trying, the world's most famous rock band finally made it to the world's largest country, as the Rolling Stones brought their show to a small stage in China's biggest city.

The concert on Saturday, a late addition to the band's Biggest Bang world tour, was the product of long negotiations and numerous compromises: from the venue, a diminutive 8,000-seat indoor arena, to the songs allowed by Chinese censors.

The five songs reported to have been banned were "Brown Sugar," "Beast of Burden," "Let's Spend the Night Together," "Honky Tonk Women" and "Rough Justice," a song from the Stones' new album. The first four were also left off the Chinese version of the band's greatest hits album when it was released here in 2003.

The band had scheduled a show here and in Beijing to support that album in 2003, but that part of the tour was called off because of worry over the rapid spread of the SARS illness.

The sold-out performance on Saturday brought together cosmopolitan Shanghai at its richest, in more senses than one. With the cheapest seats going for about $40 — and most priced at 5 to 10 times more, well above monthly salaries for most people here — the cost ensured that well-heeled foreigners dominated the crowd.

Mick Jagger, the group's lead singer, acknowledged as much in a news conference the day before with a comment meant to address two of the most delicate issues surrounding the event, the heavily foreign audience and the restricted song list.

"I am pleased the Ministry of Culture is protecting the morals of expatriate bankers and their girlfriends," Mr. Jagger said, adding that he had 400 other songs to choose from, so "it doesn't really matter."

Many people were displeased with the ticket prices, and the effect on the audience mix, nonetheless.

"It's actually tragic if you think about it: a foreign performance borrowing Chinese land, but Chinese people cannot come because of price or other issues," said Chu Meng, 23, who attended the concert. "It is ironic, I should say. I saw some foreigners cover themselves with the Chinese flag, and I don't feel comfortable about it."

Even if the Stones can't always sing what they want, they still bring high energy to the stage. This show was no exception, and they launched into it with brio, with the choice of songs like "Bitch," played early in the act, seemingly to make the point that censorship was pointless.

For one of their signature hits, "Wild Horses," the Stones shared the stage with Cui Jian, 45, a pioneer of Chinese rock who, unlike many of the fans, both knew the lyrics and did not miss a beat in his rhythm guitar accompaniment. "This is the 20th-year anniversary of Chinese rock 'n' roll," the Chinese star said after the song. "We have an appointment. In the near future, they will be back, and we'll rock again in Beijing."

"This is their cultural revolution," said a California businessman and longtime resident who gave his name as Dan, and who rocked in the aisles with his Chinese wife, Bo. "This kind of thing has to spread beyond Shanghai and a few other places still, but that's what we're seeing, a real transformation of this country."

The rock 'n' roll era all but bypassed China, which was in the throes of Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution during the music's heyday. Although Whitney Houston and Elton John and a variety of other pop music stars and acts have performed here in recent years, the Stones are by far the biggest rock act to appear in China, and their concert will be the first to be broadcast in the country after censors screen it.

Truth be told, the group may have arrived here both far too soon and far too late. The Chinese government protects few things so zealously as culture, with one result being that few here knew anything about the group. And for many of those who are more familiar, an increasingly hard-to-impress niche of the population that is savvy in an up-to-the-minute way about Western culture in all its variety, the Rolling Stones are old hat.

"I've never listened to their songs," said Shen Yichen, a 16-year-old girl who was accompanied by her parents. "Maybe listening like this for the first time is more authentic."

Before the show, her father, equally unfamiliar with the music, downloaded a song. "I don't know what song it was," said the father, Shen Shiji, 46. "Maybe it was a song paying tribute to Dylan.

"I don't know if it's their lyrics that make people like them," he added, "but listening to the melody, it wasn't so beautiful."

A popular blogger here, Wang Xiaofeng, is typical of the group for whom the Stones are a relic of another era. "For most Chinese rock 'n' roll fans, the Rolling Stones are not even as attractive as a domestic pop singer, or the Super Girl contestants," he said, referring to a television show that resembled American Idol. "In the eyes of fans, the Rolling Stones have more meaning as a rock 'n' roll symbol than as a kind of music. They are as unfamiliar as they are familiar."

    In a First, the Stones Rock China, but Hold the Brown Sugar, NYT, 9.4.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/09/world/asia/09stones.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Obituary

Buck Owens

A dominating figure of American country music, his electrified sound swept away the old sentimentality

Monday March 27, 2006
Guardian
Christopher Reed

The dominant figure of American country music in the 1960s was Buck Owens, who has died aged 76, but the name given to his strident, driving beat was associated not with him but with the town that became his home.

As a genre, the Bakersfield sound was second only to Nashville, but many fans began to regard the Tennessee tradition as over-sweet and sentimental, whereas Owens' electrified music was a modern reflection of tougher times. Bakersfield itself, then and now a dull town devoted to oil and agriculture 100 miles north of Los Angeles, never embraced Owens. But he made a $100m fortune there.

He arrived in the town in 1951 as a gig musician with the first of his three wives. In those days Bakersfield was the home of much-resented Okies, the dust-bowl refugees from Oklahoma who had fled there in the 1930s. But as a working-class community with a strong musical tradition, they helped to refine Owens' style, which he developed at a honky-tonk where he played for seven years.

He sang and played lead guitar, worked marathon shifts and offered anything musical - R&B, rockabilly, rhumbas, polkas, even the samba and country - to get people to dance. Gradually, he found that his renderings of country music were attracting a following. He took advantage of the proximity of LA to record some songs.

In 1959 he had his first success with Second Fiddle. He went on to have 45 records in the country Top 10 and 20 No 1 hits overall, selling more than 1m records a year. His first top hit, later covered by the Beatles and co-recorded with Ringo Starr, was Act Naturally (1963). He followed this with at least one - and sometimes three songs - at the top of the charts. Among his best known records were I've Got a Tiger by the Tail (1965), Think of Me (1966) and Sam's Place (1967).

One of Owens' most interesting successes was a song intimately linked to his adopted hometown and its history. It was called The Streets of Bakersfield and contained the line, "They don't know me but they don't like me," a reference to the anguish of the Okie residents. The song was a hit in 1988 as a duet with the country star Dwight Yoakam, who persuaded Owens to emerge from semi-retirement to record it.

By this time Owens was known as the Baron of Bakersfield for his successful business ventures there. He owned downtown properties, radio stations, a television production firm, a shopping publication and a music publishing company. In 1996 he opened a nightclub, the Crystal Palace, with a western-style facade but good steaks, and Owens himself playing his guitar and singing almost every night. Only hours before he died in his sleep, he had returned to the stage after an evening's playing, especially to sing for a visiting couple.

Ironically, Owens came from a background that suited Bakersfield. He was born in a small town in Texas to a sharecropper father. The family of 10 escaped the dust bowl by heading west in a wobbly Ford, but their truck broke down in Mesa, Arizona, and there they stayed. Owens left school at 13 and worked in the fields while learning the mandolin, guitar, trumpet, saxophone, piano and drums - although his famous instrument was his Telecaster electric guitar.

By 16 he was appearing in music clubs and on local Arizona radio. He married at 17. His musical mix came from his experiences as an intinerant musician and his stints in Bakersfield honky-tonks. He acknowledged his loud beat, saying, "If I'd wanted to sleep I'd have taken a nap."

In 1957 he signed a contract with Capitol Records and formed his own band, the Buckaroos, named by another famous country singer and Owens' lifelong friend, Merle Haggard (who later married one of his ex-wives). For a time, Owens lived in Washington state, where he had a radio show, but eventually he returned to Bakersfield.

He wrote many of his hits, as well as playing with stars such as Tennessee Ernie Ford, Kay Starr, Gene Vincent and Wanda Jackson. In 1966, Ray Charles made an Owens song into the hit, Cryin' Time. From 1969-86 he was co-host of Hee Haw, one of the longest running comedy and variety shows on US television. Contrary to his shrewd business triumphs, he portrayed himself as a bumpkin. He was divorced from his wives and is survived by three sons.

· Alvis Edgar 'Buck' Owens, country musician, born August 12 1929; died March 25 2006.

    Buck Owens, G, 27.3.2006, http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/obituary/0,,1740292,00.html

Singer Wilson Pickett is shown in this undated publicity photograph.
Pickett, 64, died of a heart attack in a Virginia hospital January 19, 2006,
according to his management company.

REUTERS/Rhino Records/Handout

Soul singer 'Wicked' Wilson Pickett dead at 64        R        19.1.2006
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=
2006-01-20T043618Z_01_N19346175_RTRUKOC_0_US-PICKETT.xml&archived=False

Soul singer 'Wicked' Wilson Pickett dead at 64

Thu Jan 19, 2006 11:36 PM ET
Reuters
By Dean Goodman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Veteran soul singer Wilson Pickett, known for such hits as "Mustang Sally" and "In the Midnight Hour," died on Thursday of a heart attack in Virginia, his manager said. He was 64.

Pickett, an Alabama native famed for his trademark screams, flaming delivery and flamboyant costumes, performed on a regular basis until about a year ago, when he began suffering from health problems, said his manager, Margo Lewis.

Dubbed "Wicked" Wilson Pickett by Jerry Wexler, the co-founder of Atlantic Records, where he enjoyed his greatest success, Pickett was one of the leading exponents of the hard-edged Memphis sound, a grittier alternative to the pop singles being churned out by Motown Records in Detroit.

Often recording with the house band of Memphis-based Stax Records, Booker T and the MGs, he enjoyed a long string of hits during the 1960s, including the R&B chart-toppers "634-5789," "Land of 1,000 Dances" and "Funky Broadway."

"We've lost a giant, we've lost a legend, we've lost a man who created his own charisma and made it work around the world," soul singer Solomon Burke, a close friend of Pickett's, told Reuters. "It's just hard for me to really grasp that Wilson is already traveling toward the greater place."

"In the Midnight Hour" was his breakthrough hit, transforming the relative unknown into a soul sensation virtually overnight in 1965. Pickett co-wrote the tune with MGs guitarist Steve Cropper in about an hour, and it spent a week atop the R&B singles chart in August of that year.

"CAREER BREAKDOWN"

His luck ran out by the early 1970s, when he switched labels and suffered what he once described as a "career breakdown." An ambitious plan hatched in 1981 to tour as the "Soul Clan" with fellow R&B veterans Solomon Burke, Joe Tex, Don Covay and Ben E. King quickly fizzled.

Somewhat bitter about his diminishing fortunes, he endured various domestic disputes, and got into trouble with the law during the 1990s for cocaine possession and drunk-driving.

Burke said Pickett had turned his life around, and the two of them were planning to reunite with King, Covay and "Mustang Sally" songwriter Mack Rice to record an album this year.

Born March 18, 1941 in Prattville, Alabama, Pickett grew up in a poor household with 10 brothers and sisters, an abusive mother, and a preacher grandfather who beat him whenever he sang secular songs. He moved up to Detroit in his mid-teens to live with his father, and quickly gravitated to the sounds being purveyed by the likes of local singers Jackie Wilson and Little Willie John.

Although he considered himself a gospel singer, Pickett was invited to join an R&B group called the Falcons. He wrote and sang lead on their 1962 hit "I Found A Love." He became a prolific songwriter and enjoyed a handful of modest solo hits including "If You Need Me," a tune that was also covered by both Burke and the Rolling Stones.

CREDITS DISPUTE

Pickett signed with Atlantic in 1964, and was sent down to record in Memphis after his first few singles disappeared without a trace. "Midnight Hour," one of three recorded in one night, became the subject of an authorship dispute in later years. Pickett told music writer Gerri Hirshey in her 1984 book "Nowhere to Run" that he deserved sole credit. Cropper told Reuters a decade later that Pickett was "completely crazy" and "had nothing to do with writing that music."

Although Pickett was best known for his urgent, propulsive tunes, he also earned acclaim with non-R&B fare, most notably his 1969 cover of the Beatles' "Hey Jude," which featured Duane Allman on guitar. He also recorded bold interpretations of such tunes as Steppenwolf's "Born to Be Wild" and even make-believe group the Archies' "Sugar, Sugar."

Pickett was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, and experienced a career renaissance that same year with the release of the movie "The Commitments," which revolved around a Dublin band that idolized him. He released his last album, the Grammy-nominated "It's Harder Now," in 1999.

He is survived by a fiancée, two sons and two daughters. A viewing will take place in Virginia next week, and then he will be interred with his mother in Louisville, Kentucky, his manager said.

(Additional reporting by Dean Goodman)

    Soul singer 'Wicked' Wilson Pickett dead at 64, R, 19.1.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-01-20T043618Z_01_N19346175_RTRUKOC_0_US-PICKETT.xml&archived=False