James Brown, 1933-2006: The Godfather of Soul

14 May 2010

James Brown is also known as the hardest working man in show business.

STEVE EMBER: I'm Steve Ember.

BARBARA KLEIN: And I'm Barbara Klein with People in America in VOA Special English. Today we tell about James Brown, the musician called "The Godfather of Soul."

(MUSIC)

STEVE EMBER: That was James Brown singing his famous hit song from nineteen sixty-five, "I Got You (I Feel Good.)" With this song, Brown went from a rhythm and blues singer to a pop music star. It helped him gain a huge number of white fans as well as black ones. He became a famous and wealthy singer, songwriter and performer. But this huge success was very different from the poverty of his early life.

BARBARA KLEIN: James Brown was born in nineteen thirty-three in a one-room house near Barnwell, South Carolina. His father, Joe Brown, had a job removing fluids from pine trees in the surrounding woods. He sold the sap for making turpentine. The boy's mother left the family when he was seven years old. James and his father moved to Augusta, Georgia. Young James had musical abilities. He learned to play the guitar, piano and drums. He did this while picking crops in the fields and shining people's shoes to earn money to survive.

STEVE EMBER: James loved the African-American church music called gospel. He loved it when the church's religious leader would sing this music and drop to his knees with emotional shouts and screams.