Father of Funk

The life and afterlife of James Brown

Jesse Walker | December 28, 2006

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In his 1985 novel Schismatrix, the science-fiction writer Bruce Sterling described people who didn't die -- not officially, anyway -- but "faded" instead, their corporal existence replaced by a ghostly "programmed web of speeches, announcements, taped appearances, and random telephone calls." James Brown certainly seemed to be fading for the last three decades of his life. Besides the decline in his output, his personal life fell apart. He was credibly accused of beating one of his wives. After a high-speed car chase he was sentenced to six years in prison, in what the critic Dave Marsh called "perhaps the longest sentence ever given in the United States for a traffic charge." He served two years before being paroled.

But like the faded characters in Sterling's novel, his programmed web of rhythms and shouts is all around us. If you want to fuse Brown's music to the words of Frantz Fanon -- or Richard Nixon, or anyone else -- it's there, just waiting to be deployed. James Brown died on Christmas day, 2006, but he didn't just leave us a great body of work. He left us the tools to make more music long after he's gone.

Jesse Walker is managing editor of reason.