James Brown! Gone on Christmas and born in 1928 with his sun in Taurus and his moon in Leo in Barnwell, South Carolina; educated at the Alto Reform School; as a kid dodged the cops by ducking into a canal and sipping air through a reed; never let the master tapes for Live at the Apollo leave the tote bag at his side; more hit songs in America than anyone behind Elvis; touchstone for every musical genre devised since "Please Please Please" in 1956; most sampled artist in history; an atomic star for an atomic age! If one man should score the soundtrack for the last heavy half of this American century, it is James Brown, who performed in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. and for Zairean president Mobutu Sese-Seko, who grew up in a brothel and finished life in a mansion and quite probably changed the world—the entire world, not just the Beatles-speaking Western world—all on his own. "I was always innocent," he said once. "My crime was that I... More >>>