James Brown dominated the R&B charts for half a century. He has reached the Billboard top 40 nearly 100 times and occupied the number one spot on seventeen different occasions. In 1992 the Godfather of Soul was awarded a special lifetime achievement Grammy award.
Published in hardcover in 1986--before ``the hardest working man in show business'' was arrested in Georgia--this new edition updates an autobiography that PW called ``both involving and inspirational.'' Photos. (July)
No musician is more deserving of the hyperbolic journalism typically accorded rock stars than James Brown, whose life took its most recent sublime twist in 1988 when he was sentenced to six years in a South Carolina prison for an interstate police car chase. This book is a verbatim reprint of Brown's very personal 1986 Macmillan autobiography ( LJ 2/1/87). New to this edition is an extended introduction that identifies the leitmotif of the tension between James Brown the man and James Brown the stage persona and an impassioned essay by noted rock critic Dave Marsh decrying the iniquities inherent in Brown's sentence. However, with the exception of a brief conversation between Tucker and Brown early in his incarceration, Brown's voice is silent after 1986. Implicit here is the hope that this book will serve as a catalyst to help free James Brown. An important acquisition for libraries whose collections do not already include the original 1986 edition. Those with copies may not need to spend the money for the small amount of new material.-- Barry Miller, Austin P.L. , Tex.
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