His many nicknames are quite suggestive. Much for a single man who has surfed over several decades, on several audiences, on several Americas.
While Ray Charles moves away from the soul and the singer Sam Cooke begins to give galas for galore on the side of Las Vegas, James Brown is constantly close to the concerns of everyone.
The James Brown funk is the James Brown who is not satisfied with the R&B language and especially the soul of the sixties. Soul, this positive medium, has not cut the cord with the gospel, and tries to combine sophistication of arrangements and pop music (in the true sense of popular music). And unlike a Nat King Cole, James Brown does not aspire to enter a hut shaped by whites. At its height, the black protesting writer LeRoi Jones wrote: "James Brown is our No. 1 black poet.