Bobby Howard Byrd (August 15, 1934 – September 12, 2007) was an American rhythm and blues, soul and funk singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, bandleader, and talent dedicated.
[3] Bobby Howard Byrd was born in Toccoa, Georgia, to a religiously devout family where they were respected members of the church congregation and active in their neighborhood.
The original group consisted of Byrd, who played piano and organ and sang lead vocals, Nafloyd Scott, Fred Pulliam, and Doyle Oglesby.
During a friendly baseball match at a juvenile prison, he met a young James Brown who was serving time there on robbery charges.
Although Byrd would eventually have over twenty years as a solo performer, it is his association with James Brown for which he is chiefly remembered.
With Johnny Terry and Nash Knox on board, the group became "The Famous Flames" and won a deal with Ralph Bass' Federal label, which was a subsidiary of Syd Nathan's King Records,[8] in February 1956.
Byrd and the Famous Flames also performed together on a few episodes of The Ed Sullivan Show, made a brief appearance in the 1965 Frankie Avalon film Ski Party, and upstaged headliners the Rolling Stones in the landmark 1964 rock concert/motion picture The T.A.M.I.
Its success led Brown to record more songs on his own, but the majority of his early hits were as a member of the Famous Flames, including songs such as "Try Me," "I'll Go Crazy," "Bewildered," "Think," "Baby You're Right," "I Don't Mind," "This Old Heart," "Shout and Shimmy," "Good Good Lovin," and "Oh Baby Don't You Weep".
After that performance, Byrd and Brown brought the band to a studio session where they recorded the famous funk hit "Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine.
At his funeral in December 2006, Byrd sang "Sex Machine" with Brown's other bandmates, paying homage to his late estranged friend and former performing partner.
In 2003, a few years before his death, Bobby, his wife Vicki, and Famous Flames Bobby Bennett and Lloyd Stallworth sued lead singer James Brown and Universal Music for non-payment of royalties, stating that monies that rightfully belonged to them for numerous Famous Flames hits, and Byrd's hit "I Know You Got Soul," which was sampled by numerous rappers, including Eric B.
Though he had moved to Cincinnati after the Famous Flames signed with Federal/King, Byrd retained residences in Georgia and, after leaving Brown, settled at Loganville for the remainder of his life.
In the Famous Flames' Rock & Roll Hall of Fame page, Byrd is regarded as "one of the more important auxiliary figures in the career of a major artist in music history.
"[18] In October 2004, Byrd's songs "I Know You Got Soul" and "Hot Pants" were featured on the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas soundtrack, playing on fictional radio station Master Sounds 98.3.
[19] In 1986 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame officials announced that James Brown would be included in a list of the first nine musicians to be inducted by the organization.
Brown, Byrd, Stallworth, and Terry had long been deceased by this point, and Bobby Bennett, the Flames' only surviving member, accepted the honor on behalf of the group in Cleveland, on April 14, 2012.
[26] In 2020, Bobby Byrd was posthumously inducted with the rest of The Famous Flames' members Baby Lloyd Stallworth, Bobby Bennett, and Johnny Terry into the National Rhythm and Blues Hall of Fame, some seven years after the induction of Flames lead singer James Brown into the same organization.