During the late 1960s, Brown moved from a continuum of blues and gospel-based forms and styles to a new approach to music-making, emphasizing stripped-down interlocking rhythms that influenced the development of funk music.

[22] While in Augusta, Brown performed buck dances for change to entertain troops from Camp Gordon at the start of World War II as their convoys traveled over a canal bridge near his aunt's home.

[37] He then sent them to a local radio station to record a demo session, where they performed their own composition "Please, Please, Please", which was inspired when Little Richard wrote the words of the title on a napkin and Brown was determined to make a song out of it.

In 1960, the band released the top ten R&B hit "(Do the) Mashed Potatoes" on Dade Records, owned by Henry Stone, billed under the pseudonym "Nat Kendrick & the Swans" due to label issues.

[46] In 1964, seeking bigger commercial success, Brown and Bobby Byrd formed the production company, Fair Deal, linking the operation to the Mercury imprint, Smash Records.

The Flames' dynamic gospel-tinged vocals, polished choreography and timing as well as Brown's energetic dance moves and high-octane singing upstaged the proposed closing act, the Rolling Stones.

That year he released what some critics cited as the first true funk song, "Cold Sweat", which hit number-one on the R&B chart (Top 10 Pop) and became one of his first recordings to contain a drum break and also the first that featured a harmony that was reduced to a single chord.

[53] The main guitar ostinatos for 1969's "Ain't It Funky" and "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose", are examples of Brown's refinement of New Orleans funk; irresistibly danceable riffs, stripped down to their rhythmic essence.

Other members of Brown's band included stalwart Famous Flames singer and sideman Bobby Byrd, trombonist Fred Wesley, drummers John "Jabo" Starks, Clyde Stubblefield and Melvin Parker, saxophonist St. Clair Pinckney, guitarist Alphonso "Country" Kellum and bassist Bernard Odum.

In an attempt to appeal to the older, more affluent, and predominantly white adult contemporary audience, Brown recorded Gettin' Down To It (1969) and Soul on Top (1970)—two albums consisting mostly of romantic ballads, jazz standards, and homologous reinterpretations of his earlier hits—with the Dee Felice Trio and the Louie Bellson Orchestra.

In March 1970, most of Brown's mid-to-late 1960s road band walked out on him due to financial disputes, a development augured by the prior disbandment of the Famous Flames singing group for the same reason in 1968.

This iteration of the J.B.'s dissolved after a March 1971 European tour (documented on the 1991 archival release Love Power Peace) due to additional money disputes and Bootsy Collins's use of LSD; a new lineup of the J.B.'s coalesced around Wesley, St. Clair Pinckney and drummer John Starks.

Many of his sidemen and supporting players, including Fred Wesley & the J.B.'s, Bobby Byrd, Lyn Collins, Vicki Anderson and former rival Hank Ballard, released records on the People label.

Although his records were mainstays of the vanguard New York underground disco scene, exemplified by DJs such as David Mancuso and Francis Grasso, from 1969 onwards, Brown did not consciously yield to the trend until 1975's Sex Machine Today.

Hammer had been noted, alongside Big Daddy Kane, for bringing Brown's unique stage shows and their own energetic dance moves to the hip-hop generation.

Brown's concert success remained unabated and he kept up with a grueling schedule throughout the remainder of his life, living up to his previous nickname, "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business", in spite of his advanced age.

The previous week he had performed a duet with another British pop star, Joss Stone, on the United Kingdom chat show Friday Night with Jonathan Ross.

... Brown also had a practice of directing, correcting and assessing fines on members of his band who broke his rules, such as wearing unshined shoes, dancing out of sync or showing up late on stage.

[80] During some of his concert performances, Brown danced in front of his band with his back to the audience as he slid across the floor, flashing hand signals and splaying his pulsating fingers to the beat of the music.

Although audiences thought Brown's dance routine was part of his act, this practice was actually his way of pointing to the offending member of his troupe who played or sang the wrong note or committed some other infraction.

"[82] Brown's main social activism was in preserving the need for education among youths, influenced by his own troubled childhood and his being forced to drop out of the seventh grade for wearing "insufficient clothes".

[85] White arranged to have Brown's performance broadcast multiple times on Boston's public television station, WGBH, thus keeping potential rioters off the streets, watching the concert for free.

[85] Angered by not being told of this, Brown demanded $60,000 for "gate" fees, money he thought would be lost from ticket sales on account of the concert being broadcast for free, and then threatened to go public about the secret arrangement when the city balked at paying up afterwards, news of which would have been a political death blow to White and spark riots of its own.

[85] Following this successful performance, Brown was counseled by President Johnson to urge cities ravaged from riots following King's assassination to not resort to violence, telling them to "cool it, there's another way".

In 1963, during a concert held at Club 15 in Macon, Georgia, while Otis Redding was performing alongside his former band Johnny Jenkins and the Pinetoppers, Brown, reportedly wielding two shotguns,[137] tried to shoot his musical rival Joe Tex.

In 1998, a woman named Mary Simons accused Brown in a civil suit of holding her captive for three days, demanding oral sex and firing a gun in his office.

[139] In another civil suit, a woman named Lisa Agbalaya, who worked for Brown, said the singer would tell her he had "bull testicles", handed her a pair of zebra-print underwear, told her to wear them while he massaged her with oil, and fired her after she refused.

[146] In January 2004, Brown was arrested in South Carolina on a domestic violence charge, after Tomi Rae Hynie accused him of pushing her to the floor during an argument at their home, where she suffered scratches and bruises to her right arm and hip.

[196][197] During the 49th Annual Grammy Awards presentation on February 11, 2007, James Brown's famous cape was draped over a microphone by Danny Ray at the end of a montage in honor of notable people in the music industry who died during the previous year.

[205] Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page has remarked, "He [James Brown] was almost a musical genre in his own right and he changed and moved forward the whole time so people were able to learn from him.