A Loud, Proud Send-Off for an Icon of Soul
Hyfler/Rosner
NY Times
Manny Fernandez
A Loud, Proud Send-Off for an Icon of Soul
James Brown gave one last show in Harlem yesterday, three
days after his death, in a golden coffin lined with white
velvet, on the flower-bedecked stage of the famed Apollo
Theater, before a crowd of thousands who had lined up for
blocks to see him.
Mr. Brown's body arrived beneath the Apollo's red-neon sign
just before 1 p.m. in a white-painted carriage pulled by two
white horses with feathery plumes atop their heads. The
carriage was small, with tall windows and white curtains
with silver fringe. Two solemn men sat atop it, guiding the
horses, and Mr. Brown's friends and associates and Harlem
dignitaries walked alongside and behind it.
Hundreds who lined 125th Street outside the theater on a
chilly, overcast afternoon cheered and applauded.
Helicopters hovered. Photographers aimed their cameras from
the surrounding rooftops. A guy hawked commemorative
T-shirts for $10. Mr. Brown's cries and exultations filled
the street, blaring from one of his concert videos playing
on a beat-up television mounted above a sign for Uptown
Tattoos. A chant rose up: "James Brown! James Brown! James
Brown!"
When the theater's doors finally opened, people began
streaming in for a public viewing. They walked up a few
stairs and stepped onto the red-carpeted stage, where Mr.
Brown's body lay in an open coffin, washed in white and gold
stage lights. The coffin was made of 16-gauge steel with a
gold paint finish. Mr. Brown was wearing a cobalt, sequined
satin suit with white gloves and pointed silvery shoes.
Loudspeakers played his breakthrough album, "Live at the
Apollo," recorded Oct. 24, 1962.
Women wearing veils approached. A man in a suit dropped to
his knees and crossed his heart. One couple broke into a
brief dance. "Right now," Mr. Brown said on the
loudspeakers, in a snippet of between-song banter, "I'm
going to get up and do my thing."
Mr. Brown did his thing yesterday: he put on a show.
Throughout the day, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands,
formed two lines on 125th Street outside the Apollo, one to
its east and one to its west, each one filling up 125th
Street, reaching the corner and then stretching for blocks
up Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Frederick Douglass
Boulevard, forming a giant U. Some had been waiting since
midnight Wednesday.
"We're sending him out in the style he lived," said Nellie
Williams, 58, of Greer, S.C., who stood near the front of
one line. "He was a man that had to be seen and heard." She
brought her daughter, and a copy of an oil painting her
brother did of Mr. Brown, his pompadour perfectly teased,
his shirt open, his smile wide. "I want to show my last
respects for his last show in New York," Ms. Williams added.
Mr. Brown, 73, died of congestive heart failure early Monday
in Atlanta. He was remembered, during a private ceremony for
family and friends at the Apollo, and amid the lines of fans
standing outside for the public viewing, as a singer,
dancer, bandleader, funk pioneer, entrepreneur, black-pride
icon and entertainer who many said transformed American pop
music and African-American culture.
A private ceremony will be held today near Augusta, Ga., Mr.
Brown's adopted hometown, and a public service is set for
tomorrow at the James Brown Arena in Augusta.
Yesterday, the somber pageantry that accompanies the death
of a dignitary could be found on the streets of Harlem,
retuned for the death of a showman in the nation's black
cultural capital. The spectacle - the horse-drawn hearse
gliding down 125th Street, the Apollo temporarily
transformed into a funeral parlor, the crowds of admirers
waiting in line for up to five hours to say a prayer near
the coffin - made clear this was a different kind of funeral
for a different kind of man. This was a man who personified,
as the headwaiter at a soul-food restaurant put it, "the
outrageous expression of life."
Mr. Brown's journey to Harlem began in Augusta the day
before. A white hearse carrying his body left the city about
9:30 p.m., accompanied by the Rev. Al Sharpton, a longtime
friend who considered Mr. Brown a father figure. Fourteen
hours later, about 11:30 a.m., the hearse pulled up to Mr.
Sharpton's National Action Network headquarters on West
145th Street in Harlem.
Outside the headquarters, it was impossible to tell people
were waiting for a hearse. One man played a bongo drum, and
someone else played the upbeat funk of "Papa's Got a Brand
New Bag" on a portable stereo. The carriage waited, and so
did the horses, Commander and Whitey, and the man who would
hold the reins, Vet Harris, 66. "It's an honor," Mr. Harris
said. "It's beautiful."
When the golden coffin was removed from the hearse and
placed in the carriage, there was applause. Some onlookers
cried. A group of friends and dignitaries assembled behind
the carriage for the march down Lenox Avenue to the Apollo,
among them Mr. Sharpton; Frank Copsidas, Mr. Brown's agent;
Ali Woodson, former lead singer of the Temptations; and the
Rev. Herbert Daughtry, pastor of the House of the Lord
Pentecostal Church in Brooklyn.
Outside the Apollo, throughout the morning and into the
evening, hordes of people assembled on both sides of 125th
Street behind metal police barricades. They were a largely
black crowd, young women and retired men, elderly couples
and families with children. Mr. Brown's tunes played from
storefronts, and women danced to the beat and sang along to
his 1968 song "Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud." His
image was everywhere: On T-shirts, posters, paintings people
brought from home. The computerized Apollo marquee read,
"Rest in Peace Apollo Legend, The Godfather of Soul, James
Brown, 1933-2006."
Burnis Hall, 65, stood near Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
Boulevard with his wife. They were on vacation from Lathrup
Village, Mich. "I first saw him in 1959, in Amarillo, Tex.,
when I was young airman in the Air Force," Mr. Hall said of
Mr. Brown. They stood with others in the chilly wind,
struggling for the words to capture the legacy of a man who
worked hard to defy convention. "Here's an old guy that's
been there since the mid-'50s, still active in 2006," Mr.
Hall said. "How can you ignore this person?"
Nearly everyone had a James Brown story. They wanted to talk
about the time they jumped on stage and danced with him, or
met him at a party, or, like Samuel A. Herbert of Buffalo,
once shined his black boots behind the Apollo. "He gave me
$5 and he touched me on my shoulder and said, 'God bless and
be in courage,' " said Mr. Herbert, 57, retired from his
work as a cancer research technician.
Inside during the viewing, Mr. Sharpton stood near the
coffin, which was flanked by sprays of white lilies, white
carnations and red and white roses. One flower arrangement
spelled out "J B"; another, "Godfather." A velvet rope kept
people in the fast-moving line several feet from the coffin.
Mr. Brown's friends and family members sat in the first
several rows of seats.
Tomi Rae Brown was there, dressed in black, chewing gum and
passing out pink roses to Mr. Brown's relatives. Ms. Brown
has described herself as Mr. Brown's wife, but his lawyer
has depicted her as the singer's partner, and she was barred
from his South Carolina home a day after his death. "He's my
husband and the father of my child," she said. "I'm
mourning."
About 6 p.m., the public viewing was interrupted for a
service for Mr. Brown's family, friends and the news media.
"One era had a Bach, another had a Beethoven, but we had
Brown," Mr. Sharpton told the few hundred who sat in the
Apollo. He said that those close to Mr. Brown decided
Wednesday evening that he deserved a special procession and
a special coffin. "We had some 30 people offering their
planes, but because of the weight of the casket, we couldn't
get an ordinary flight," Mr. Sharpton said. "I said, 'I'll
tell you what, we'll drive.' "
Mr. Sharpton said the public viewing was being extended by
an hour, to 9 p.m., to accommodate the hundreds outside who
still wanted to pay their respects. At 9:20, the police
announced that no one else would be allowed inside, and the
few hundred people remaining moved across the street.
During the service, Mr. Sharpton called six of Mr. Brown's
children to the stage, where they held hands. Then he
introduced Charles Bobbit, Mr. Brown's personal manager, and
Ms. Brown, who spoke through tears. "My name is Tomi Rae
Brown," she said. "I love that man, and I have loved that
man since the day I met him."
Mr. Bobbit was with Mr. Brown when he died in Atlanta.
"Before he passed, he said, 'I think I'm going to leave you
tonight,' " Mr. Bobbit recalled. "I said, 'You're not going
anywhere.' "
Cassi Feldman and Eric Konigsberg contributed reporting.
pirat...@buccaneerpress.com
http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192139&highlight=james+brown
--PirateJohn--
www.PirateJohn.com
Hyfler/Rosner
<pirat...@buccaneerpress.com> wrote in message
news:1167412337.0...@79g2000cws.googlegroups.com...
And you should all see the front page of the NY Times.
Gorgeous full-color photo of the open casket and the Apollo
sign.
Above the fold.