Top 100 Quotes About James Brown
#1. When you love a song so much you have to sing, you know how you feel - it releases something in you that resonates as true, whether it's James Brown or Joni Mitchell.
Bonnie Raitt
#2. James Brown died owing me $50,000. But I loved James Brown.
Don King
#3. Anyone who can do the splits and come back up on the backbeat, as James Brown and Prince can, has my eternal respect. Prince, who is a genius of the highest order, can come back up while singing and playing the guitar.
Bill Nighy
#4. Charles and I are from Augusta, Ga. - so we come from James Brown territory, soul music and Motown. And Charles has always had a lot of Southern rock in there as well.
Dave Haywood
#5. James Brown was my favorite, my absolute idol. Every time I played with him was like a music lesson, and I never thought I could be so funky! I mean, a white boy from Canada - a Jew - getting down with his funky bad self!
Paul Shaffer
#6. When Rolling Stone handed me this crazy assignment to be in the studio with James Brown, they had the misapprehension that I'd written for them already just because I claimed my character had.
Jonathan Lethem
#7. You want a hero in the music world? James Brown. He brought a feeling to music without really using words. He's just famous for his sound.
David Lee Roth
#8. James Brown was one of the first artists who found four bars that he liked and played them the entire way through, and then he just added to it vocally.
Brian Austin Green
#9. James Brown's Live at the Apollo is not just a musical whiplash, it's a spiritual cleansing. You can just close your eyes and see him doing the splits, kicking the mic stand and doing a 360.
Ted Nugent
#10. Once there the main man, the bearded preacher, bridles and jabs, spasms and gurns like a pre-ejaculatory James Brown.
Russell Brand
#11. What I like about Elvis is the same thing I like about James Brown, Michael Jackson, Prince. These guys, back in the day, there was no smoke and mirrors. It was just raw talent. They would step out onstage and command an audience. Talk about awesome.
Bruno Mars
#12. If it weren't for the mentorship and guidance from people like my mother, James Brown and others, I wouldn't have been able to make something of my life.
Al Sharpton
#13. The people at large absolutely gave James Brown respect. He was an original like a Rembrandt or a Picasso
Aretha Franklin
#14. Everything's stolen. Everything precious - be it a kiss, or be it James Brown - gets misappropriated to the aid of the advertising executives. So, an act of reclamation, somewhere else to be: that's what I want my music to be. Somewhere you can step into. A place.
David Gray
#15. I'm coming from a Ginuwine and Usher background: slow and smooth songs. And that's why I really connected to Sam Cooke, because he was just very smooth. It's not like the James Brown types, which is all great stuff, but he was totally set apart from those guys.
Leon Bridges
#16. I used to break dance. I can do some good James Brown footwork. But now I think I've danced too much. My girlfriend made fun of me: 'Enough with the dancing.'
Sam Rockwell
#17. I stream this radio station, Radio Nova, that's based in Paris. They curate a beautiful set that's really all over the place - they'll play blues or some West African music, then A Tribe Called Quest, then funk from Ethiopia, then James Brown, and then the Beatles. It's an amazing mix.
Zoe Kravitz
#18. It's bluesy, rocky jazz. I call it soul music, but it's not James Brown soul music. It comes from my soul. It comes from a deeper place. Duffy has that similar old school soul sound to herself. If I opened for Duffy, that would make sense to me, in my head.
Tinsel Korey
#19. When I first played New York, it was with James Brown at the Apollo, and I was playing in a band under the name The Valentinos. I remember Sam Cooke saying, 'I want you to go in there with James Brown. I couldn't be as hard on you as James Brown would be.' But we came out marching like soldiers.
Bobby Womack
#20. I was a James Brown junkie as a kid.
L.A. Reid
#21. America ... Do not touch my TV, my DVD, my stereo, my dual-deck VCR. Do not touch my old school, my new school, my slow jams, my party jams, my happy rap, and you better not touch ... My James Brown.
Bernie Mac
#22. You could put Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley on one side of the stage, and James Brown on the other, and you wouldn't even notice the others were there!
Bill Wyman
#23. I think art can really serve to inspire a movement - and, of course, it has in the past. The Civil Rights movement wouldn't have the same resonance without the songs from everyone from Pete Seeger to Odetta to James Brown.
Saul Williams
#24. But that kind of falls in line; when you think about it, James Brown was a funk minimalist. All of those parts create a sum that's larger than than the individual parts.
Charlie Hunter
#26. Psy is fantastic. He's shifted the planet. He's got the whole world dancing. And it's a rarity in this world. Only four people made that happen in history - James Brown, Michael Jackson, yours truly and Psy.
MC Hammer
#27. I felt Michael Jackson was inspired a little bit more from the elegance of a Fred Astaire. Michael loved Sammy Davis, Jr. and James Brown and Judy Garland and Fred Astaire. But he wasn't any of those people. To be inspired is one thing, but he made it all his own.
Kenny Ortega
#28. When I started playing, I played in R&B bands. I played James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and all that.
Neil Peart
#29. I usually listen to various kind of singers. Curtis Mayfield was my favorite. James Brown, Tina Turner, queen of soul, I started to get that musical essence from that time before I even do my first song.
Burning Spear
#30. It was Frankie Lymon all over again," Marvin said. "Only this kid had mastered James Brown's moves. Michael was like Stevie. From the very beginning, he worried me.
David Ritz
#31. In '87, I used to do this awful, awful James Brown impression.
Wanda Sykes
#32. I love a good lyricist - always have. The thing that inspired me most was the different performers, like Tina Turner, James Brown, Michael Jackson, Madonna, even Janet Jackson.
Jennifer Lopez
#33. Every James Brown cut makes a party get crazy. He's the god of all music. I always play different wild remixes of his songs because people start bugging out when they realise what I'm playing.
Afrika Bambaataa
#34. I'm crazy about James Brown. I'm crazy about soul music. And then the blues. Rhythm and blues.
Bill Nighy
#35. James Brown lives, as long as someone steps out of their body and dances uncontrollably.
Al Sharpton
#36. I'm not James Brown. I'm not Sam Cooke. I'm Charley Pride. I'm just me and that's what you got.
Charley Pride
#37. As I always said, if people wanted to know who James Brown is, all they have to do is listen to my music.
James Brown
#38. When we heard we were topping the bill over James Brown we couldn't believe it. We tried for two days to get it changed round - I mean you can't follow an act like that.
Mick Jagger
#39. The hardest thing about being James Brown is I have to live. I don't have no down time.
James Brown
#40. You go through the Civil Rights struggle, everybody knew the songs - 'We shall overcome.' Everybody would sing it. Music helped us. James Brown, 'Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud.' They helped black people figure out how to navigate what was a very treacherous place in America for them.
Geoffrey Canada
#41. Doing this James Brown thing for the last couple of days has been ideal. But it's a different kind of fun.
Jules Shear
#42. He crashed a dozen Cadillacs in one year and played the Apollo. With racial hatred burning in the headlines, the audience danced in the seats to a white boy from the bottomland, backed by pickers who talked like Ernest Tubb. "James Brown kissed me on my cheek," he says. "Top that.
Rick Bragg
#43. You say 'African music' and you think 'tribal drumming.' But there's a lot of African music that's like James Brown, and a lot, too, that sounds very Hispanic.
Damian Marley
#44. Fortunately, I'm known as the hardest-working woman in showbiz, not to compete with James Brown. I've always been a multi-tasker.
Tamara Tunie
#45. People have different takes on clothes and what to wear and colors and all that stuff, so why make a big deal about uniformity? It took me a long time to grasp that particular concept, simply because I was coming from the James Brown thing. Again, I wouldn't trade that experience for anything.
Maceo Parker
#46. I invented rock & roll. Jimi Hendrix was my guitar player. James Brown was my vocalist.
Little Richard
#47. Cardiff Stadium was a warm up for the 3 Hyde Park shows. James Brown opened. And I think it may be the only time we played Mini Epic live.
Chad Smith
#48. I was never really that interested in the punk movement. I was a blues guy: I liked Motown, James Brown.
Gary Oldman
#49. I love Sly Stone and James Brown and Stevie Wonder, and I want my music to reflect some of that.
Al Jarreau
#50. There would be no Rock and Roll without Ike Turner, James Brown, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Allen Toussaint, etc. Fake ghetto books and fake ghetto music. Elvis Presley, whom they idol, is merely a karaoke makeover of James Brown and Chuck Berry.
Ishmael Reed
#51. James Brown became my father. He would talk to me the way a father talked to a son. He became the father I never had.
Al Sharpton
#52. James Brown and Frank Sinatra are two different quantities in the universe. They represent two different experiences of the world.
Amiri Baraka
#53. When my woman kisses me I start dancing like James Brown. Ow! I Feel Good!
Godfrey
#54. It's like James Brown used to say ... I don't know, but whatever I play it's got to be funky.
Curtis Jones
#55. I grew in the inner city, listening to Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway, James Brown, The Commodores - lots of soul music.
Stefon Harris
#56. My dad was into the 1950s doo-wop era. If you look at those groups, or at James Brown, Jackie Wilson and the Temptations in the 1960s, you'll see you had to be sharp onstage.
Bruno Mars
#57. I used to enjoy all the white bands when I was a kid listening to the radio. But the record companies, they take music and label it - like, they say "rock". Because the white singers can't sound like James Brown, they call him "soul". They've been doing that for years. That's the prejudice crap.
Miles Davis
#58. One night all the James Brown band was playing on stage and I look in the back and I could see Mick Jagger and Keith Richards trying to get in the club and they couldn't get in cause it was to crowded.
Tommy Chong
#59. I've been to two stadium gigs in my life. One was James Brown and the other was Pink Floyd. They both sounded the same. I couldn't tell the difference between James Brown and Pink Floyd. I've never liked stadiums.
Boz Burrell
#60. I've studied a lot of great people over the years - Pete Seeger, James Brown - and tried to incorporate elements that I've admired, though I can't say I dance like James.
John Fogerty
#61. James Brown is important because he decorates the clock correctly and he's good with lower mathematics. Don't get me wrong - he's good.
Captain Beefheart
#62. Our immediate influence in b-boying was James Brown, point blank.
Crazy Legs
#63. You can't really dance properly to James Brown. If you dance to James Brown, you look like an idiot. There's a lot of jerking.
Sandra Bullock
#64. I think the best thing about being James Brown is looking at my little son. Hopefully I can make my son a role model to a lot of people.
James Brown
#65. James Brown is the perfect example of flashy but classy. Classy doesn't have to mean boring. His gear was flamboyant but without being so over the top. The cape was probably the biggest part of his persona. He looked like Superman.
Mayer Hawthorne
#66. My mom and dad would take me all over. One night we'd be at the Apollo watching James Brown, and then I'd be at the Joffrey Ballet. It was that kind of scene.
Lenny Kravitz
#67. Where I came from in the country, there was no place to hear pop music like Little Richard and people like that. Later, I heard James Brown, Otis Redding, The Drifters, The Four Aces, The Ink Spots.
Percy Sledge
#68. I've never seen a performer create electricity with an audience like James Brown. He's got everybody in his hands and whatever he wants to do with them, he does it. It's amazing. I've always thought he was underrated.
Michael Jackson
#69. I found my destination a few miles outside Swelling: a lone, squat, brown bar called The Inn of the Line...The place looked like a dive. Maybe even a plunge. Hell, it was a drowning accident.
Elliott James
#70. Get on up, stay on the scene, get on up, like a sex machine.
James Brown
#71. I've been held responsible for taxes I know nothing about.
James Brown
#72. I think what I came through is great, but my son can take it to another level, not having to fight racism. His mother's a Norwegian and I'm mixed up four or five times, so he can face the world.
James Brown
#73. Every good rowing coach, in his own way, imparts to his men the kind of self-discipline required to achieve the ultimate from mind, heart, and body. Which is why most ex-oarsmen will tell you they learned more fundamentally important lessons in the racing shell than in the classroom.
Daniel James Brown
#74. So there you have it, the extent of my charms: brown hair and eyes like unbarfed chocolate. I'm a lucky girl. -Max
James Patterson
#75. I'm not going to be joining ZZ Top. You know they can't play my stuff. It's too complicated.
James Brown
#76. While my favorite book of short stories is Fredrick Brown's 'Nightmares and Geezenstacks,' my favorite single story is 'Sound of Thunder,' by Ray Bradbury.
James Luceno
#77. I'd like to cut down on the work a little bit.
James Brown
#78. Tell the politicians and the hustlers: live and let live.
James Brown
#79. The only time you don't find a four-leaf clover," he liked to say, "is when you stop looking for one.
Daniel James Brown
#80. Communism and fascism or nazism, although poles apart in their intellectual content, are similar in this, that both have emotional appeal to the type of personality that takes pleasure in being submerged in a mass movement and submitting to superior authority.
James A.C. Brown
#81. Every day you should be doing right what you recognized as wrong the day before. Obviously.
Jedidiah James Brown
#82. The challenges they had faced together had taught them humility - the need to subsume their individual egos for the sake of the boat as a whole - and humility was the common gateway through which they were able now to come together and begin to do what they had not been able to do before.
Daniel James Brown
#83. Music has to breathe and sweat. You have to play it live.
James Brown
#84. this type of analysis combines the three target-situation analyses (use, linguistic, and learning) and the present-situation analysis to
James Dean Brown
#85. Sometimes, you like to let the hair do the talking!
James Brown
#86. I used to play one job and have 125 pair of shoes on the floor. What was I doing? I couldn't wear but one pair.
James Brown
#87. Seeing the whales off James Price Point, mothers, babies, bull whales, seeing the count, going up into the thousands of these whales, the assurance that they will be ok with a mega port, mega ships and a huge factory ashore, is now clearly proven wrong.
Bob Brown
#88. I don't know karate, but I know ka-razy!
James Brown
#89. I started Michael years ago. I saw him in Gary, Indiana, and we'd have him on the talent shows. He kind of emulated me, and did the best he could.
James Brown
#90. Sometimes you struggle so hard to feed your family one way, you forget to feed them the other way, with spiritual nourishment. Everybody needs that.
James Brown
#91. Physiologists, in fact, have calculated that rowing a two-thousand-meter race - the Olympic standard - takes the same physiological toll as playing two basketball games back-to-back. And it exacts that toll in about six minutes. A well-conditioned oarsman or oarswoman
Daniel James Brown
#92. What everybody's looking for today, they're looking for escape-ism.
James Brown
#93. Take those kids and raise them up, teach them how to drink out of a righteous cup.
James Brown
#95. Papa didn't cuss, he didn't raise a whole lot of fuss. But when we did wrong, Papa beat the hell out of us.
James Brown
#96. My expectations of other people, I double them on myself.
James Brown
#97. Retire for what? What would I do? I made my name as a person that is helping. I'm like Moses in the music business.
James Brown
#98. You got to use what you got to get just what you want.
James Brown
#99. We can't make it here, Joe. There's nothing else for it. Thula won't stay, at any rate. She's insisting." "Where are we going to go?" Harry turned to meet Joe's eyes. "I'm not sure. Seattle, for now, then California maybe. But, Son, the thing is, Thula wants you to stay here.
Daniel James Brown
#100. Even before he came to power in 1997, Gordon Brown promised to change the accounts to parliament from simple litanies of cash in and cash out, to a more commercial system that took notice of the public property the departments were using. This system is known as resource accounting.
James Buchan
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