(By Chris Richards, Washington Post, May 17, 2012)
All songs
must end, but not when Chuck Brown played them.
He spent the early ’70s trying to make a name and a living, knocking out
top-40 covers in District nightclubs and cabarets. One night, in an attempt to
keep the dance floor from thinning out, he told his band to fill the dead air
between songs with a beat. So his drummer kept the sticks moving. His
percussionist kept slapping at the conga. His audience kept their heels on the
parquet. His beat connected the songs.
Then, his songs connected the city.
A proud
community formed around Brown’s music. He called it go-go because it wouldn’t
stop. Day-Glo concert posters stapled to telephone poles in the ’80s promised 4
a.m. curfews, but Brown was happy to play his guitar past sunrise. His music
endured through the dawn and through the decades, into the 21st century, but
never too far outside of Washington, where he loomed so large. “Chuck was like the Washington Monument,”
says radio and television personality Donnie Simpson. “He was like Ben’s Chili
Bowl. He was the big chair. He was all of that. Chuck Brown was Washington D.C.
. . . People feel you when it’s genuine and Chuck was always that.”
He gave
Chocolate City its own sound and made fans a part of it through
call-and-response routines that would send them home hoarse. Night after night
— at the Howard Theatre, at the Masonic Temple on U Street, at Kilimanjaro, at
the Ebony Inn, at Pitts Red Carpet Lounge — they’d scream: “Wind me up, Chuck!”
It was a plea. A prayer. An exaltation. He’d sing back in a rough, rumbling
voice that was soaked in charisma. “He
was a symbol of D.C. manhood, back in the day, because of the authority that he
spoke with,” says Darryl Brooks, a local promoter who worked with Brown across
the decades. “He just spoke from a perspective that black men could
understand.”
As go-go
bloomed in the early ’80s, New York City musicians were using drum machines and
turntables to mint a futuristic new sound called hip-hop. Down in Washington,
Brown was sneaking Duke Ellington melodies into his urgent young music. He may
have been pioneering a new funk dialect, but he kept one foot in tradition,
refusing to let go of the blues licks he learned during his stay at Lorton
Correctional Complex.
As the ’80s
blurred into the ’90s, rap music became a global phenomenon, but go-go stayed
staunchly local — and Washington anointed Brown as “the godfather.” Has
American music ever produced a figure so singular? He was a man who could stop
traffic in his city but could stroll down the sidewalks of the world
unnoticed. But Brown’s music would still
bleed into pop music from time to time. A drum break from “Ashley’s Roachclip,”
a song he released in 1974 with his band the Soul Searchers, was sampled by
everyone from Ice Cube to the Geto Boys to Duran Duran. Elements of “Bustin’
Loose,” Brown’s definitive 1978 hit, were reincarnated in Nelly’s 2002
chart-topping rap single “Hot in Herre.”
Elsewhere,
Brown’s musical influence was more intravenous. Competing funk bands admired
him, and his sound spilled into jazz when Miles Davis snatched up Brown’s
drummer in the late ’80s. But in
Washington’s go-go scene, he remained a giant who leaves no heir.
“I lost a
musical mentor and very personal friend,” says “Big Tony” Fisher of go-go’s
legendary Trouble Funk. “I don’t think I met anyone who made me laugh more than
him and made me dance — made us dance — more than him.” “He’s like a musical father to all of us,”
says Andre “Whiteboy” Johnson, leader of veteran go-go troupe Rare Essence. “He
obviously influenced generations of people — not just one — a few generations of
musicians around here. I know what he wanted was to see the music get bigger
and better, so that’s all we can do — just keep pushing forward and try to do
him proud.”
In the ’90s,
Brown expressed concern about the direction of go-go. He worried about his
legacy and whether the sound would ever thrive outside of the District. But in
his later years, he showed nothing but pride in his creation. As younger bands
torqued his beat into more aggressive shapes, he was still quick to applaud
them, grateful that go-go was still going.
The sound
spanned generations, and so did Brown’s fan base. “Some people remember a
Friday night in 1984. Some people remember a show from 2011,” says local
R&B singer Raheem DeVaughn. “There are so many memories.” (DeVaughn also
says Brown’s illness prevented the godfather from joining him and rap superstar
Snoop Dogg in the studio two months ago.)
The music
still courses through Washington. Even if you never dropped a bead of sweat at
a Chuck Brown concert, you’ve heard his voice blasting from open car windows,
at the ballpark, maybe even on a television commercial for the D.C. Lottery or
Chips Ahoy. There was a musicality to
everything about the man — even his voice-mail message: “Thank you for calling,
now here’s what you do/Leave your name and your number and I’ll get back to
you/Have a niiiiiiiice day.” He
stretched the penultimate word out like it was music. Like it was another song
that he didn’t want to end.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/chuck-browns-musical-impact-deep-into-washington-and-beyond/2012/05/16/gIQAUo6zUU_print.html
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