'Godfather of Go-Go' Chuck Brown dies
Washington - Chuck Brown, a soul singer who was affectionately known as the godfather of a style of funk music called go-go, died Wednesday at 75.
Brown passed away at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore after a bout with pneumonia, The Washington Post reported, citing his manager, Tom Goldfogle.
Brown was synomynous with the fast-paced go-go style of funk music, which was closely identified with Washington, DC, where it emerged in the mid-1970s to challenge the dominance of disco. His biggest hit was Bustin' Loose, which spent four weeks at the top of the R&B singles charts in 1978.
Brown was born in 1936 in Gaston, North Carolina, and moved with his mother and siblings to Washington at 8. He spent eight years in prison after fatally shooting a man in what he said was self-defence. He played in blues and Latin bands throughout the early '60s before forming his own band The Soul Searchers in 1966.
He only gained recognition later in life when he was nominated for his first Grammy in 2011, won a lifetime achievement award from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2009 and had a Washington street named after him.//DPA
