2006: The Mysterious Death Of James Brown
Public DomainJames Brown in a 1970 publicity photo.
On Dec. 25, 2006, the “Godfather of Soul” James Brown died from heart failure due to pneumonia. He was 73 years old.
Brown had risen to fame in the 1950s as the lead singer of the Famous Flames, a rhythm and blues band from Georgia. Hits like “I Got You (I Feel Good)” and “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” cemented his legacy as a founder of funk music and one of the most beloved musical artists of the 20th century.
However, his career came to a tragic end on Christmas Day 1996. Two days earlier, he’d had an appointment for a dental implant, but he was so ill when he arrived that his dentist had declined to perform the procedure. Brown was admitted to a hospital in Atlanta the following day, and although he had hopes that he’d still be able to perform at his scheduled New Year’s Eve shows, he declined rapidly.
Bryan Bedder/Getty ImagesReverend Al Sharpton speaks at James Brown’s funeral in December 2006.
Just before 2 a.m. on Christmas morning, Brown reportedly stated, “I’m going away tonight,” and then quietly and peacefully passed away.
His sudden demise sparked rumors that he’d actually been murdered. In a 2019 interview with CNN, one of Brown’s doctors, Marvin Crawford, stated, “He changed too fast. He was a patient I would never have predicted would have coded… But he died that night, and I did raise that question: What went wrong in that room?”
Suspects range from a mysterious visitor who purportedly visited Brown shortly before his death to his manager, Charles Bobbit, who was at the singer’s bedside when he coded. However, solid evidence of foul play has yet to surface.
