National Book Award winner James McBride has written a new book about James Brown, the godfather of soul.
Kill ‘Em and Leave, goes beyond the typical rock biography. In his retelling, McBride explores Brown’s small town roots near a nuclear bomb-making facility and the people who lived in its shadow, along with Brown’s sharecropping childhood. He also delves into Brown’s relationships with Al Sharpton and Michael Jackson, among others. Here is more from the book’s description:
He describes the stirring visit of Michael Jackson to the Augusta, Georgia, funeral home where the King of Pop sat up all night with the body of his musical godfather, spends hours talking with Brown’s first wife, and lays bare the Dickensian legal contest over James Brown’s estate, a fight that has consumed careers; prevented any money from reaching the poor schoolchildren in Georgia and South Carolina, as instructed in his will; cost Brown’s estate millions in legal fees; and left James Brown’s body to lie for more than eight years in a gilded coffin in his daughter’s yard in South Carolina.