James Brown: Hardship on Twiggs Street

James Joseph Brown was born on May third, nineteen thirty-three, in a small wooden structure in Barnwell, South Carolina. When he was four or five, the family moved to Augusta, and James went to live with his Aunt Honey on Twiggs Street, in a neighborhood where poverty was the ambient condition and survival required improvisation daily.

His aunt ran a brothel. Young James shined shoes on the sidewalk, danced for coins, and was sometimes sent to bring customers inside. His mother left the family and moved to New York. His father, who worked in a turpentine camp and did other odd labor, could not keep a stable home for long. At sixteen, Brown was arrested for breaking into cars and sent to a state reform school in Toccoa, Georgia. He was released early, partly through the intercession of a local singer and musician named Bobby Byrd who vouched for him.

From that reform school, Brown began performing. He played piano, then drums, then fronted a gospel group that became a rhythm and blues group that became, eventually, a phenomenon. His first big hit, 'Please, Please, Please,' was recorded in nineteen fifty-six. 'Papa's Got a Brand New Bag' came in nineteen sixty-five. 'I Got You,' 'Cold Sweat,' 'Sex Machine,' 'Super Bad.' By the late nineteen sixties he was selling out stadiums and had acquired a radio station in Augusta. He was the Godfather of Soul, and Augusta was his hometown, and he never fully let go of that fact.

In two thousand and five, the city unveiled a bronze statue of Brown on Broad Street. He died on Christmas Day, two thousand and six. The statue has been temporarily relocated to the Augusta Museum of History while the city constructs the James Brown Linear Park along Broad Street, a project that will reroute public space around his memory for the next generation.