Chuck Brown dies: The ‘Godfather of Go-Go’ was 75
By Chris Richards, Updated: Wednesday, May 16, 4:42 PM

Chuck Brown, the gravelly voiced bandleader who capitalized on funk’s percussive pulse to create go-go, the genre of music that has soundtracked life in black Washington for more than three decades, died May 16 at the Johns Hopkins University hospital in Baltimore. He was 75.

The death was confirmed by his manager Tom Goldfogle. The Washington Post reported earlier this month that Mr. Brown had been hospitalized for pneumonia.

Known as the “Godfather of Go-Go,” the performer, singer, guitarist and songwriter developed his commanding brand of funk in the mid-1970s to compete with the dominance of disco.

Like a DJ blending records, Mr. Brown used nonstop percussion to stitch songs together and keep the crowd on the dance floor, resulting in marathon performances that went deep into the night. Mr. Brown said the style got its name because “the music just goes and goes.”

In addition to being go-go’s principal architect, Mr. Brown remained the genre’s most charismatic figure. On stage, his spirited call-and-response routines became a hallmark of the music, reinforcing a sense of community that allowed the scene to thrive. As go-go became a point of pride for black Washingtonians, Mr. Brown became one of the city’s most recognizable figures.

“No single type of music has been more identified with Washington than go-go, and no one has loomed so large within it as Chuck Brown,” former Washington Post pop music critic Richard Harrington wrote in 2001.

Mr. Brown’s creation, however, failed to have the same impact outside of the Beltway. The birth of go-go doubled as the high watermark of Mr. Brown’s national career. With his group the Soul Searchers, his signature hit “Bustin’ Loose” not only minted the go-go sound, it spent four weeks atop the R&B singles chart in 1978.

“Bustin’ Loose” was “the one record I had so much confidence in,” Mr. Brown told The Post in 2001. “I messed with it for two years, wrote a hundred lines of lyrics and only ended up using two lines. . . . It was the only time in my career that I felt like it’s going to be a hit.”

It was Mr. Brown’s biggest single, but throughout the 1980s “We Need Some Money,” “Go-Go Swing” and “Run Joe” became local anthems, reinforced by radio support and the grueling performance schedule that put Mr. Brown on area stages six nights a week.

While rap music exploded across the country, go-go dominated young black Washington, with groups including Trouble Funk, Rare Essence and Experience Unlimited following in Mr. Brown’s footsteps.

Mr. Brown performed less frequently in his final years but still took the stage regularly. He would often comment on his golden years in rhyme.

“I’m not retired because I’m not tired. I’m still getting hired and I’m still inspired,” he said in 2006. “As long as I can walk up on that stage, I want to make people happy. I want to make people dance.”

Charles Louis Brown was born in Gaston, N.C., on Aug. 22, 1936. He never knew his father, Albert Louis Moody, a Marine. He took the surname of his mother, Lyla Louise Brown, a housekeeper who raised her several children in poverty.

“We’d go to somebody’s house and [my mother] would say, ‘Please feed my child. Don’t worry about me. Just feed my child,’ ” Mr. Brown recalled tearfully in a Post interview in 2011.

Mr. Brown was 8 when his family relocated to Washington, where he abandoned his schooling for a childhood filled with odd jobs. He sold newspapers at the bus station and shined shoes at the Navy Yard, where he recalled being tipped kindly by entertainers including Hank Williams and Les Paul.

As a teenager, Mr. Brown began to flirt with petty crime and stumbled into a disastrous situation in the mid-1950s when he shot a man in what he said was self-defense.

A Virginia jury convicted Mr. Brown of aggravated assault, which was bumped up to murder when the victim died in the hospital six months later. Mr. Brown served eight years at the Lorton Correctional Complex. There, he swapped five cartons of cigarettes for another inmate’s guitar.

Upon his release, Mr. Brown returned to Washington, where he worked as a truck driver, a bricklayer and as a sparring partner at local boxing gyms. He also began to play guitar and sing at backyard barbecues across the area. His parole officer wouldn’t let him sing in nightclubs that served liquor.

In 1964, he joined Jerry Butler and the Earls of Rhythm, and in 1965, a group called Los Latinos. Both local acts played top-40 hits at area nightclubs; in 1966, Mr. Brown formed his own group, the Soul Searchers. He originally considered taking the stage name “Chuck Brown, the Soul Searcher.”

With the Soul Searchers, Mr. Brown scored minor hits in the early ’70s — “We The People” and “Blow Your Whistle” — but eventually decided to emulate James Brown by trying to create his own sound. Inspired by the percussive feel of the Grover Washington’s “Mister Magic” and rhythms that Mr. Brown internalized as a child in church, he settled on go-go’s loping, popping cadence.

In addition to a childhood singing gospel, Mr. Brown was a guitarist fluent in jazz and blues and could toggle between gritty riffs and fluid solos. But he truly excelled behind the microphone, bringing a warm voice that he could punch up into a hot shout or tamp down into a sandpapery purr or a gentle croon, as the drummer’s conga popped and rumbled along.

The influence of jazz and pop standards could be heard in much of Brown’s go-go material. Motifs from jazz staples “Moody’s Mood for Love” and “Harlem Nocturne” became a part of his “Go-Go Swing” and Brown reshaped Louis Jordan’s calypso “Run Joe” into a go-go classic.

In turn, go-go would have its influence on jazz when trumpeter Miles Davis plucked longtime Soul Searchers drummer Ricky Wellman for one of his last touring bands. Many spotted go-go rhythms on Davis’s 1989 album “Amandla.”

And while hip-hop raced past go-go in the ’80s, Mr. Brown eventually influenced that genre as well. He was sampled by various hip-hop artists, most notably in Nelly’s 2002 hit “Hot in Herre.”

But his impact was felt most acutely in the Washington area, where his sound spawned a generation of bands who would pull go-go into focus in the ’80s. Mr. Brown was always the genre’s champion, but he was quick to acknowledge the importance of other band leaders, Andre “Whiteboy” Johnson of Rare Essence, “Big Tony” Fisher of Trouble Funk, and the late Anthony “Lil Benny” Harley among them.

“These guys were the pioneers of go-go, and they each have their own distinct sound and identity,” Mr. Brown told The Post in 2001. “Everybody has something to offer.”

In 1992, Mr. Brown helped launch the career of the late singer Eva Cassidy, recording and releasing an album of duets, titled “The Other Side,” that confirmed his talent as an interpreter of standards.

Formal recognition came late in Mr. Brown’s life. He was nominated for his first Grammy Award in 2011, when he was 74, for best rhythm-and-blues performance by a duo or group with vocals for “Love,” a collaboration with singer Jill Scott and bassist Marcus Miller.

In 2005, the National Endowment for the Arts presented Mr. Brown with a Lifetime Heritage Fellowship Award. And in 2009, the District named a segment of Seventh Street NW “Chuck Brown Way”; it was a strip near the Howard Theatre where he used to shine shoes as a child.

He appeared in advertisements for the D.C. Lottery and The Post and became the city’s unofficial mascot, known for his extroverted warmth and willingness to flash his gold-toothed smile for any fan hoping to join him for a snapshot. An appearance on U Street NW outside Ben’s Chili Bowl could stop traffic.

“I really appreciate that I can’t go nowhere without people hollering at me,” Mr. Brown said in 2010. “I love being close to people.”

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Mr. Brown also leaves behind a still-standing genre that, as he once told MTV, embodied the highest of human emotions.

“It’s about love, the communication between performer and audience,” Mr. Brown said of go-go. “When you’re on stage, the people put that love to you and you give it back. There’s no other music like it.”

One Bowel Movement Every Day, Right? Many people believe that the definition of a normal bowel movement is having 1 movement each day, but that is not true for everyone. There is no rule for frequency of bowel movements, but the general range is from 3 times a day to 3 times a week. Less than 3 movements a week may indicate constipation, and more than 3 watery stools a day could indicate diarrhea.

Of 1078 people surveyed:

I can not have a natural bowel movement. I need some laxative. 2.5%

1 to 2 bowel movements in 2 weeks 0.4%

1 to 2 bowel movements per week 1.2%

2 - 3 bowel movements per week 3.9%

1 bowel movement every second day 4.3%

1 bowel movement every day 22.2%

1 to 2 bowel movements per day 37.7%

2 to 3 bowel movements per day 19.3%

3 to 4 bowel movements per day 5.6%

4 to 5 bowel movements per day 1.6%

More then 5 bowel movements per day 1.2%

A Band Battles Ticketmaster on Sales Fees
By BEN SISARIO
Published: May 15, 2012


One Friday afternoon recently, about 50 fans and friends of the band String Cheese Incident took $20,000 in cash to the Greek Theater in Los Angeles to take a small stand against the system — in this case, Ticketmaster.


With money advanced by the band, each person had enough to buy eight tickets at $49.95 apiece for the group’s show in July. Once all tickets were in hand, almost 400 of them, they were carried back to String Cheese headquarters in Colorado and put on sale again through the group’s Web site — for $49.95.

“We’re scalping our own tickets at no service charge,” Mike Luba, one of the group’s managers, explained in an interview last week. “It’s ridiculous.”

President George W. Bush offered up his endorsement of Mitt Romney. It was in an elevator — as the doors were closing.

“I’m for Mitt Romney,” Mr. Bush told an ABC News reporter who spoke with the former president in Washington, D.C. as he was getting on an elevator. Mr. Bush made his comments as the elevator doors closed.

While Tuesday’s remarks hardly constitute a staged endorsement — the Romney campaign didn’t send a press release touting it — it marks Mr. Bush’s move from the sidelines and into Mr. Romney’s camp. That said, it’s hardly a bold move given that Mr. Romney is the unofficial Republican nominee.

President Barack Obama’s campaign used the remarks to paint Messers. Bush and Romney as the same brand of leadership. “President Bush has endorsed Governor Romney, and Governor Romney has endorsed a return to Bush-era economic policies: massive tax cuts for the wealthiest and no accountability for Wall Street, which led to huge deficits and tepid growth,” said Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for the Obama campaign.


Mr. Bush’s father, former President George H.W. Bush, offered a formal endorsement in late March, an endorsement that came as the GOP race was still competitive and in which he urged the party to unite around Mr. Romney.

“Barbara and I are very proud to fully and enthusiastically endorse and support our old friend Mitt Romney. He’s a good man, he’ll make a great president,” Mr. Bush said, sitting with his wife Barbara Bush and Mr. Romney in his Houston office.

Another son, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, has also endorsed Mr. Romney.

A chronicle of the LAPD's fight to keep East Coast Mafia types out of Los Angeles in the 1940s and 50s.

Talk about dedication to the job. To test the association between hookworms — intestinal parasites — and food allergies, Dr. James Logan infected himself with the suckers and swallowed a pill camera to film the action in his gut.

Tropical disease expert Dr. Logan and his team at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) study how to control insects that transmit deadly diseases like malaria. The self-experiment was for a segment on the TV show Embarrassing Bodies, which debuted in the U.K. in March.

Hookworms are passed through feces and people can acquire them by walking barefoot on contaminated soil — like at the beach. Previous research has suggested that hookworms can alleviate and even cure symptoms of food allergies, which intrigued Logan who suffers from a food allergy that prevents him from eating bread without becoming ill.

“Surprisingly, hookworm infection is known to have a beneficial effect on health. Published studies have shown that hookworms can cure or alleviate allergies such as inflammatory bowel disease and food allergies and even asthma. The worms produce saliva that changes the immune system to stop your body overreacting to the things that cause allergies,” says Logan.

In the Bodies episode, LSHTM researchers injected hookworms into Logan’s skin, and over two months they traveled through his bloodstream reaching both his heart and lungs. From the lungs, the critters were coughed up and then swallowed, making their way into his intestines. As the hookworms matured, the pill camera tracked the damage and inflammation they caused to Logan’s intestines, which he described as “stabbing pains” in his gut.

Part of the motivation for the stunt was to use new technology to show how hookworm infection is acquired. “Until now, no one really knew how hookworm entered the body — they are too small to be seen with the naked eye. But, for the first time ever, we used state-of-the-art imaging to watch the worms enter my body. This gave me and the other scientists useful information about how the worms are able to achieve the incredible feat of being able to get through our tough skin,” says Dr. Logan.

Tests showed that Logan had an increase of eosinophils — a type of white blood cell and a sign of immune response to worms. Although his stomach pain persisted, Logan was able to enjoy a meal of pizza and breadsticks without the nauseating side effects. “I had a brilliant night’s sleep,” he told viewers the morning after his carb-filled meal. “Maybe the worms are having a good effect on my body. I am able to do things like eat bread, which is great.”

At the end of the experiment, Logan was able to rid his body of the worms by taking the anti-worming drug albendazole.

Some onlookers thought the scientist’s self-experiment was a bit unwise. “Being a person who has spent most of my career making sure people and animals don’t get worms, it seems like this is going in the wrong direction,” says Dr. Dwight Douglas Bowman, a professor of parasitology at Cornell University. According to Dr. Bowman, hookworms have been essentially eradicated from the U.S., and experimenting with them the way Logan did makes him uneasy. “We don’t want to put other people and the environment at risk. If you give yourself too many you can get sick. They can cause serious anemia. For a successful pharmaceutical trial, you would need to test a lot of people and I don’t want to give 10,000 people hookworm,” he says.

But Logan wasn’t nervous about his own risk and says the experiment was safe: “I wasn’t nervous about having hookworms as I know that there is little risk of becoming ill. The only time people become ill with hookworms is when they are in very high numbers. And the complication then is anemia. The number I infected myself with was extremely small so there was no danger of me becoming ill.”

Dr. Quentin Bickle, a reader in parasite immunology at LSHTM who designed the study, said in a statement, “the application of novel imaging methods in the television experiment provided an interesting opportunity to find out more about hookworm skin penetration and about the balance and the link between the pathological effects of hookworm infections on the gut mucosa and the potentially beneficial effects of the modulated immune response induced.” He says further research on worm infections could shed light on our immune responses, leading to new treatments.

Set in the Depression-era Franklin County, Virginia, a bootlegging gang is threatened by authorities who want a cut of their profits.

When asked by The Barna Group what words or phrases best describe Christianity, the top response among Americans ages 16-29 was “antihomosexual.” For a staggering 91 percent of non-Christians, this was the first word that came to their mind when asked about the Christian faith. The same was true for 80 percent of young churchgoers. (The next most common negative images? : “judgmental,” “hypocritical,” and “too involved in politics.”)

In the book that documents these findings, titled unChristian, David Kinnaman writes:

“The gay issue has become the ‘big one, the negative image most likely to be intertwined with Christianity’s reputation. It is also the dimensions that most clearly demonstrates the unchristian faith to young people today, surfacing in a spate of negative perceptions: judgmental, bigoted, sheltered, right-wingers, hypocritical, insincere, and uncaring. Outsiders say [Christian] hostility toward gays...has become virtually synonymous with the Christian faith.”

Later research, documented in Kinnaman’s You Lost Me, reveals that one of the top reasons 59 percent of young adults with a Christian background have left the church is because they perceive the church to be too exclusive, particularly regarding their LGBT friends. Eight million twenty-somethings have left the church, and this is one reason why.

In my experience, all the anecdotal evidence backs up the research.

When I speak at Christian colleges, I often take time to chat with students in the cafeteria. When I ask them what issues are most important to them, they consistently report that they are frustrated by how the Church has treated their gay and lesbian friends. Some of these students would say they most identify with what groups like the Gay Christian Network term “Side A” (they believe homosexual relationships have the same value as heterosexual relations in the sight of God). Others better identify with “Side B” (they believe only male/female relationship in marriage is God’s intent for sexuality). But every single student I have spoken with believes that the Church has mishandled its response to homosexuality.

Most have close gay and lesbian friends.

Most feel that the Church’s response to homosexuality is partly responsible for high rates of depression and suicide among their gay and lesbian friends, particularly those who are gay and Christian.

Most are highly suspicious of “ex-gay” ministries that encourage men and women with same-sex attractions to marry members of the opposite sex in spite of their feelings.

Most feel that the church is complicit, at least at some level, in anti-gay bullying.

And most...I daresay all...have expressed to me passionate opposition to legislative action against gays and lesbians.

“When evangelicals turn their anti-gay sentiments into a political campaign,” one college senior on her way to graduate school told me, “all it does is confirm to my gay friends that they will never be welcome in the church. It makes them bitter, and it makes me mad too. This is why I never refer to myself as an evangelical. Ugh. I’m embarrassed to be part of that group.”

I can relate.

When Tennessee added an amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriage (even though it was already illegal in the state), members of my church at the time put signs in the yard declaring support for the initiative. From my perspective, the message this sent to the entire community was simple: EVERYONE BUT GAYS WELCOME.

Dan and I left the church soon afterwards.

Which brings me to North Carolina and Amendment One.

Despite the fact that the North Carolina law already holds that marriage in the eyes of state is only between a man and a woman, an amendment was put on the ballot to permanently ban same-sex marriage in the state constitution. The initiative doesn’t appear to change anything on a practical level, (though some are saying it may have unintended negative consequences on heterosexual relationships), but seems to serve primarily as an ideological statement

....an expensive, destructive, and impractical ideological statement.

Conservatives in the state—who you would think would be more opposed to tampering with constitutions—supported the amendment, and last night it passed. Religious leaders led the charge in support of the amendment, with 93-year-old Billy Graham taking out multiple ads in publications across the state supporting the measure.

As I watched my Facebook and Twitter feeds last night, the reaction among my friends fell into an imperfect but highly predictable pattern. Christians over 40 were celebrating. Christians under 40 were mourning. Reading through the comments, the same thought kept returning to my mind as occurred to me when I first saw that Billy Graham ad: You’re losing us.

I’ve said it a million times, and I’ll say it again...(though I’m starting to think that no one is listening):
My generation is tired of the culture wars.

We are tired of fighting, tired of vain efforts to advance the Kingdom through politics and power, tired of drawing lines in the sand, tired of being known for what we are against, not what we are for.

And when it comes to homosexuality, we no longer think in the black-at-white categories of the generations before ours. We know too many wonderful people from the LGBT community to consider homosexuality a mere “issue.” These are people, and they are our friends. When they tell us that something hurts them, we listen. And Amendment One hurts like hell.

Regardless of whether you identify most with Side A or Side B, (or with one of the many variations within those two broad categories), it should be clear that amendments like these needlessly offend gays and lesbians, damage the reputation of Christians, and further alienate young adults—both Christians and non-Christian—from the Church.

So my question for those evangelicals leading the charge in the culture wars is this: Is it worth it?

Is a political “victory” really worth losing millions more young people to cynicism regarding the Church?

Is a political “victory” worth further alienating people who identify as LGBT?

Is a political “victory” worth perpetuating the idea that evangelical Christians are at war with gays and lesbians?

And is a political “victory” worth drowning out that quiet but persistent internal voice that asks—what if we get this wrong?

Too many Christian leaders seem to think the answer to that question is “yes,” and it's costing them.

Because young Christians are ready for peace.

We are ready to lay down our arms.

We are ready to start washing feet instead of waging war.

And if we cannot find that sort of peace within the Church, I fear we will look for it elsewhere.

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For a more gracious response to Amendment One, please take the time to read this great piece from our friend Justin Lee of the Gay Christian Network.

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Update: I've closed the comment thread, just because it's become too much to monitor and I want to keep this a safe place for conversation. Thanks for understanding!