And he more than lived up to both monikers.
James Brown, the man who helped put the soul in soul music, died Christmas morning after a lifetime of triumphs and tribulations. He was 73.
Brown entered an Atlanta hospital with pneumonia on Sunday and succumbed at 1:45am the next day. The cause of death isn't immediately, known according to his agent. "We really don't know at this point what he died of," Frank Copsidas admits.
A longtime friend was by his side when he passed away.
Brown leaves behind a legacy of hits like "I Got You (I Feel Good)", "(Get Up I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine," and "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" (1965's Grammy winning Best R B Single). His last major mainstream chart success was 1987's "Living In America, which also copped a Grammy for Best R B Male Vocal.
But it was some of his other tunes that changed music and the world. "Say It Loud - I'm Black and I'm Proud," became a statement about an emerging sense of black power in 1968.
"I clearly remember we were calling ourselves coloured, and after the song, we were calling ourselves black," Brown recalled.
"The song showed even people to that day that lyrics and music and a song can change society."
He was a huge influence on other artists, ranging from Michael Jackson to Mick Jagger, who both owe much of their fancy footwork to the singer. His rhythms are also credited with inspiring the roots of rap music, and he was copied by Prince and David Bowie.
And he took credit for inspiring several types of musical evolutions.
"Disco is James Brown, hip-hop is James Brown, rap is James Brown; you know what I'm saying?" he asked in 2003.
"You hear all the rappers, 90 percent of their music is me."
His personal life was less successful. Brown was plagued by a history of drug abuse and police were at his door often over charges he beat his wife.
All of those accusations culminated in his worst act of defiance in September 1988, when a drugged out Brown wandered into an insurance seminar next door to his Augusta office with a shotgun and asked the participants if they'd been using his private restroom.
When police arrived, he led them on a PCP-fueled chase through two states, which only ended when cops shot out the tires on his truck.
He was sentenced to six years in jail, but only served 15 months behind bars, another 10 on a work release program, and was paroled in 1991.
He was eventually granted a full pardon 12 years later.
It wasn't his first brush with the law - after growing up on the mean streets of Augusta, he served 3 years in a reform school for breaking into cars.
It was there he met a man who would eventually change his life.
Bobby Byrd's family took Brown into their home and he joined his friend's singing group, who would morph into Brown's back-up act, The Famous Flames.
His first hit, the pleading classic "Prease, Please, Please", was an R B hit in 1956.
Brown toured endlessly and put on a sweat-soaked show that earned him the "Hardest Working Man" nickname.
It's said he would be two or three pounds lighter every time he walked off stage.
"He'd always give it his all to give his fans the type of show they expected," his lawyer Jay Ross, recalls.
He achieved a separate kind of immortality in the 70s when Eddie Murphy famously parodied his style 'in the hot tub', on a classic Saturday Night Live sketch.
He leaves behind his fourth wife and a son from that marriage, James Jr.
Brown was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, and was touring right up to the end. He had two shows scheduled at Casino Rama on January 5th and 6th, dates he will now never be able to keep.
And Dean Martin passed on Xmas 1995 after a long illness. He was 78.
S. R B charts. But James Brown leaves behind an impressive collection of hit records.
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