Y'all can celebate Elvis...but when it comes to music...I love James...

The funk Mr. Brown introduced in his 1965 hit “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” was both deeply rooted in Africa and thoroughly American. Songs like “I Got You (I Feel Good),” “Cold Sweat,” “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine” and “Hot Pants” found the percussive side of every instrument and meshed sharply syncopated patterns into kinetic polyrhythms that made people dance.

Mr. Brown’s innovations reverberated through the soul and rhythm-and-blues of the 1970s and the hip-hop of the next three decades. The beat of a 1970 instrumental “Funky Drummer” may well be the most widely sampled rhythm in hip-hop.

Mr. Brown’s stage moves — the spins, the quick shuffles, the knee-drops, the splits — were imitated by performers who tried to match his stamina, from Mick Jagger to Michael Jackson, and were admired by the many more who could not. Mr. Brown was a political force, especially during the 1960s; his 1968 song “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud” changed America’s racial vocabulary. He was never politically predictable; in 1972 he endorsed the re-election of Richard M. Nixon.

Mr. Brown led a turbulent life, and served prison time as both a teenager and an adult. He was a stern taskmaster who fined his band members for missed notes or imperfect shoeshines. He was an entrepreneur who, at the end of the 1960s, owned his own publishing company, three radio stations and a Learjet (which he would later sell to pay back taxes). And he performed constantly: as many as 51 weeks a year in his prime.

Mr. Brown was born May 3, 1933, in a one-room shack in Barnwell, S.C. As he would later tell it, midwives thought he was stillborn, but his body stayed warm, and he was revived. When his parents separated four years later, he was left in the care of his aunt Honey, who ran a brothel in Augusta, Ga. As a boy he earned pennies buck-dancing for soldiers; he also picked cotton and shined shoes. He was dismissed from school because his clothes were too ragged.

He was imprisoned for petty theft in 1949 after breaking into a car, and paroled three years later. While in prison he sang in a gospel group. After he was released, he joined a group led by Bobby Byrd, which eventually called itself the Flames. At first, Mr. Brown played drums with the group and traded off lead vocals with other members. But with his powerful voice and frenzied, acrobatic dancing, he soon emerged as the frontman.

In 1955 the Flames recorded “Please Please Please” in the basement studio of a radio station in Macon, Ga. A talent scout heard it on local radio and signed the Flames to a recording contract with King Records. A second version, recorded in Cincinnati in 1956, became a million-selling single.

Nine follow-up singles were flops until, in 1958 a gospel-rooted ballad, “Try Me,” went to No. 1 on the rhythm-and-blues chart. Mr. Brown followed up with more ballads, although the Flames’ stage shows would turn them into long, frenzied crescendos. His trademark routine of collapsing onstage, having a cape thrown over him and tossing it away for one more reprise, again and again, would leave audiences shouting for more.

In 1960 Mr. Brown’s version of “Think” put a choppy, Latin-flavored beat — hinting at the funk to come — behind a sustained vocal and pushed him back into the R&B Top 10 and the pop Top 40.
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He's part of the reason I am a Democrat...simply said. He touched me.

I like both of them. I like the early Elvis though, rather than the caped, Vegas Elvis.

Me too.

Had Elvis had a different manager, he should have done some combo records

Although early on while on Sun he did record with Jerry Lee, Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash, it would have been something to have over the decades duets with James Brown and Aretha.

My favorite Elvis was the 1967-early 1970s..
especially In the Ghetto and Suspicious Minds, the Wonder of You, and American Trilogy and the comeback concert, the one which today would have been called unplugged.
.and he still had his voice the day he died. Too bad they didn't get him away from Col. Tom and someone didn't have the guts to tell Elvis to stop it all.

James Brown was one of the greats and put on perhaps the greatest live show for years
An oddity was, he had over 100 chart hits, yet never had a #1 on the Pop charts.

It's been what, 30 years since they gave Elvis a new identity in the witness protection program?

Georgia...

gave us James Brown,
Ray Charles,
Sam Cooke...
and my wife.

I bow a knee to the State.
And, that don't happen often...

I'll take GA, MS, ALA, ARK and LA...
and charge them to live up to their
charge of liberty...equality...
if they do that...if they embrace
James, Ray and Sam...and the brothers
who fought for their rights...Medger,
Martin and the Little Rock Nine.

Then we are The New South.
That is where my pride lives.

and Jimmy Carter too...
(The only President with great taste and an actual love in country/r&b/pop music if you ask me(Or Willie Nelson).