The Godfather of Soul, The Hardest Working Man in Showbusiness; Soul Brother No. 1; Mr Dynamite — James Brown was not a modest man, yet he more than earned the many colourful sobriquets with which he described himself over the years.

In a career spanning five decades, this tireless, consummate showman with a rasping voice redefined the nature of soul in the 1950s, invented funk in the 1960s, partly inspired the disco revolution of the 1970s and, thanks to the technological miracle of sampling, involuntarily contributed excerpts of his work to an estimated two or three thousand rap recordings of the 1980s and 1990s.

And not just rap: the drum part from his 1970 hit Funky Drummer, for instance, has been recycled endlessly, providing the basis for songs by Sinéad O’Connor, George Michael, L L Cool J, Fine Young Cannibals, Public Enemy and many others besides.

A singer, dancer and entertainer supreme, Brown was long acknowledged as the leading influence on a subsequent generation of superstar hoofers, notably Michael Jackson, Hammer, Bobby Brown and Prince.

An ally of successive US presidents and a confrère of black power leaders, his influence in the community was such that his TV appeals for calm after the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King in 1968 played a vital part in defusing a potentially explosive situation on the streets of America’s inner cities.

Yet his own volatile temperament was less readily contained and in 1988 he was sentenced to six years imprisonment after an incident in which he threatened two policemen with a gun, then attempted to run them over in his car while under the influence of the drug angel dust. He was released in March 1991 and put on parole until October 1993. Further brushes with the law ensued in 1995 when he was arrested and charged with beating up his wife, Adrienne, at their home in Aiken, South Carolina, and in 1998 when he was charged with possession of cannabis and unlawful use of a firearm.

Brown always gave his date of birth as 1933, but this was at odds with the facts, as recorded on the various court documents relating to his run-ins with the American authorities, which give his date of birth as May 3, 1928.

Born in Barnwell, South Carolina, in the woods a few miles from the Georgia state line, James Joseph Brown Jr was shunted off to live in a brothel in Augusta, Georgia, after his parents had separated. In that black neighbourhood of clapboard shacks, he was looked after by one “Aunt T”, when she was around, or else left to fend for himself.

His school attendance was irregular, and he dropped out in his early teens. The seeds of his notoriously fraught relationship with the law were sown at the age of 16 when he was arrested for breaking into cars, a crime for which he served nearly four years in corrective institutions.

He competed in local field sports events and then trained and fought as a bantamweight boxer. He also sang with a local gospel group, the Three Swanees and an R&B band called Bill Johnson and the Four Steps Of Rhythm.

In 1954 he co-opted a group called the Gospel Starlighters led by a singer and pianist friend, Bobby Byrd, and converted them into his own group James Brown and the Famous Flames. They came to the attention of Little Richard’s manager, Clint Brantley, who secured a contract for them with Syd Nathan’s Cincinnati-based King record label. In 1956 Brown scored a hit in the R&B chart with his debut single Please Please Please.

Success in the mainstream pop market took a while to come, but by 1963 he had scored his first US Top 20 single with Prisoner of Love and powered his way to No 2 in the American album chart with his landmark album, Live At The Apollo. This was the recording of a show at that most hallowed of New York venues on October 24, 1962, and its success underlined Brown’s phenomenal impact as a stage performer.