"I took a trip to Rome during one of my down periods a few years ago, and had the good fortune to be greeted by the pope." Reading about this encounter, one naturally wonders what the Hardest Working Man in Show Business and the Hardest Working Man in Religion had to say to each other. "The pontiff shook my hand three times," Brown continues, "and I told him I had been thinking about leaving the music business, and to my surprise, he advised against it. I asked him why. He said, 'Because, sir, you can get things done.'"

Was the Holy Father a soul man in the James Brown sense? Or was this standard papal advice to visitors long in the tooth? You won't find out the answer from I Feel Good, a carelessly written celebrity biography that barely skims the surface of Brown's fascinating life. For an in-depth look, read Brown's first autobiography, James Brown: The Godfather of Soul (first published in 1986, reprinted in 2003), coauthored with Bruce Tucker. In Tucker, Brown had a real writer to work with. In Eliot, he has someone best described as no Plutarch. Eliot has written bios of Cary Grant, the Eagles, Erin Brockovich, Walt Disney, Donna Summer, Roy Clark, Vicki Lawrence, Bruce Springsteen, Phil Ochs, Burt Reynolds, Barry White, and Kato Kaelin--more than is good for him, probably, and certainly more than is good for Brown.

The clear purpose of I Feel Good is to repair a very tarnished image. Brown has had a bad 20 years. Between 1988 and 1991, he served part of a six-year prison term for assault, failure to stop for an officer, resisting arrest, and illegal possession of a pistol and drugs. In 1998 he was arrested after a car chase and sentenced to a 90-day drug rehab. In 2003 he was pardoned by the state of South Carolina, but that didn't stop him from getting in trouble again. In January 2004, he was arrested for allegedly shoving his wife, Tomi Rae, to the floor of their bedroom.

But I Feel Good gives only a garbled account of these misadventures, laced with braggadocio and racial paranoia. Again, readers who would rather focus on Brown's accomplishments are advised to read Tucker. Not only does Tucker's book include old-fashioned aids like an index and discography (both maddeningly absent from Eliot), it also brings out the complexity of a man who, despite his recent decline, is an American icon. Rough yet refined, boastful yet humble, Brown is an extraordinary talent who also happens to be blessed (cursed?) with a sharp intelligence that cuts through the B.S. as cleanly as his incredible voice cuts through the air.

The true fan will say, "Skip the books and listen to the music." Good advice, since no amount of description can capture the essence of James Brown. But given the state of popular music these days, listening is not a simple proposition. To a large degree, what one hears will depend on one's background, age, and cultural outlook.

For white middle-class fans who grew up in the 1960s, Brown is the one who added funk to soul. That is, he took the style of black music then popular among whites and injected it with rhythmic steroids. For African Americans of the same vintage, Brown is one of several artists who secularized church music. That is, he took the burning heart of gospel, the "hard" style of the solo evangelist, and injected it with hedonism. To most whites, funk was all about sex--an appeal Brown exploited with titles like "Sex Machine" (even though the lyrics had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with dancing). To most blacks, funk, like soul, was full of echoes: Behind every "baby" they heard "Jesus."

In music, the line between sacred and secular is tricky. A century ago, African Americans drew it between instruments (tambourines okay, drums not) and practices (dancing with the feet apart okay, with them crossed not). In the 1920s a vaudevillian named Thomas A. Dorsey got saved at a Baptist convention and decided to incorporate the music he knew best--the blues--into a new genre called "the gospel song." People are still surprised to learn that the salty blues "It's Tight Like That" was written by the same man who wrote Martin Luther King's favorite hymn, "Take My Hand Precious Lord."

Though blurry, the line persisted through the 1950s. The recent movie Ray contains a scene in which angry Christians protest the use of gospel sounds by a young nightclub singer named Ray Charles. Righteous anger was also directed against the rock 'n' roller Little Richard, who took his "devil-destroying" style from the Holiness Church in Macon, Georgia. The leading white rock 'n' rollers also came out of Pentecostalism: Jerry Lee Lewis learned piano in the Assembly of God in Ferriday, Louisiana (also attended by his cousin, Jimmy Swaggart); and Elvis's legendary hip shake was standard practice in the Pentecostal First Assembly of God in Tupelo, Mississippi.

Brown belongs to this generation, but strictly speaking, his career did not start in church. As every fan knows, Brown made his performance debut on the Third Level Canal Bridge in Augusta, Georgia, where in 1940 at the age of seven he "buck-danced" for soldiers on their way to Daniel Field. The dimes and nickels he earned were given to his Aunt Honey, who ran a house of "gambling, moonshine liquor, and prostitution" and had taken the boy in after his mother deserted him and his father, an itinerant laborer, could not keep him.

Yet church played a formative role. Ashamed of his patched garments, Brown was caught stealing clothes and sent to the Georgia Juvenile Training Institute in Rome, where he formed a gospel group. Upon his release he went to live with a foster family in Toccoa, where he sang with the Trinity CME Church choir and the short-lived Ever Ready Gospel Singers. Unable to break into radio with gospel, he formed an R & B band with his friend Bobby Byrd. Eventually known as the Flames, this little band worked their way through countless tiny gigs, including one at the white high school, where they played halftime during afternoon basketball games.

"Once," recalls Brown, "I came sliding across the basketball floor with a big dust mop and danced with it. The kids went wild."

That dust mop served Brown well. Ever the consummate showman, he was soon the star of the Flames, optimistically renamed the Famous Flames. In 1956 they had their first hit, "Please, Please, Please" (#6 on the R & B chart). When their record label suggested calling them James Brown and the Famous Flames, the others resentfully quit. But Brown kept going, forming a new band, working tirelessly at his sound and stagecraft, and not only climbing the R & B chart but also "crossing over" to the larger, more lucrative pop chart.

Many of Brown's crossover hits between 1959 and 1962 ("Try Me," "Bewildered," "Prisoner of Love") were ballads in the soaring, aching style of soul. His vocalism here is so powerful, the listener is struck by how easily he could have edged Otis Redding off the stage at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. But that didn't happen, because by the time millions of white kids discovered they had soul, Brown had moved on to funk.

The breakthrough came in 1965: "Papa's Got a Brand-New Bag, Part I" (#1 R & B, #8 pop). Few moments in popular music are as legendary as the recording session at which Brown's band changed the basic beat from one-TWO, three-FOUR to ONE-two, THREE-four. But instead of penetrating the legend, Eliot adds another goofy layer to it:

  With the "One," James Brown had thrown out all the traditional chord
  progressions along with his sweet melodies, the salad and the dressing
  of R & B and soul--and retained only the thick juicy cut of the
  rhythm. Gone along with the excess was the timidity, the apologetic
  head-down shuffle of Black musical passivity. James Brown's "One"
  represented pride and authority, a sound that stepped up to the mike
  with strength and conviction, and a generation of Black and White
  boomers instantly embraced it on the good foot.

Now let me get this straight. By encouraging guitarist Jimmy Nolen and saxophonist Maceo Parker to punch out an especially tight, snappy rhythm, Brown was liberating his fellow blacks from harmony and melody, those twin oppressions that had destroyed the pride of such timid, apologetic, head-down, shuffling darkies as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Sidney Bechet, Big Bill Broonzy, Nat "King" Cole, John Coltrane, Sam Cooke, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Al Green, Earl Hines, Mahalia Jackson ...? (You get my drift, so I'll stop at J.)