R.I.P. Bobby Byrd

Bobby Byrd–best known for being the wayward James Brown’s benefactor when the young Brown was an aspiring singer fresh out of jail and then as Brown’s musical partner and confrere through the Godfather’s two-decade rise from ’60s soulman to ’70s funkateer, as well as a solo artist in Brown’s carnivalesque live revue and on records produced by Brown–died yesterday in Georgia. Sticking with Brown through innumerable lineup changes–from the time Brown started his apprenticeship in Byrd’s group the Avons in the 1950s, through Brown’s quick rise to marquee billing with Byrd as one of his Famous Flames, and finally as one of the last vestiges of Brown’s first phase when Byrd followed his leader into the new world of hard funk Brown helped to create with the freshy constituted JB’s in the early ’70s–Byrd finally decamped in 1973, recording and gigging on the soul nostalgia circuit into the 21st-century. Cause of death was listed as complications from cancer; Byrd was 73.

Bobby Byrd, James Brown Sidekick, Dies 9/13/2007 [Augusta Chronicle]