I really liked James Brown. He became sort of a folk hero back int he 80's and early 90's when he got in trouble with the law for trying to evade arrest while high on PCP I think. There were "Free James Brown" T-shirts and bumperstickers. People knew he had done wrong, but he was James Brown for crying out loud, you couldn't lock up the Godfather of Soul.
What really saddens me is the fight already going betwixt his long time companion and mother of his young son, and his lawyers, had it not been for Gerald Ford's passing the media would have already turned it into a circus.
My favorite memory of his is not even my own, but that of my sister when she first solo'd in a small plane, high above the James River shouting at the top of her lungs: "I feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel good! I knew that I would now!"