In the wake of the recent death of Chuck Brown, known as the “Godfather of Go-Go”, Chuck Thies, who identifies himself as a political analyst in the D.C. area, wrote the following in his First Read–DMV column:
John Phillip Sousa, Duke Ellington, Marvin Gaye, Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye reside on the Mount Olympus of Washington musicians. Chuck Brown is Zeus.
Sousa, Ellington, Gaye, Rollins and MacKaye all mastered the genres of music for which they are known. Brown, alongside The Young Senators and Black Heat, invented his genre. Go-Go. A sound uniquely Washington.
Can we just hold up a sec?
I don’t mean any disrespect to Mr. Brown, who was certainly a giant in the field of Go-Go music. But how many people across the country can even describe what Go-Go music is? Aren’t we going a little beyond tribute to compare Brown to Ellington, for gosh sakes? To suggest that he was in any way a more significant figure than Sousa? Must our declarations of admiration for the recently deceased go to such reality-distorting extremes? Is such laughable tribute any real tribute at all?
Of course, Thies undermines his own claim for Brown’s importance by saying his music was “uniquely Washington”. True enough: Brown’s single national top 40 single, “Bustin’ Loose”, is far lesser known than the Nelly hit that sampled it:
In the real world, Marvin Gaye and John Phillip Sousa made music that made a lasting, worldwide impact. And the incomparable Ellington? One of the most significant musical figures of our century, to say the very least. But in the world of Chuck Thies these men are lesser lights in a musical universe ruled by the “uniquely Washington” Chuck Brown. Such, unfortunately, is the hype of eulogyspeak.
Every Moment Has A Song 