Chuck Brown
May 18, 2012
Go-Go, From Scopitone to Chuck Brown
I don’t mean to slander his legacy, but the news this week of the death of Chuck Brown, the “Godfather of Go-Go,” made me think of Scopitone, the proto-video platform for cheesily risqué musical films that Susan Sontag enshrined in the early canon of camp. Brown, who worked since the 1960s around the area of Maryland (where he was born), northern Virginia, and Washington, D.C., never made a Scopitone film. He did something better, though, leading the development of the sexy, upbeat subgenre of funk that has its own name, go-go, but could just as well be called Chuck Brown’s music.
