Family battle over legacy keeps the Godfather of Soul from his grave
James Bone in New York
# 'Widow' says she is being sidelined
# Body kept in coffin at mansion
The late James Brown is performing an unfortunate encore to his career as the “Godfather of Soul” because of a family feud over his legacy.
Infighting has kept the body of the singer from being buried since his death on Christmas Day from heart congestion at the age of 73.
The feud pits Tomi Rae Hynie, who claims to be Brown’s widow and the mother of his youngest child, against several of the singer’s children from other women.
Ms Hynie even charges that Brown was actually buried after a public funeral and then exhumed as the discord grew.
“They bury him and don’t tell me; I read it in the paper the next day and when they find out in the news that I’m so upset about it, they get the body . . . and they exhumed it,” she said in a TV interview. “Then they pulled it back out and put in the funeral home because they found out that I was angry that I wasn’t invited to them putting him in the ground until they’d built the mausoleum.”
But Charles Reid, the manager of the C A Reid Funeral Home, in Brown’s adopted hometown of Augusta, Georgia, denies that the body was interred. He says that the corpse — put on display for emotional fans in Augusta and New York — is being kept in a sealed coffin in a guarded, temperature-controlled room at Brown’s home in Beech Island, Georgia, ten miles from Augusta.
The undertaker delivered the body to the estate after the December 30 services in Augusta, he says. Ms Hynie insists that she was legally married to Brown after he hired her as a backing singer a decade ago, and bears his last name. The couple have a five-year-old son named James.
However, Ms Hynie was already married to a Pakistani immigrant seeking US citizenship when she tied the knot with Brown. The marriage to the man was later declared void, but it has cast doubt on her union with the singer. After the couple had a row on an aircraft in July 2003, Brown took out a full-page advertisement in the Hollywood trade paper Variety announcing their break-up. But the pair continued to live together, Ms Hynie insists.
She was away in a drugrehabilitation programme for addiction to painkillers after the recent death of her father when Brown died on Christmas Day. Ms Hynie says that she last spoke to him when he visited the dentist shortly before being admitted to hospital and he told her: “Baby, I love you.”
“He had a big surprise for me. And the big surprise was that we were going to renew our vows,” she said on TV. When Ms Hynie returned to Brown’s estate with her son, they found themselves locked out.
Ms Hynie was allowed to speak at Brown’s public farewell at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, New York. But she accuses family members of stopping her from speaking at the service in Augusta. She claims that two of Brown’s three daughters, Deanna and Yamma, have deliberately excluded her from the family.
Brown’s lawyer is demanding a DNA paternity test on Ms Hynie’s son, James, now living with his mother in the Los Angeles mansion of Athena Kottak, the sister of Tommy Lee, the Mötley Crüe drummer. Ms Hynie said that she was happy to oblige, but suggested that the other children should also undergo paternity tests.
Brown had a catalogue of 750 songs, including such hits as Please, Please, Please and Sex Machine. His Beech Island estate was seized in 1985 for unpaid taxes, and Bobby Dallas, his longtime lawyer, purchased it at auction. In 2000 Mr Dallas put the house and 40 acres into trust for Brown, along with his business assets. It is for the trustees, along with Brown’s children, to determine where the singer will be buried.
Debra Opri, a family lawyer, insisted that Brown had “died a single man”. But she said that the trust would ensure that his estate becomes a museum, like Elvis Presley’s
Graceland home, with a mausoleum — just as Ms Hynie wants.
With strings attached . . .
# Acquaintances filed claims worth $38 million against the estate of Jerry Garcia, of the Grateful Dead. These included the custody of Wolf and Tiger — two of Garcia’s guitars
# Bob Marley did not have a will when he died, leading to family feuds and legal disputes among his wife and 13 children
# Jimi Hendrix left no will when he died in 1970. Family members are still locked in legal dispute over the legacy
# Tupac Shakur’s father claimed 50 per cent of his son’s estate, despite being absent from Tupac’s life for 15 of his 25 years. The claim was rejected
Source: agencies
11.01.2007, 04:12
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