Perhaps it is my immersion in the recent live box set of Frank Sinatra performing live in Las Vegas over the course of 25 years, but when I heard that James Brown had passed away on Christmas morning, my initial thought was that he was the Sinatra of black pop culture.

Like Sinatra, he was enormously innovative and influential, achieved unprecendented superstardom, had an iterative career that passed through distinct phases, scandals, and lulls, and he was caricatured on Saturday Night Live (okay, that last isn't exactly a unique distinction).

The comparison to Sinatra is arguably more apt than to the Beatles, in my opinion. The Beatles were an inherently collaborative enterprise, while Brown and Sinatra were sole proprietors. Both Brown and Sinatra were strict taskmasters, demanding perfection and loyalty from their sidemen and associates. Both were sui generis artists, who repeatedly reinvented themselves and sustained their careers through fluctations in popular taste. And both were profoundly flawed people who exercised lamentably misguided judgment, but whose enormous talents bought them a lot of slack. They utilized, and perhaps exploited, the talents and efforts of countless other contributors, but the vision, values, purpose and principles animating their accomplishments were entirely their own.

I saw Tony Bennett at Ceasar's Palace the night Sinatra passed away. Seeing Prince at the Apollo would have been an appropriate equivalent, I think. RIP.