08/24/2026
Happy birthday to "The Godfather of Go-Go" Chuck Brown, who would have been 90 today. He was born on August 22, 1936, and the sound he is credited with inventing — mixing heavy funk, big-band jazz, blues, rhythm and blues, and Afro-Cuban Latin percussion — belongs entirely to D.C.
When Brown died in 2012, the D.C. Public Library and the Mayor’s Office announced a joint effort to keep the story of the music from disappearing along with the man who started it.
The collection that grew out of that decision is powerful and inspiring. There are album covers and concert flyers, back issues of Go-Go Swings magazine, interview transcripts from some of the scene’s greatest performers, drumsticks from the Back-Yard Band, a ticket stub from the Capital Centre shows, and a wire statue of Chuck Brown. Archivist Derek Gray is still building it, and he is still asking Washingtonians to check their closets and attics.
WETA’s Boundary Stones has the story of the go-go archive, and how to add something to it, at the link in the comments below.
