Nappy Brown – Nostalgia Central

Napoleon Brown Goodson Culp was born on 12 October 1929 in Charlotte, North Carolina.

He began his career singing gospel music before switching to R&B, and in 1954, he won a recording contract with Savoy Records.

A series of hits – including Don’t Be Angry (1955), Pitter Patter (1955), Little By Little (1956), and It Don’t Hurt No More (1958) – established Brown as one of the biggest stars in R&B and one of the first African-American artists to become popular with white audiences.

By the early 60s, though, Brown was an R&B absentee, for reasons that were never entirely clear; it was rumoured that he was in jail, or dead.

He had, he said later, simply given up the entertainment business and returned to North Carolina and gospel music.

After decades away from the limelight, he returned to music in the 1980s. His final album, Long Time Coming, was released in 2007.

On 1 June 2008, following a performance at the Crawfish Festival in Augusta, New Jersey, Brown fell ill and was hospitalised. He died in his sleep on 20 September 2008, at Mercy Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was 78.