Chuck Brown - Telegraph Go-go's sound was influenced by James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone and George Clinton, but it was unmistakably a product of Washington, DC - bred in the city's black neighbourhoods and characterised by continuous groove and call-and-response motifs. By the mid-1980s go-go records were being played by British DJs at all-night parties in clubs and warehouses that preceded the acid house boom. Chuck Brown was born on August 22 1936 and started singing when he was a boy. I used to play a little piano in church and after that I left home at the age of 13 and ran all around the country - just a kid out there who wanna go and explore. It was a pretty tough life. I got in a lot of trouble. Brown learned guitar in prison - he served eight years for shooting a man, though he claimed it was in self-defence . After being released he briefly became a boxer, working with Floyd Patterson before finding a job as a guitarist with Jerry Butler, and later Los Latinos. He formed the band The Soul Searchers in 1968 with John Ewell on bass and Frank Wellman on drums. Brown came up with the name during the process of searching for a bass player and a drummer - "just driving down [Highway] 295 it came to me," he said. In 1972 Bill Withers was playing a concert in Washington and saw The Soul Searchers, recommending them afterwards to Clarence Avant of Sussex Records, who released their albums We the People (1972) and Salt of the Earth (1974), the second of which was heavily sampled during the 1980s. In 1978, Brown and his band started working with the producer James Purdie and manager David Carpin, recording the album Bustin" Loose in the same year. The single of the same name was released in January 1979. It was the group's only record to make it into the US Top 40, though it topped the R&B chart. The band's survival during the 1970s was thanks to perseverance as much as anything else. "During our 10 years out there, we have managed to work when others couldn't," Brown told the British music magazine Blues & Soul in 1979. All of the groups that started out when we did have gone now. The disco thing wiped the last batch out. Somehow, though, we made it through. Artists such as Marvin Gaye and Roberta Flack had to leave Washington, DC, to become successful. But Brown stayed, becoming an icon of his local music scene. Go-go was eventually consumed by hip-hop, but Brown remained active in Washington. In 2009 the city named a block of Seventh Street "Chuck Brown Way." In 2010 he was nominated for his first Grammy for Best R&B Performance by a duo or group with vocals for Love, from his album We Got This. Chuck Brown is survived by his wife, Jocelyn, and his three sons. Chuck Brown, born August 22 1936, died May 16 2012