In a career of mediocre, listless headlines, it still stands out as my best. I was a very young editor at the Tifton Gazette when soul singer James Brown, “The Godfather of Soul” was paroled after a bizarre scrape with the law. My headline was clean, to the point, and, best of all, rhymed – “‘Godfather of Soul’ out on parole.”

Sixteen years later, it still trumps my corny, second-best, “Argyle socked by tornado.”

James Brown died Christmas Day at the age of 73. A bout with pneumonia ended a show business career that spanned over 50 years and influenced the history of popular music.

James Brown’s story is purely American. Born in rural poverty near Barnwell, S.C., Brown was abandoned by his mother at the age of four, and lived with his father and his live-in girlfriends until he was six, when he moved into his Aunt Honey’s place — an Augusta brothel.

Embarrassed by his homemade underwear and shabby dress, he yearned to better life for himself, performing for troops for nickels and dimes, then turning to petty crime in his teens. While incarcerated, he decided music would be his career and his first professional record, “Please, Please, Please,” with the Famous Flames, sold over a million copies. Many hits would follow, including the classic “I Feel Good.”

He toured all the time — sometimes having 350 performances in a year — earning him another nickname, “The Hardest-Working Man in Show Business.” But like most purely American stories, Brown was no saint, and had numerous legal run-ins over his career. His most famous incident occurred in 1988, when he led law enforcement on a high-speed chase that ended at a friend’s house. Brown’s explanation? He was just going to his friend’s house. That “trip to a friend’s house” cost him three years in prison.

There are thousands of “James Brown stories,” most of them equally strange and funny. This one comes from a guy in Augusta, who vouches for its authenticity.

James Brown kept his tour bus at this place in Augusta. The bus was locked up in a gated, secure parking lot when not on tour. One time, on the night after the James Brown bus had returned to Augusta from a gig, the night security officer heard some commotion coming from James Brown’s bus.

In a dark parking lot, the security guard saw a figure step off the bus. The security guard drew his gun and yelled, “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

The person coming off the bus then responded, “Don’t shoot! Godfather of Soul!”

It was, of course, James Brown. Apparently, James Brown had left something on his bus. What? I doubt it was his wallet. He climbed a barbed-wire fence to get into the parking lot, then broke into the bus, to retrieve something.

He didn’t call ahead of time, tell them he was coming. I’m sure they would have let him in — he was James Brown, after all. Instead, in the middle of the night, he basically burglarized his own bus.

Then, when confronted with a gun, perhaps a life-or-death moment, he doesn’t say, “Don’t shoot! It’s James Brown!” or “Don’t shoot! I’m unarmed!” or “Cool out! I just forgot my stash!” With a gun pointed at him, he identifies himself instinctively as “Godfather of Soul.”

That’s who he was. And there will never be another like him.