James Brown, the undeniable ``Godfather of Soul,'' told friends from his hospital bed

that he was looking forward to performing on New Year's Eve, even though he was ill with pneumonia. His heart gave out a few hours later, on Christmas morning. ``People already know his history, but I would like for them to know he was a man who preached love from the stage,'' said friend Charles Bobbit, who was with Brown at the hospital.

His thing was 'I never saw a person that I didn't love.' He was a true humanitarian who loved his country.'' Brown was himself to the end, at one point saying, ``I'm going away tonight,''

Bobbit said at a news conference later Monday. ``I didn't want to believe him,'' he said. A short time later, Brown sighed quietly three times, closed his eyes and died, Bobbit said. ``He was an innovator, he was an emancipator, he was an originator.

Rap music, all that stuff came from James Brown,'' entertainer Little Richard, a longtime friend of Brown's, told MSNBC. ``James Brown changed music,'' said Rev. Al Sharpton, who toured with Brown in the 1970s and imitates his hairstyle to this day. ``He made soul music a world music,'' Sharpton said. ``What James Brown was to music in terms of soul and hip-hop, rap, all of that, is what Bach was to classical music. This is a guy who literally changed the music industry. He put everybody on a different beat, a different style of music. He pioneered it.'' From the 1950s, when Brown had his first R&B hit, ``Please, Please, Please'' in 1956, through the mid-1970s, Brown went on a frenzy of cross-country tours, concerts and new songs. He earned the nickname ``The Hardest Working Man in Show Business'' and often tried to prove it to his fans, said Jay Ross, his lawyer of 15 years. Brown's stage act was as memorable, and as imitated, as his records, with his twirls and spins and flowing cape, his repeated faints to the floor at the end. ``He was dramatic to the end - dying on Christmas Day,'' said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a friend of Brown's since 1955. ``Almost a dramatic, poetic moment. He'll be all over the news all over the world today. He would have it no other way.'' ``To this day, there has been no one near as funky. No one's coming even close,'' rapper Chuck D of Public Enemy once told the AP. Brown was abandoned as a 4 year old to the care of relatives and friends. He grew up on the streets of Augusta, Ga., in an ``ill-repute area,'' as he once called it, learning how to hustle to survive.