After 15 Years of Infighting, James Brown’s Estate Is Sold
The New York Times
The sale to Primary Wave Music, for an estimated $90 million, provides resources to ultimately realize the musician’s wish to fund scholarships for needy children.
Since James Brown’s death 15 years ago, a plan by the soul and funk music icon to leave the bulk of his estate to scholarships for needy children has been delayed by torrents of litigation. But the mission of financing those scholarships has taken a major step forward under the terms of a new business deal.
Primary Wave Music, a New York company that specializes in marketing estates and song catalogs, is buying the assets of the Brown estate, including music rights, real estate and the control over Brown’s name and likeness.
Larry Mestel, the founder of Primary Wave — which did a similar deal for half of Whitney Houston’s estate, and owns the largest interest in Prince’s — envisions an array of new projects to honor Brown’s legacy and promote his music to new generations of fans. Those may include a Broadway musical, television shows and the creation of a Graceland-like museum attraction at Brown’s mansion in South Carolina, he said.
