Mourners pack a service for Brown

In life and in death, James Brown should be remembered for his impact on music and on the world, not for the many people who surrounded him, the Rev. Al Sharpton said in a passionate eulogy.

“When he started singing, we were sitting in the back of the bus. When he stopped singing we were flying Lear jets,” Sharpton told about 300 mourners during a private funeral service for Brown at Carpentersville Baptist Church in North Augusta.

It was standing-room only in the tiny red brick church in a neighborhood of dilapidated homes -- some with boarded up windows -- on a street just inside the South Carolina line from Augusta, Ga., the place Brown called home.

One day after thousands bade farewell to Brown at the Apollo Theater in New York, friends and relatives filed past the casket containing Brown’s body.