It is still his favorite, the song that was James Brown's first hit. The first of more than 40 million selling records. Please don't leave me, he begged. And the fans didn't. They loved his strutting, his sweating, his frenzy, the way he gave them everything he had. In the 60s he recorded one hit after another. Among the biggest, Papa's got a brand new bag. James Brown became more than a superstar. He became a leader. He implored black people to get an education. In 1968, after Dr. Martin Luther King was killed, he walked the streets of Washington and Boston and helped calm the rioting. It's not important that I'm Mr. Brown. It's important that I on the right to be called that. And that I can be called that. And I have a choice of turning it down. I'm still James. Mr. Brown lives in a fancy house on an island. He wouldn't take us there. James came from the poorest part of Augusta, Georgia. He would take us there. To see an old man, he calls Mr. Dutt, who first taught him music. I cried my living out of me again. He loved it that he had. And he got all kind of different little steps. He didn't want to be doing the split and yet, you know, and singing. And he wanted something like that. He had to spoke and everything. Otherwise, he wanted to sound. And Shine, he did until he tried to give back to his people some of the success they gave to him. Just as James Brown won't show you his house, he won't show you the businesses he used to own his heyday and then lost. Particularly the three radio stations he poured millions of dollars into, trying to put other blacks to work and educate them. I lost a lot of money I tried to add some more life to my home. I hate that. You feel better about that at all? I feel disgusted. He still has money to spend, the flashier lifestyle than most people, but trying to affect public policy didn't work for James Brown. He hoped the government would bail out his radio stations. Instead, the internal revenue service went after him for four and a half million dollars. Claim he's still fighting. And when he endorsed Richard Nixon for president in 1972, thousands of his fans deserted him. Twenty-four years after he recorded, please, please, please, James Brown is still working. But he's had to survive an amusing industry that used his ideas, copied his sound, and then moved on to the anonymity of disco. But now, fans are turning back to rock and roll, back to James Brown. And at 47, James Brown's got a new bag, designed to put him back before the public in a big way. He plays a creature named Lee's Brothers movie. It's about me, what I've been about all along, giving back, helping. Number two, it's one of great opportunities, but the greatest opportunity I've ever had. We're using because he hit the role. He's American classical music. You had your Beethoven's, your Brahms, your Bach's. Ready, here. We got my sky in the business. As he tries to shape who he will be, James Brown is still concerned with the matter of who he was long ago in Augusta, Georgia. Still begging, please, please, don't leave me. I started yesterday, today, I'm starting tomorrow, I still be starting. Barthitational CBS News, Augusta, Georgia.