What you won't see in Mick Jagger's James Brown biopic: Soul star's legs were HACKED off in fight over his fortune

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He was the Godfather of Soul, a music legend whose incendiary stage act over six decades inspired generations of performers from Mick Jagger to Michael Jackson. 

But the story of James Brown, now immortalised by Jagger in a £25 million biopic, Get On Up, has become even more extraordinary in death. 

Last night Brown’s widow Tomi Rae – the mother of his 13-year-old youngest child James Jnr – revealed for the first time the vicious battle over her husband’s £65 million fortune, how his corpse was dismembered amid a paternity row, and why his body has been moved 14 times since his death because of family feuding.

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Body and soul: Tomi Rae, James Brown's widow, lays a rose at his funeral - before a family feud began

Legend: The biopic, Get On Up (pictured), charts the world-famous soul singer's career in all its glory

‘The movie gives a good depiction of my husband’s life but the drama that has unfolded since his death is more painful and outrageous than anything a scriptwriter could dream up,’ she said in an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday.

‘James would be spinning in his grave if he knew the hell I’d gone through over the past eight years.’

Brown died on Christmas Day 2006. He was 73. Tomi Rae says she has been left ‘virtually penniless’ ever since as Brown’s various children – legitimate and otherwise – lawyers, hangers-on and business associates all launched legal claims on his estate.

She says a will leaving half his fortune to her and the rest to a charitable foundation to help underprivileged children ‘mysteriously disappeared’ in the days following his death. 

Brown’s other family rely on a will the singer signed in 2000, before he married Tomi Rae and before the birth of James Jnr. This will lists Brown’s six adult children as the beneficiaries.

‘He thought he had provided for me and Little Man, as he called our son. But every piece of scum and slime came crawling out of the woodwork the day he died,’ she said. ‘There have been lawsuits and countersuits... I know I will prevail eventually, but I’m in a living hell.’

Tomi Rae was just 25 when she became Brown’s backing singer. The genius behind hits including I Feel Good and Sex Machine was 64 and already three times divorced.

The pair wed in December 2001, when son James Jnr was six months old. But after Brown died, his other children – there are at least six and up to as many as nine, depending on who you believe (the number keeps rising as others come forward claiming he was their father) – challenged James Jnr’s legitimacy, claiming Brown had undergone a vasectomy in the 1980s.

Telling the story: Mick Jagger, pictured with one of James Brown's sons Also, has made a biopic

A judge ordered a DNA test which confirmed Brown was James Jnr’s father. Tomi Rae’s eyes welled up as she recalled the episode: ‘They couldn’t do the normal DNA test because of all the embalming fluid in his body. So they had to cut off his legs to get to his bone marrow. I wept uncontrollably when I found out. My husband, the greatest dancer in the world, had his legs hacked off in death.’

But the macabre farce continued. The great soul singer’s body was moved 14 times in the six months after his death, ending up in a temporary grave in the garden of his eldest daughter Deanna’s home in Georgia.

‘That is the final insult to James,’ said Tomi Rae. 

‘He and I would often talk about his legacy. He wanted our home – a 230-acre estate on Beech Island in South Carolina – to be turned into a living memorial, like Graceland. That’s where he wanted a proper mausoleum.

‘But when James died, I was in California. When I returned home, the house was locked with chains on the gate. The people who had taken charge had plundered the place. They auctioned off some stuff and family members went through like locusts stripping everything that wasn’t nailed down.’

She says the first time she has been inside the house they shared since his Christmas Day death in 2006 was a few week ago after the movie’s premiere in Augusta, Georgia. 

‘I walked through and just wanted to weep. The Christmas tree was still up, but the presents under the tree from my husband to our son had been opened and ransacked. They’d taken all my jewellery, clothes, furs, all James’s awards.’

Tomi Rae is now resigned to the fact that the legal wrangling could go on for years, saying: ‘My husband was a prolific womaniser. There are the children we know about but there are more and more people coming out of the woodwork claiming to be his. They are doing DNA testing all the time.’

Tomi Rae, who was hired by Jagger to be a consultant for the new film, is now working with the Rolling Stones star and his team on a two-hour documentary which will tell the story of the battle over Brown’s estate.

Brown was raised in a brothel by his aunt after his mother abandoned him as an infant and his abusive father refused to care for him. It was this rejection that is believed to have led to him becoming a ‘control freak’ in later life.

Caring: The soul legend 'never forgot where he came from', wanting to help his family and those in poverty

‘He always insisted on being called Mr Brown, even by me,’ she smiles. ‘It was about respect. This was a man who came from nothing, who dragged himself up by his bootstraps. He had talent but he was ahead of his time.

‘Before James Brown, black artists didn’t cross over into the mainstream. Before James Brown, black artists didn’t control their own music. He was a control freak.

‘He hated swearing. When I swore he would fine me. He just wanted people to respect him. That’s what makes what has happened since his death all the more painful.

‘They have disrespected his final wishes – to take care of me and his son – and they have disrespected his body.

‘James cared passionately about money. He knew what he wanted his legacy to be. He wanted to take care of me and Little Man and the rest would go to a charity helping underprivileged children.

‘James never forgot where he came from. He wanted to help poor kids, white and black. He knew what it was like to be hungry and have no shoes on his feet. He often said he wasn’t going to leave money to his older kids because he didn’t want them living off his legacy.’

In later life Brown struggled with prostate cancer, diabetes and a failing libido. ‘I nursed him through the cancer,’ said Tomi Rae. ‘He had arthritis and found it hard to do the splits on stage any more. He was using drugs to numb the pain. He needed Viagra to perform on stage and in bed. He said it gave him extra energy in both places.’

She says her husband would explode in violent rages. ‘I forgave him because I knew it wasn’t personal,’ she said. 

‘I was the only one in his circle who wasn’t a “yes man”. I would disagree with him and he’d throw things and explode in anger. But he wasn’t a wife beater. He was just a tired, sick, frustrated man and I understood that. I forgave the anger and violence. I truly loved him.’

Brown was also prone to intense jealousy. Tomi Rae added: ‘He built a brick wall around our pool so none of the workers in the house would see me in my bikini.’

She believes that drugs may have contributed to her husband’s death. 

‘James was smoking a lot of pot but I could smell something else in there. I confronted him about it [Brown had a previous addiction to PCP or ‘angel dust’ and had freebased cocaine] but he shrugged it off. I think the second I was out of there, James was smoking pot laced with other, stronger drugs.

Icon: Tomi Rae said he would 'turn in his grave' if he knew the trauma the family had gone through 

‘I think it was a lethal combination that killed him. People always wanted to party with James and keep him high. Was my husband murdered? We will never know but I will believe he most certainly was until my dying day.’

Tomi Rae and James Jnr now live in Las Vegas, where she works as a Janis Joplin impersonator. ‘I’ve been forced to busk on the streets at times to make ends meet,’ she said. ‘I’m broke.’

She says Jagger has become a ‘father figure’ to her son. The pair held a mock ‘dance-off’ after the New York premiere of the film.

The movie is generating Oscar buzz, especially for Chadwick Boseman whose performance as Brown has been lauded by critics.

Tomi Rae added: ‘James was someone who believed everyone was out to take get their hands on his money. In death he’s been proven right.

‘The only person who has behaved decently is Mr Jagger.

‘As for the rest of my husband’s family and so-called friends, they can rot in hell.’