Chuck Brown, who became a local hero in Washington for creating go-go music — a strutting funk variant that is the city’s signature dance genre — and kept the beat going for decades, died on Wednesday in Baltimore. He was 75.


The cause was multiple organ failure as a result of sepsis, Tom Goldfogle, his manager, said.


Known as the godfather of go-go, and almost invariably dressed, onstage and off, in a slick black suit, fedora and shades, Mr. Brown was as much a celebrity on the streets of Washington as any national politician. With steady, midtempo beats that could be extended for hours in concert, his biggest songs, like “Bustin’ Loose” and “We Need Some Money,” became unofficial anthems, even if they never crossed over to a wider national audience.


On Wednesday evening impromptu vigils formed outside Washington landmarks like the Howard Theater, and local officials like Mayor Vincent C. Gray praised Mr. Brown’s role in the city’s cultural scene.


“Go-go is D.C.’s very own unique contribution to the world of pop music,” Mayor Gray said. “Today is a very sad day for music lovers the world over.”


In the mid-1970s, with disco luring dancers away from live bands, Mr. Brown drew on James Brown’s funk, Latin rhythms and the crowd-pleasing good humor of Cab Calloway-era big bands to create go-go.


Playing bluesy guitar and leading call-and-response chants in a grainy baritone, Mr. Brown wove the beat seamlessly from one song to the next, keeping people on their feet all night. He also made whimsical musical connections, dotting his go-go sets with the “Woody Woodpecker” theme and jazz standards like “Moody’s Mood for Love.”


The style got its name, Mr. Brown once said, because “the music just goes and goes.”


Charles Louis Brown was born on Aug. 22, 1936, in Gaston, N.C., and was raised in poverty by his mother, Lyla Louise Brown, a housekeeper. He never knew his father.


As a teenager in Washington he drifted into crime and served eight years in prison for shooting a man in what he said was self-defense. While there, he traded another inmate five cartons of cigarettes for a guitar.


On his release, in 1962, he began to play music around Washington, first at backyard barbecues and churches — his parole officer would not let him play anyplace that served liquor — and eventually in clubs. He scored a few minor hits in the early 1970s, including “We the People” and “Blow Your Whistle,” before developing his go-go sound.


Led by Mr. Brown and his band, the Soul Searchers, the sound spread throughout Washington with groups like Trouble Funk and Rare Essence. But despite a blip in the mid-1980s, when it drew the interest of major record companies and could be heard in a Hollywood movie (“Good to Go” in 1986) , go-go’s extended jams never fit into pop radio formats, and it remained a regional phenomenon. “Bustin’ Loose” was Mr. Brown’s only single to reach Billboard’s Top 40, in 1979, although it held at No. 1 on the R&B chart for four weeks.


With its repetitive, sing-speak vocals, go-go is sometimes cited as an influence on early rap. In 2002 the rapper Nelly sampled “Bustin’ Loose” in his No. 1 song “Hot in Herre.”


In recent years Mr. Brown often performed with his daughter, Takesa Donelson, a rapper known as KK. He continued to tour and release records, most recently “We Got This” in 2010. But wider success was elusive.


By the 2000s Mr. Brown had come to be seen as a hometown treasure in Washington. In 2005 the National Endowment for the Arts gave him a National Heritage Fellowship award, and in 2009 the city gave the honorary name Chuck Brown Way to a block of Seventh Street in the Northwest section of the city, near the Howard Theater. In 2011 he was nominated for his first Grammy Award, for best rhythm and blues performance by a duo or group with vocals, for his song “Love,” featuring the singer Jill Scott and the bassist Marcus Miller.


Besides his daughter, Mr. Brown is survived by his wife, Jocelyn, and three sons, Nekos Brown, Wiley Brown and Bill Thompson. Another son, Charles Jr., died in the 1990s.