A week before Thanksgiving, 1969, James Brown and the latest incarnation of his backing band were holed up at King Records in Cincinnati, Ohio. On the drums that day was Clyde Stubblefield, who had joined the band in 1965 – at the time, as one of six drummers Brown would shuffle between when unsatisfied with the particular sound he was getting. By the fall of ‘69, however, Stubblefied, along with John “Jab’O” Starks, had outlasted the pack.
By Amos Barshad song in hip-hop history
As Stubblefield tells it, he was playing an improvised groove when Brown walked into the studio and immediately took to it. “Brown says, ‘Hey, let’s make a song out of that. We already have the rhythm.’ So he starts singing. Then the horns come in. And we got a song. It was just a groove. Just a jam tune.” The track the band cut that day is also, thanks to Brown’s narration, a document of the session. On the record, the Godfather takes command as usual, dropping his proto-rap skitters – “Tall women! / is all I need / I ‘member / riding the breeze” – and every manner of uhs and ahs. Around four-and-a-half minutes in, he turns his attention to Stubblefield. “Fellas, one more time,” he instructs. “I wanna give the drummer some of this funky soul we got here.” And then he addresses Stubblefield directly -- “You don’t have to do no soloing, brother, just keep what you got” – and portends the moment to come: “Don’t turn it loose, ‘cause it’s a mother.” Some more announcements, a four-count, and then the whole band drops out but Stubblefield: eight bars of a crisp, crackling beat -- hard as hell, but with a playful little snare shuffle – follow. Brown takes a minute to regain his senses, before announcing right there on wax that “The name of this tune is ‘The Funky Drummer.’” Stubblefield’s break would make the record– eventually released as a two-part 45 in 1970 under the name “Funky Drummer”–arguably the most sampled song in hip-hop history. By the late ‘70s, Stubblefield’s pattern had become an elemental building block of hip-hop as one of the first break beats to be isolated by originators like Grandmaster Flash. It mostly enjoys its reputation today thanks to an incredible ‘80s run: Big Daddy Kane (“Mortal Combat”), Kool Moe Dee (“I’m Blowing Up”), Kool G Rap (“It’s a Demo”), MC Shan (“So Def”), Slick Rick (“The Moment I Feared”), N.W.A. (“Fuck the Police”), and RunDMC (“Run’s House”) all flipped “Funky Drummer.” Eric B. served it up unadorned for Rakim on “Lyrics of Fury,” and the God MC murdered it: “a matter of life and death, just like a etch-a-sketch / shake ‘till your clear, make it disappear, make the next.” The Bomb Squad chopped it up for Public Enemy
“The Funky Drummer” is released as a two-part 45. 1970
DISCO on “Fight the Power” (and about a half dozen other tracks) and Chuck D paid it tribute: “Nineteen eighty niiiine, the number, another summer / sound of the Funky Drummer.” By the end of the decade, it was already a cliché. On the Beastie Boy’s Paul’s Boutique – a pinnacle of the pre-licensing-restriction, sample-as-art-form era – production team the Dust Brothers placed one bar of the break beat between “Shadrach” and the interlude “Ask For Janice” as a sly dig at its overused status. But it lived on through to the ‘90s nonetheless. Posi-rap acts (Digable Planets, Leaders of the New School) and post-gangsta rappers (Ice Cube, Dr. Dre) alike kept on riding Clyde’s groove. LL Cool J got well acquainted with it on 1992’s Mama Said Knock You Out, with producer Marley Marl sampling it on the title track and “Boomin System.” “The girlies, they smile, they see me comin / I’m steady hummin, I got the ‘Funky Drummer’ drummin,” LL declares.
Since its peak, notable use has been spotty (Nas’s 2002 track “Get Down” is an exception) but appreciation has not. Boston indie rapper Edan curated a mixtape of all “Funky Drummer” samples, appropriately titled Sound of the Funky Drummer. The Root’s ?uestlove borrowed the moniker for his own mixtape series and his band has played the song live. And top producers still love throwing Stubblefield respect -- Just Blaze, to Remix Magazine in 2007: “Listen to the drummer on James Brown’s ‘Funky Drummer’ and try to replicate it; it is damn near impossible.” Pharrell, to Rolling Stone in 2005: “The illest rhythm section in the world has gotta be Clyde Stubblefield with James Brown.” But what does Clyde Stubblefield think of the deathless “Funky Drummer”? “That rhythm never excited me,” he’s said. “I actually didn’t care about that beat. ‘Cold Sweat,’ ‘I Got the Feelin’,’ ‘Give It Up or Turn It Loose’-- those are the drum patterns that I put together mentally. ‘Funky Drummer’ – not much thought [went] into it.” And how does Stubblefield feel about being the world’s most sampled
“The Funky Dreamer” is released for the part of an album, In the Jungle Grove Kool G Rap samples “Funky Dreamer” (FD) in “It’s a Demo.” 1986
MC Shan’s “So Def” Slick Rick’s “The Moment I Feared” NWA’s “Fuck Da Police” Eric B. and Rakim’s “Lyrics of Fury” all sample FD 1988 interview for Isthmus, a Madison, WI publication, “I made James to a certain extent, but you won’t see anyone’s name but his on any of his albums.” 1983
LL Cool J’s “Boomin’ System” and Dr Dre’s “Let Me Ride” mixes in FD 1992
1989 Run DMC “Run’s House” Big Dadd Kane’s “Mortal Combat” Kool Moe Deep’s “I’m Blowin’ Up” Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” Beastie Boy’s “Paul’s Boutique” all sample FD
1993 Digital Planets follows suit with “Where I’m From”
1991 L eaders of New School sample FD in “Sob Story”
drummer? “The feeling about that is like ‘show me the money,’” he half-joked in a 2003 interview.
Stubblefield hasn’t seen a penny from any of the artists who have sampled his rhythm.
It’s not the modest pooh-poohing of the “Funky Drummer” phenomenon that it appears: a financially motivated resentment runs very deep in Stubblefield’s relationship with Brown. “The only thing I didn’t get off on,” Stubblefield has said about playing with Brown, “was the money he paid you. He wound up taking the majority of it back at the end of the week by fining you. If you missed a beat, or your shoes [weren’t shiny enough], or you did something wrong onstage, you’d get a fine. He’d turn around and do his fingers like five, ten, fifteen. That would be the fine and it came out of our money.”
Stubblefield still plays – you can catch his band at their Monday night residency at Madison’s Downtown in Madison, Wisconsin, his home more or less since leaving Brown’s band in 1971. He’s released albums and toured with former members of Brown’s band, including Jab’O and Fred Wesley, and has a hand in a half a dozen other low-key musical projects. But his legacy is inextricably tied to “Funky Drummer.” And that won’t ever sit quite right: “Somebody sent me a list of all the people that sampled my drum patterns. It’s almost two hundred people. And out of that many people no one’s ever said, ‘Clyde Stubblefield.’” AB
More significant though is the fact that Brown owns all the licensing rights to his songs. “I made James to a certain extent,” Stubblefield said in 1983, “but you won’t see anyone’s name but his on any of his albums. He’d rather give the doorman a royalty on a record than any of his musicians.” To this day, myspace.com/clydestubblefieldband for a more complete list of songs go to: tiny.cc/funkydrummersongs
Edan the Dee Jay makes a compilation album of FD sampled songs appropriately titled, “Sound of the Funky Drummer.” 2004 record MIDI tracks for Tonntracks EZ Drmmer software. 2008 Nas’ “Get Down” becomes one of 100+ songs to sample FD. 2002
2009 Movmnt magazine shows famous sample in an interview with Norman Bender, “The feeling about that is like ‘show me the money.’”
2007 Hip-Hop music producer, Just Blaze, tells Remix Magazine., “Listen to the drummer on James Brown’s ‘Funky Drummer’ and try to replicate it; It is damn near impossible.”
2005 Rapper Pharrell says to Rolling Stone, “The illest rhythm section in the world has with James Brown.”
“The History of the Funky Drummer,” written by Amos Barshad.
LAYOUT???????
