Ashley's Roachclip

The record

The Soul Searchers were the Washington, D.C., band led by guitarist Chuck Brown, later known as the Godfather of Go-Go. “Ashley's Roachclip” appears on the group's 1974 album Salt of the Earth, released on Sussex Records as catalog SRA 8030 and produced by Carroll Hynson and Joe Tate. The song was written by Lloyd Pinchback, who played flute and saxophone. The lineup included John Euwell on bass, Kenneth Scoggins on drums, Lino Druitt on congas and bongos, Bennie Braxton on organ, John Buchanan on trombone, piano and synthesizer, and Donald Tillery on trumpet, with Brown on guitar. The track runs 5:36, and several players, including Tillery, Buchanan, Druitt and Pinchback, are also credited with percussion.

The break

From about 3:30 to 3:50 the band drops back to a drum and percussion break. Scoggins plays straight eighth notes on the hi-hat under a steady kick and snare, with percussion around it, a cleaner and more even groove than the swung go-go rhythms Brown's band became known for. Its steady tempo made it easy to loop.

Into hip hop

The break was issued on Ultimate Breaks and Beats and quickly became a producer's staple. Eric B. & Rakim's “Paid in Full”, the title track of their 1987 debut album, is its best-known use, and LL Cool J's “Jack the Ripper” took it the same year. In 1988 it showed up on Slick Rick's “Hey Young World”, Run-DMC's “Run's House” and Eazy-E's “Gimme That Nutt”. 3rd Bass, the Geto Boys, 2 Live Crew and Ice Cube followed, and P.M. Dawn built “Set Adrift on Memory Bliss” around it in 1991. Ice Cube's “Jackin' for Beats” used it as one of many borrowed beats, and Ab-Soul returned to it on “Tree of Life” in 2012. Turntablists used it as raw material as well, including the Invisibl Skratch Piklz on “Ah One, Two, Three, Cut”.

Legacy

Beyond hip hop, the break was used on pop and dance records by acts including EMF, Milli Vanilli and Duran Duran, which carried the Soul Searchers' drummer into the charts two decades after the album came out. Salt of the Earth remains a sought-after original pressing among breakbeat collectors, and the track is one of the most recognized drum breaks to come out of Washington's funk and go-go scene.