Funky Drummer

The record

“Funky Drummer” was recorded by James Brown and his band on November 20, 1969, at King Studios in Cincinnati, Ohio. The session lineup included Clyde Stubblefield on drums, Fred Wesley on trombone, Maceo Parker and Eldee Williams on tenor saxophone, St. Clair Pinckney on baritone saxophone, Jimmy Nolen and Alphonso “Country” Kellum on guitar, Charles Sherrell on bass, and Richard “Kush” Griffith and Joe Davis on trumpet, with Brown on vocals and Hammond organ. King Records issued the song in March 1970 as a two-part 45, catalog 45-6290. It reached number 51 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 20 on the R&B chart. The full-length take had no album release until the 1986 compilation In the Jungle Groove.

The break

Late in the recording the band drops out and Stubblefield plays an unaccompanied eight-bar pattern. The groove is built on a steady, lightly swung hi-hat, a syncopated kick drum and ghosted snare notes around a firm backbeat. Because the solo is exposed, with no horns, bass or guitar on top of it, it could be lifted cleanly once digital samplers became affordable in the mid-1980s.

Into hip hop

The 1986 appearance of the complete take on In the Jungle Groove put the solo in the hands of a new generation of producers. That year it turned up on Boogie Down Productions' “South Bronx” and Kool G Rap & DJ Polo's “It's a Demo”, and Kool Moe Dee used it on “Go See the Doctor”. Public Enemy's Bomb Squad built it into “Bring the Noise” in 1987 and buried a fragment of it under the layers of “Fight the Power” in 1989. Eric B. & Rakim's “Lyrics of Fury”, Run-DMC's “Run's House” and N.W.A's “F*** tha Police” all used it in 1988. LL Cool J's “Mama Said Knock You Out” and Dr. Dre's “Let Me Ride” carried it into the 1990s.

Legacy

Stubblefield received no songwriting credit on “Funky Drummer”, so he was not paid royalties when the break was sampled. “I think it's disrespectful not to pay people for what they use,” he told The New York Times in 2011. He released his own album, Revenge of the Funky Drummer, in 1997, and died in 2017. The break remains one of the most widely sampled drum patterns in recorded music, used well beyond hip hop by pop acts including George Michael and Ed Sheeran.