1970 · Behind the Songs
An improvised drum break, eight bars long, that became raw material for a generation.
“Funky Drummer” was recorded on 20 November 1969 at King Studios in Cincinnati, Ohio, and released by King Records as a two-part 45 in March 1970. The session is an extended vamp with guitar, tenor saxophones and organ trading short figures over it, but what matters is what happens near the end, when Brown asks the band to “give the drummer some”. Clyde Stubblefield, told by Brown to do no soloing and just keep what he had, plays an eight-bar unaccompanied break that became one of the most sampled recordings in music. The band on the date included Maceo Parker on tenor saxophone, Fred Wesley on trombone and Jimmy Nolen on guitar, and Brown himself is said to have named the tune on the spot: “The name of this tune is ‘The Funky Drummer’.”
As a single it was modest: number 20 on the R&B chart and number 51 on the pop chart, and it did not get an album release until the 1986 compilation In the Jungle Groove. Its second life began in 1986, when “South Bronx”, “Eric B. is President” and “It’s a Demo” sampled Stubblefield’s break, and Public Enemy, N.W.A, LL Cool J, Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys followed. Stubblefield had no songwriter credit and received no royalties; in 2011 he told The New York Times that it was “disrespectful not to pay people for what they use.”