Don’t turn it loose, cause it’s a Mutha!

It is inevitable, in a forum such as A Story To Tell, that props have to be given to the obvious as well as the obscure. That for every unearthed treasure trove worthy of discovery and highlighting, there are the familiar workaday musical offerings which form the musical framework to our lives, and equally worthy of mention as we continue to try to bring some interesting insights into the music we all know and love. The cuts that are so deeply ingrained in our individual and collective consciences as to almost be rendered a part of our beings. The trouble is often what to say that has not been said a million times before.

However, sometimes, you just have to state the bleeding obvious and accept the fact that there are some parts of our musical heritage for which words are obsolete anyway. The music itself talks to us enough. Put it like this, if I was to say that there is a picture hanging in a gallery in Paris of a half-smiling dark-haired woman that defies belief in its power of attraction, you’d be within your rights to be singularly unimpressed by my description. If I took you to The Louvre and showed you the Mona Lisa, hopefully you’d see that words simply can’t do justice to some creative endeavours. But that should not stop us trying, especially when the creative endeavour is itself one of rare simplicity in execution.


So to what ubiquity am I referring in this rambling intro? Well, put simply, the most sampled record of all time, the bedrock of a ridiculous amount of rap music, James Brown’s ridiculous “Funky Drummer”. This archetype of funk has come to be known primarily for a mere 20 second burst of Clyde Stubblefield’s unadulterated drums, a solo so pristine and on the money as to inspire a multitude of greatness from its seemingly humble origins. Just 8 bars of syncopated rhythmic brilliance. But in fact the drum pattern and break builds from the very beginning of the track, laying a foundation for Maceo’s tenor sax blasts and James Brown’s own organ stabs, and setting a groove which appears to burst from this loose studio jam, a spontaneous groove which gives birth to a monster right there on tape.


You can almost sense it from Brown’s own vocal improvisations and his realisation of the need to “Give the drummer some” on the track. But he realises also that there is no need for extravagant soloing, because the beat that Stubblefield has laid down is already “a mutha”. And he is right. The mother of all things funky. The whole song, recorded late in 1969, was a double-side single release only, and one senses that history should be eminently thankful that the studio tapes were rolling that day, because the sense of a jam that just hits all the right buttons for this supremely talented group of musicians is overwhelming. The whole song, for anyone who delights in the music of James Brown, is a beast of itself, a head-nodding groove that shakes the hips in the way that only funk music can. And it is significant also that the sampled use of the track has itself been an important part of the James Brown legacy, and that of his orchestra, opening up his canon to a whole new generation of music fans.


It is hard to believe for such a figure that there was a period of time when James Brown’s legacy and legend was not so assured. The late 1970s and early 80s were a fallow period, and his star had waned somewhat, his influence less known outside of aficionados. Far from forgotten, his place in musical heritage was just mislaid and under-appreciated for a time. But the funky drummer helped change all that. In fact, look up a list of all the tunes that sampled it, and you can see for yourself. It helped change a whole lot more. Uh! Ain’t it funky!