One Song - James Brown's "Funky Drummer" (Part 1)

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

Was James Brown the inventor of funk? Diallo & LUXXURY dive into “Funky Drummer (Part 1)” the first half of the nine-minute funk epic that cemented James Brown as a true master of the genre. They get into the song’s legacy as a treasure trove for hip hop samples, James Brown’s unique presence as a bandleader, and what makes the song fit in the pantheon of perfect wedding DJ songs. Then, they bust out the stems to discuss the percussive nature of every instrument in the ensemble, including the greasy guitar licks, trumpet blasts, legendary sax and organ solos, a rarely heard set of James Brown vocals, and the titular funky drumming that combine to make a colossal 70s classic.  Songs Discussed: “Living in America” (1985) – James Brown “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud” (1968) – James Brown “Please Please Please” (1958) – James Brown and the Famous Flames “Try Me” (1958) – James Brown and the Famous Flames “Buddy Bolden’s Blues” (1939) - Jelly Roll Morton “Out Of Sight” (1964) - James Brown “Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag” (1965) - James Brown “Cold Sweat” (1967) - James Brown “Fun House” (1970) - The Stooges “So What” (1959) - Miles Davis “Mahna Mahna” (1977) - Mahna Mahna and The Snowths “I Be Blowin’” (1993) - De La Soul ft. Maceo Parker “The Grunt (Pts 1 & 2)” (1972) - The J.B.’s “Protect Ya Neck” (1993) - Wu-Tang Clan “Doing It To Death (Pts. 1 & 2)” (1973) - The J.B.’s Subscribe to the One Song Patreon at patreon.com/onesong Check out the One Song Spotify playlist Episode produced, edited, and mixed by Eric Hicks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Carry in the change Take me in the change Take me in the change And you can hear the change And the bleed right here And then he's going to say So hit me now That's actually

Not just a James Brownism It's not just a Shimon It literally is functional To tell the band It's an instruction Go back to the head Go back to the hits And the hits are those

Percussive pre-planned I beg your pardon, but to the people on the dance floor, he's just rapping. But suddenly, he's making things happen. Who? Is that cold? It's 1969. Is that cold, bro? Right there.

There you go. Luxury. Today, we are going way back to the song that some would argue gave birth to at least three musical genres. That's right, Diallo. This song didn't even crack the top 50 when it came out, but its legacy is enormous. countless producers have sampled the song where we were told to give the drummer some, but did the drummer get enough or even any? Yeah, exactly.

Well, today we're going to find out because the drummer ain't had it in a long time. We're talking one song, and that song is Funky Drummer by the Godfather of Soul, the hardest working man in show biz. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. James Brown, one, two, three, four, hit it. You gotta try breakfast. And what better way than with a delicious pratt organic coffee, Starting with just $1 all day, every day now until December 31st. You gotta try breakfast at A&W.

At participating in Ontario. When you're a mid-sized business, you need every competitive advantage you can get. Like an AI solution that works for you, not against you. SAP Grow is built with AI embedded at its core, working across every system. And it's ready to go from day one so you can hit the ground. running. Bring it with SAP Grow. A.I. Cloud ERP for any size business. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diallo Riddell. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist luxury, aka the guy who whispers, interpolation. And this is one song. The show where we

break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres, telling you why they deserve one more listen. You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before, and you can watch one song on YouTube and Spotify. While you're there, please like and subscribe. All right, well, we're happy to say that this is part one of a two-part episode that we are doing on James Brown's epic Funky Drummer. You know, James Brown is one of those artists you can know before you actually know what a record is. You know the hair. You know about the footwork.

You know the screams. You know the cape. You know the whole routine where James looks completely exhausted. Somebody puts the cape over his shoulders and helps him towards the side of the stage. But no, then James throws off the cape like, you thought I was finished. It pulls me every time. And then the band has to perform for like another 45 minutes. But luxury.

Do you remember where you were the first time you were introduced to funky drummer? I would 100% say this is a classic, a sample took me back in time to find a source kind of song. And by the way, by the way, we mentioned it's a two-part episode because we will be going into depth and detail on the extent to which this song has influenced genres. Perhaps even birthing arguably a single genre that changed the world. 100%. We're going to talk about that in great detail on this. two-part episode, but I definitely, for my first example of hearing the song, would have been tracing back a public enemy song, probably, or maybe it was an LL Cold J song, or maybe it was an NWA

song. This song has been sampled 2,000 times and counting. And counting, and counting. Even when we just played the burst here in the studio, it felt like when that break comes in, you feel like you're hearing something plucked from the primordial, you know, musical ooze that will give bird to like a million different life. Funky ooze. It's the funky ooze. Funky ooze. That's absolutely right.

We're going to talk about greasy grooves later. But look, I think a lot of us learned about older music. We didn't start with like a box set and read the liner notes. We heard something on a rap we're going to thought, yo, what is that? Yeah, that's incredible. Whatever it is, this song is infused with not just the funk and the stank and the dusty grooves of it being sampled. Yeah. But it also has history in many, many layers.

Yeah. And that's one of my favorite parts about, like, that's why we're doing a two-part episode. because it's so important to modern music. What about you, Diallo? When did you first hear about the godfather of soul? Honestly, I think that my first exposure to James Brown, just because of when I grew up, it was probably like in a movie trailer.

Like, I feel like every movie trailer in the 80s is like, I feel good. It's like, what happens when he loses his job? Oh, my God. I'm moving it I would now. You just, a memory is being triggered. I may have heard James Brown before all the sampling stuff from a movie trailer.

Specifically, oh my God, I think you know where I'm going with this. You just mean, you just, triggered a memory, a very pleasant one. It's Rocky Four, living in America. Oh, my God, that song is so tight. It's really silly, too. And he's decked out in, like, the All-American Flags. It's all-American flags. It's all

American. It's all high Hollywood production values. But that might have been the first James Brown song where I was, like, aware because I was watching him sing it and perform it, where I was aware of the full package. You're like, who's this unk? He was the very definition of an unc when he sang that song. I mean, because even the hair in 1985 or whenever the song came out,

like that hair was already kind of like, to my young mind, throwbacky. I knew it wasn't modern hair. And it's James Brown doing, living in America. Great song. Listen, I always thought it was funny if someone was like, hey, what's your favorite James Brown song? You know, it might be living in America. I don't know who's going to answer that.

I think they'll piss people off. But it's a good solid tune, you know. I think the other place I got early exposure to James Brown, ironically not James Brown. It was Eddie Murphy's Celebrity Hot Tub sketch on SNL. 100%. Oh my God.

I quote that to this day. Oh my God. That might be one of the funniest SNL clips of all time. Oh, the best of Eddie Murphy was the first piece of content, if you want to call it that. I remember it was the first time I ever cried

from laughing so much. And like that one, I mean, come on. He's like, I put my toe in. Ah! I'm going to make me sweat. Ah! I can watch that.

It is the greatest interest. of all sketch comedy time. I mean, like, he just comes in so hot, no pun intended. And I could watch that thing for her days. With a little speedo on. And like guys who you see in the background of other Eddie Murphy movies,

but they're all fake pretending to play with the trumpet and trumpet. And it's such a weird place in his catalog, too, because this is the guy who was kind of like a revolutionary in the 60s. Like he does famously, say it loud, I'm black, and I'm proud. James is a cultural front.

figure in many decades, not the least of which is his questionable interview, where he kind of showed up, I'm going to say, not sober, and tried to answer the nice young ladies' questions on air. The women love you when you get out there. Why is that, ladies? Well, I'm asking you. Huh? Because I look good.

You look good. I smell good. I feel good. And you sing good. And make love good. Oh. Well, there was. Well, there we are. We don't have to ask anybody else. We got that from the source.

There you are. But let me ask you this. Because that's the conversation we were having in preparing the show. Is James sort of the creator of funk? I mean, like, it's a legit conversation to have. Look, we just have to like, James Brown is such an important, iconic, cultural figure. We are going to have to reduce his importance to just for the sake of this song. We're going to talk about the funk aspect of James Brown. His earlier material is absolutely R&B and

soul. But it's more, there's a lot of ballads like, please, please, please, please. Try me. Try me, try me, try me. Try me. Try me. God and tell me. There's a lot of this six-eight ballad kind of slower. There's also faster songs.

But in this era, we are, this is a James Brown that leads. to the funk era, but we're not there until the mid-6 weeks. Yeah, we're not there yet. And I think that, like, it's important to say that even when he starts making music that you'd have to at least call proto-funk, if not just funk, you know, having talked to people who were live that, nobody was using the word funk in 1965 like that. Like, if anything, funk was a word used mainly by jazz musicians going back a long, long time. That's right. To describe, like, sort of taking something that was, you know, sort of negative, you could say a normal American

parlance, you know, like it was, oh man, the funk, the musty smell, the stench. Literally, the word is coming from smell, stems, but associated with maybe something between sex and dancing and having fun. Absolutely. It's associated with kind of like the fun part of life, but the unspoken of the, you know, the elite classes, don't talk about the funk. It was polite enough that, like, to put the word funk in the title of your song was not really acceptable.

It was considered a dirty word in the early 1900s. Yeah. But I think that we can trace, basically the use of the word funk, two jazz musicians, to take something that had a negative connotation, but then to describe a certain, for the lack of a better term, a certain blackness to syncopation. That's sort of the first time we see it. And you found a great song from 1907. So one of the early songs with the title, with funk in the title, it's unrecorded,

but in 1907, there was a Buddy Bolden song, which at the time, again, unrecorded but existed in, that people heard it would have been called funky butt, which we believe. Which is really just too on the money for my twist. I mean, it's literally the funky butt. It says it all right there. But obviously, with a positive connotation about like this jazz is a sexy, you know, musical form and also very important, you know, to black culture and would soon be important to all musical culture. So in this moment, it's coming into being as an expression that is associated with the new music of the time. By the way, again, they didn't want to put that song on a plate.

It's 78 RPM or whatever. So it goes by the name. You can still find a version by Jelly Roll called Buddy Bold and Blues. Let's hear a little bit of Buddy Bold and Blues. I love it. I thought I had Buddy Bolden Shelf. Open up that window and let that bad air out. Open up that window.

And let the powley out, I thought I heard buddy bold and sing. By the way, I love all the connotations that we were talking about in there. Even a lot of people don't really, Jelly Roll, Morton Jelly Roll was a euphemism for the female genitalia. Yeah, they're doing all kinds of things behind the scenes, and yet right in front of your face. That could be, it's a shared code, right? That not every, if you're in the know, you know what's going on. If you know some hot jazz cat. That's right.

But it's right there in the lyrics, too, that there's the correlation between, like, you're at a hot, sweaty jazz club, and it's sexy music, and people are feeling sexy and drinking, and it's nighttime. And it's infused with the music, but it's also, as he puts it in the sign, stench in the air, open that window. It's funny because doing Sherman Showcase, we had a cartoon character on our show that was sort of like the Soul Train, Train. Yeah. But it was called the Funk Monster. And when we were translating the word funk into other languages so that the show could go out. across the world. It was really hard to figure out, because it's not like the word funk means the same thing in any of these other languages. By its nature, it's slang, so we had to find

other words that sort of gave the connotation of funk. In fact, in most, you know, like in Japan, they still just call it funk, but we wanted it to come across as like a local word, and it was tough to do. The word funk just, it's taken on its own life. You know, it's really tricky and elusive in a wonderful way to try to like define what funk is, but for the purposes of this song, the funky drummer, and what we're talking about, which is James's funk era, then we'll give a real quick musical definition now that we've gotten sort of the broader kind of cultural context.

And of course, it's important to say that, like, in the very famous Fats Waller story where a lady said to him, I think a white lady said to him, Mr. Waller, what is jazz? This is in 1947. It's from the Washington Post. A very famous line, Mr. Waller, Mr. Fats Waller, what is jazz? And he replies, lady, if you got to ask, you ain't got it.

Or alternatively, as it's been reported, madam, if you have to ask, you'll never know. So this line right there kind of sums it up. Jazz, what is jazz? Well, you can kind of define it as the swing. It has an element of blues to it. It is generally performed with some amount of improvisation, mixed in with some amount of preparation.

And that's important for our song today. We'll be talking about that a little later, that balance. Because some people mistakenly think that all jazz or all funk is all improv all the time. Of course it's not. Of course not. So with that said, a little bit of a break, down musically as to what funk is. You mentioned it is something to do. It's got something to do with time.

So syncopation to a certain degree, literally the use of 16th notes in an unexpected way. So in this song, for example, we have done, dun, get to, get go in the beat. Those unexpected percussion things, even though it's a loop and we hear it repeated, every time it's sort of, it's outside of the downbeat. And having these wonderful, unexpected, syncopated moments is very much, a new thing in jazz through funk. The modern music of the 20th century, mostly created by black musicians, has this particular element that doesn't exist

quite as much in sort of the classical tradition. So that's an important thing. It's about rhythm, it's about time, and then it's about this kind of another vague word, but pocket. I mean, that's a very hard word to define. Ah, but we love the pocket. Like, oh, he's in the pocket.

He's in the pocket. What does that mean? It's hard to say. It's a little bit of a looseness mixed with some strictness. Like the time is strict in that you're going to, it's, it's on beat. It's not mistakenly like wobbly like a child trying to play an instrument. And yet there's a looseness between the notes. I don't want to jump the gun, but I do want to say there's usually one node out of those 16 notes that we always hit in funk music. Yeah. We are going to talk about

that one note and that is the downbeat, the one of the measure, the one very important part of today's story. Lucy famously said, you know, George couldn't find the one. That's absolutely right, y'all. And the pocket, again, hard to define, but there's an element where there is space between the notes. Sometimes that groove is a little behind the beat. Sometimes it's a little ahead. Go back to our far side episode where we talk about Dilla.

Always going a little bit behind. You're simultaneously doing something where it's unmistakable, where the groove is. Timberlin, by the way. Also, always a little bit behind where you think it should be. A little bit behind, a little bit ahead. So part of what makes that possible in funk is that a lot of the songs are slower.

because when you have slower BPMs, you can subdivide the bar into those 16th notes. A little more space there's a little more space to have those syncopated moments. You can't really do it at 1.30 BPM. No, not at all. It can happen.

All your DJs out there, no, everything is a wavelength. If you stretch that wavelength out at a slower tempo, then you're just going to have more spaces in there. You can have funk in disco music, but the sort of BPM like continuum, when you start getting into like 110, 115, 120, it's harder to fit those 16th notes into the bar, basically.

So anyway, it's infinitely vampable. It's got a sense of repetition and trance. All of these kind of ideas are part of what makes funk funk, but there's no single thing that you can point to. You just kind of know it when you hear it. You kind of know it when you hear it. You know, I had someone tell me that if you were DJ in a party in the 60s, then all you ever really had to do, like you could have all the Motown songs.

You could have like all the big songs that we know. But you always had to have one James Brown record. Oh, yeah. Because that was the record that you could put on. Right. And the party would always dance to it. I forgot the most important thing, and you just reminded me of it. It keeps people dancing.

It keeps it moving. Punk is about movement. It's about making your body move perhaps against its will. And that's a big part of what makes something funky is that you just can't help up jerk your body to it and dance. James was a kind of guy who had his ear to the street, so to speak. You know, they always said that, like, he always wanted to know what was coming next. And we've already played a little bit of, like, you know, the balladeer,

that James Brown was. But as early as a song called Out of Sight, he's already moving the rhythm to the forefront. Let's hear a little bit out of sight. And you're slipping new, you're more than all right. You know you're out of sight. So this is a blues structure, you know?

It's 12-hour blues. And you can hear already in that elements of what become his arguably the first true James Brown funk moment. So that song is 1964's Out of Sight. It's 1960. It was actually written under a pseudonym Ted Wright, but it's James Brown.

And in his autobiography, James says, Out of Sight was another beginning, musically and professionally. My music changed with Papa's Got a Brand New Bag, but it really started with Out of Sight. Now let's listen to Papa's Got a Brand New Bag the next year. It's the same song, basically, but the funk is dialed up.

And I would argue, like, out of sight is close to funk, not quite. But when we get to Papa's Got a Brand New Bag, let's listen. So hearing them side by side is really interesting, right? It is. It's the same song, but the second one's sharper, tighter. The horns are punching. The guitar is like, you know, the guitar is creating something that hasn't been there before.

I think that even James' voice is percussive. To your point, he would demonstrate parts that he wanted his band members to play. by using his voice like, and then I want you to be like, you know. By his own admission, James was not musically trained. He couldn't play, he could, he played the organ, and he's, you're going to hear his organ parts on this song, and they're great, and it's very charming, they're very percussive. But he himself didn't have the musical language to communicate with his band by saying

keys or chords or even notes. He would sing and describe and accurate, and you amazingly hear him doing that in real time on the song. on the song. He's Duke Ellington calling the... Is he the Duke Ellington of fun? Is he funk Ellington? He's funk Ellington.

Absolutely. He's funk Duda Meldo, too, because he's an orchestrator. He's got the band, and in real time, he's telling them what... Ellington has done it ahead of time. During the song, of course,

there's musical cues all the time between musicians on stage. But James Brown explicitly saying, with words, what to do in real time during the recording, it's so incredible. He talks a lot about sweating,

like when he wants particular people to... By the way, another song for the same period, Cold Sweat. Can we hear a little bit cold sweat? That's absolutely right. So the development of the funk starting in 65 with Papa's Got a Brand New Back. Again, arguably, really the true beginning

of what we in modern day would call funk and funk music and funkiness. And this does go back to the One. So that's one thing to listen for is the downbeat is where the most emphasis is. So the one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four. And that's a little different between the two songs we just heard. And the second one, it's far more important that the band hits that one. Yeah. And it gives you some freedom to be a little

looser after that. So when it comes back down to earth on the one, it's the most explicit hit of all, the most explicit, percussive accent. And when we listen to cold sweat, listen for that one. You'll be noticing it is far more, it's not spread out across the bar. It's really on the one. One. Now we're kind of like I can do what I want Right exactly that's one I just had to get home by a certain time

What time is that? One But then I can do whatever I want But back or by one Right? I love that It's such a magic trick I would argue that

You know in some of those early songs Like the rhythm is like You know It's it's providing some atmosphere You know It's bringing you to an event but pretty soon, the music is the event. Yeah, and this goes back to that sort of definition of funk

that we threw some words out there, but we'll never quite nail down. But this idea of a balance between tightness and looseness, because the tightness is the one, and then two through four, you know, one, two, three, four. Actually, in this case, it's a two-bar loop, but we're getting back to the one, depending on how you count. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But the tightness on the one gives you looseness until you get to that next one. And that's what we're hearing with the syncopation, that second snare hit. Yeah, by the way, I'd like that you point out, this is almost like a two bar situation. Because even that in a weird way, sort of increases the BP, or I should say decreases the BP by half. So it gives you more time to do your syncopated choices in that second bar. And what's fun about this, we've talked about the connection to the Stooges on a few episodes. But now listen to Funhouse.

One of my favorite Stooges of all time. From 1970, same beat. Now check out the drums right here. One. It's cold sweat. One. I'd never thought of that. The snare.

Dun, dun, that particular snare syncopation is the same as in cold sweat. We know Iggy was a huge James Brown fan. Never thought of cold sweat and fun house having that shared DNA. Exactly. One more thing about cold sweat. Peewee Ellis,

James' band leader at the time, said he came up with that part, the da-da-da-da-da-the-horn part. Yeah. From this Miles Davis, song. This is So What? Off of Kind of Blue. From Kind of Blue.

A chords. I mean, So What is very swinging. It ain't funky. But it's amazing that they will take just those two notes and turn it into something. That was the inspiration. Just those two hits, da-da, finds its way into cold sweat and becomes part of the blueprint for modern funk. Oh, man, we got to do a Mel's Davis episode, one of these days. Oh, I'm excited.

All right, we're going to take a quick break, but when we come back, we're going to hear this song come to life. We're going to hear the band create this classic in real time from nothing, with James as sort of the funk orchestra's conductor. Stick around, we'll break it down. All right, welcome back to one song. It's time to get into the stems. Why don't we start?

Why don't we start with the bass? Let's start with the bass. So this is sweet Charles Chorrell on bass guitar. He had just recently in 1968 replaced Tim Drum. one of many personnel changes. There's always this constant rotation of musicians in James Brown. You get hired and fired. Backing bands, that's right.

In 1970, there would be, just three months later, he would mutiny along with some of the others and get replaced by Bootsie Collins. I know, which is a whole different episode of this show that I would love to do. That's right. We definitely will. But in this moment, he is thumping on the bass guitar, and let's have a listen.

And we're just vamping between two chords. And by the way, what you're hearing goes for many, many minutes with slight variations. An interesting kind of thing about it is that the song appears to have been recorded. In this moment, they're in C. They're actually going from C7 to F7. Yeah. But the recording appears to have been slowed down. It's a half-step lower.

Yeah. So for whatever reason, they chose to slow it down, maybe to give it a little bit more... It makes it slower. Makes the tempo slower, a little bit more of a groove. It's funny, the way that he plucks that bass, it feels almost more like an upright bass. Like, it almost seems more like he's got like a jazz tradition in him as opposed to what boots he's going to bring it to the band. Right. No, it could just be how it's miced and engineered. Like, there could just be the highs are cut.

Uh-huh. Like, but also it could be the way he's playing. He could be playing with his fingers as opposed to a pick that would make it more high frequency. But I hear what you're hearing. Yeah. There's definitely some jazz influence in the performance there. And I just want to briefly talk about, I mentioned earlier, this balance in both jazz and funk, and specifically in James Brown and this song, the balance between what's prepared and what's improvisation.

So you hear the song begin with something prepared. There are sometimes called hits or the head in jazz. It would be called the head. The top of the song is the head. It means the whole band has concocted something collectively that they're all going to do together before they go into the next section and start the vein. In this case, the vamp is the two chords shuttling back and forth. But listen back again to that,

dun, dun, da da, da, da, da, da, da, da, the whole band is playing that. They had to prepare that. Here it is again. And I'll actually give you the full recording, just so you know the context. So now you've heard everything prepared. There are two things that were prepared.

And by the way, did you notice that it's a half step lower? Yeah, right? It's a little bit lower, a little bit slower. It's slower. thing the head is one of, I think in this song, I believe there are just two or three things that were prepared. I imagine James came to the session, said to all the players, guys, we're going to start with this head or perhaps worked with his bandleader to perform. Guys, we're going to do and then do whatever you got to do. That's right, because that's part of how James is the

conductor. He has the ability to lead everybody into a change. He often calls it the change. but part of that is by having these landmarks that everyone knows, okay, we're about to do this together. And from that point forward, then they start to sort of veer off sprinkle in their own thing. Which, by the way, is a combination of prepared parts or at least an unchanging part.

Like that baseline doesn't really change. Right. But then we get to the head a second time halfway through the song. So the second time through, James calls it out. So I'll bring in a little bit of James. And it sounds like this. Because this time he announces the, change, listen for it, and he's singing the instructions.

I'm just going to isolate James and the bass, and you'll hear what I mean. So he's shuttling between the same two chords. And here comes the change. Listen for it. It's two bars. And now the head again. And then we go back to the groove. Second time around, the groove is a little different.

But that's sort of what's been prepared ahead of time. Right. And the rest of it is an unfolding vamp where James is listening. He's like, this is going to be important later when we get to the drums. He hears things. He gives instructions. And that's the balancing act between improvisation and preparation. It is interesting because he's hiring and firing people based on what they bring to the musical table.

Right. So these are far more than just your typical session musicians. Oh, they're top of the line. are bringing a little bit of themselves to it, which I'm sure we'll talk about when we eventually get to the splits. Well, their best of the best, and what's interesting about their, I suppose, a lot in life, is they have this incredible opportunity

to perform with this incredible band leader, but it's also under very tight and strict circumstances. Famously, if you've got something wrong, you would be fine. James would call it out. You'd have to put money in the tip jar, which is all the tips go to him. He'd call out a clam, right, in musical parlance.

Like if you hit the bum note or a clam, James would call it out and he would find you. And they all kind of lived in terror of that. Which when you listen back to how repetitive their parts can be, bear that in mind because they're a little bit living in fear. They're a little bit living in like musical ecstasy doing this incredible musical performance. But they're also attentive to their band leader

being a real strict band leader, taskmaster. Another interesting thing that happens in this song is in the first half, I'll play it again, but the bass is shuttling between two chords. It starts right away after the head. And that's what I was mentioning before. We're going from C to F, basically.

Pull back to cover. I didn't mean to put James in there, but it was fun to hear him. So the first couple of minutes of the song, basically, looks like three minutes of the jam. Sweet Charles Sherrill or Shirel is shuttling between those two notes. And putting little fills in there, a little chromaticism. When we get to that change, I'll play what he plays again.

He's got two bars. And in his mind, he's going, okay, I need to get us back to the hits. Which are more like where the horns are, right? That's right. It's the head. It's the hits. It's the one prepared part of the song. And then what's interesting is they change.

In the second part, we move to D. We go up a whole step. And he's not shuttling anymore. He's just playing the root. So listen to what he plays. I'll play the whole thing. I'll play him ending the shuttle into the change and the hits.

And then we're going to go to D and what he plays is different because he doesn't have to go between the chords. He's just doing the root. Let's hear it. Here's the change. To the head. Now we're in D.

Wow. He just has to emphasize that D and that's that's dope he's doing a whole new that sounds like tribe called quest that sounds like dj mugs like that baseline's perfect and it's a lot of work it's a lot of work to play that over and over again and you don't know how many minutes you're going to be playing this just looking for james to be like okay oh in concert that might go out for 15 minutes you got to have strong strong strong I imagine the tips of his fingers and thumbs just being hard as rocks. Hard as rocks.

And he pretty much does that to the end. And it should be said that the entirety of this session, the single that was released originally in 1970 was an A side and a B side, part one, part two. That's why the song is called Funky Dumber Part 1 and 2. But each of the A side and the B side are both two and a half minutes each. And the whole recorded performance is actually nine and a half, almost 10 minutes long. Wow. So he's playing da-d-d-d-da-da-da-da-da-da-dun.

essentially for like six more minutes. So he's getting a work out there. Let's go to the guitar. What's happening with the guitar on this song? So we have two guitar players on this song. Jimmy Nolan, famous guitar player who's credited with, from 65 to 70, I should say. He was replaced also by a Boots by a Collins. Bootsie's brother Catfish replaced him. He was part of the uprising, I suppose, just a few months after he recorded this.

Yeah, yeah. But at the time, Jimmy Nolan was still in the band, and so was Alfonso Country Kellum. Now, I'm not sure there's two guitar parts in this, and I'm not sure which is which. I'll play them both, and we'll talk about him after. So this first part is really minimal and sparse. So every two bars, he just says that little melodic thing. Little melody.

With slight variation. That's pretty much what he's doing the whole time. Wow, that's barely behaving like the guitar that we would usually imagine on a James Browns. Well, that's, I think, happening in the other one. Let's listen to the second guitar. It is playing actually some jazz chords. Important to mention, too, that throughout the course of the song,

they play different parts, but in each section, they're kind of locked into the thing you're hearing. So the first guitar is pretty locked into that minimal sparse, every two-bar melody thing. The second guy, and again, I'm not sure which one's Jimmy Nolan and which is Alfonso, Country Kellam. But the second one is doing kind of more of a jazz. like sevenths you get the full seventh chord with some extensions in there let's listen

spice your notes in there so I'll put them together here's the second guitar so that's how they interact a lot of space in there so that's where we get the kind of chord quality because the baseline is just giving us the roots that's where we're getting the C7 to F7 situation. But they're just jamming on that up until we get to that second change. It sounds like they might be doing this for as long as our bass players playing that. It's a

six minute groove until you get to the concert and James decides the song is 20 minutes long. That's right. It can change every time. If they had performed a second take, it might have been completely different. You got to wait for him to say, all right, now. You got to listen to James. The creativity doesn't come until James tells you it's time to be creative. So in part two, after we hit the change,

remember we had that hit the change and then we go the head again, and then we're into D. They both change their parts a little bit. So let's listen to that first guitar again. Actually, I'll play the whole change through because that's fun to hear. So here is the end of what we were hearing into the two bar change, the head, and then the second part. Here's the hit. New part.

I'll play them separate so you can hear what they're each two. Here's the first one again. Oh, that's interesting. He just did that new part for a moment. Yeah. And then he stopped doing it. I wonder if James gave him a look. There's always like a slight variation, like just the tiniest little bit.

No, it's interesting because I'm getting in the headspace of to be a guitar player and to have a sense of there is a part or maybe you're looking for a part, but you're also like feeling James's eyes on you and feeling judged. Listen, I've worked for very demanding bosses. I know the feeling. But you know what's interesting about these guitar parts is that if you heard them in isolation, you might be like, oh, that's it? You know what I mean?

They're very minimal. They're sparse. But I guarantee you, can you play the song without those guitar parts? Sure. I have a theory. All right, let's give it. I just want to hear everything. With the exception of the guitars and James, let me just hear the rest of the groove.

Drums, bass, and horns. Yeah, let's hear that. Yep, I think I'm right. Right. Here's my theory. Here's my theory. Yeah. You sometimes listen to those guitars, you're like, oh, that's it. But you take them away. Yeah.

And the groove loses some grease. Yeah. I like some grease on a groove. Yeah, because... I like a greasy groove. That's absolutely right. The bass isn't doing anything particularly syncopated or funky. Yeah.

And the horns are stabbing staccato kind of punctuation marks. Sure. They're percussive punctuation. But you have a steady groove that's closer to the drums. Yeah. There's like 16th notes and more activity. maybe in the guitars? I think that staccato

in the staccato that's happening in the strings is absolutely necessary. It's doing the job perfectly because it's like a perfectly shot scene in a movie, but there's no tension. Those guitars are giving me the tension. Yes. With all the little things that they're doing,

like it's just, it's moving the air around my ears so that I feel like I either have to move. It's fight or flight or dance. You're absolutely right. And what contributes to the tension also, earlier on at least, is that the vamp has the seventh in it, the seventh is a very unresolved chord.

Yes. So you're getting a little bit of like tension that never resolves. Never resolves. From bar to bar, we're hearing that da-na-na-na-na-nut. That seventh right there, we're never right, the root.

Yes, that's what makes you want to get up and dance. Yeah, so that first guitar, it's interesting. When we go into D, it sounds like he has an idea and he plays it a few times and then gives up on it. Let's listen to that. Here's the new part. So he's doing that. And he does it twice more, then he stops.

And then he does that. Right? You can almost see him like in the student like, hey, you like that, Jay's the Jay's. And Jay's like, he's like, uh, never mind. I'll go back to this. He got some vibes from something that that wasn't what to do. Or it could have been because the second part that was being played sounded like this. And by the way, you can hear all the bleed.

They are all performing together. They're in the same room. So they're listening to each other. This is a full band performance. This is not an over. up situation. So maybe he heard the second guitar player playing this new idea and he responded like, oh, wait a second, I'm going to dial my part back. So let's listen to that. Here's the second part. I'll play him together. Because he was kind of playing over him a little bit. And now they're

more trading back and forth in space. Maybe that could be it. It's interesting to listen and try to get your son in the head's back. All I'll say is, me and I'm sure always call that monomona. Menomina. Yeah, when you do, monomina, do, do, do, do, do, do.

And then, it's some way like, and then everybody starts looking at you, like those Muppets. I'm sure you guys see that sketch. Monomona. Monomona.

Monomona. Every time I see that sketch, Because the second he did something that he was feeling that moment and was living his truth in that moment, his bandmates completely forsake him. And then he looks around. Nobody else likes this, huh? If you insist, that's so funny.

He is artistically restricted. And I feel for that Muppet. Let's listen to that moment one more time. I'll put them both together. So, like, let's listen to poor guitar player number one, getting rejected or feeling like he shouldn't do what he's doing. From the head. From the head.

From the head. From the head. Stop it. Stop it. Okay. Right? That's all he does. So funny.

So funny. Sorry, man. Those rejections are tough when you have your heart on your sleeve. Well, both of those guys do it pretty much for the next six minutes. Once they find those parts, they lock in and that's what's happening in the guitars for the rest of the song, basically. You know, even when we're not talking about the drums, I feel like every instrument in that room is finding its own way to be percussive.

And perhaps nowhere is that more stark and specific to James Brown than the horns? Absolutely right. Every instrument is a drum philosophy that's starting to happen in James Brown's band in the mid to late 60s is especially noticeable in the horn section. What you're hearing specifically is,

I believe, six different players, at least the credits on the record, give six names. Fred Wesley, Macyo Parker, the Horny Horins, Wesley on trombone and Macyo on tenor sax, I should say. And then we also have two more trumpet players, Richard Cush Griffith and Joe Davis,

and another tenor sax, L.D. Williams, and finally, St. Clair Picney on Maritone Sacks. Can I just say Fred and Macyo got a lot of love? Because even if you weren't an expert in all things, James Brown and the J.Bs, you know those two names. You know those names. Because he calls them out every time.

Yeah, yeah. Macyo in particular gets a lot of Maceo. Well, I like that. Fred. Fred? Fred. Yeah. I always wondered, who's Fred?

I always wondered, who's Fred? He's like, Fred? Yeah. Well, let's hear the horns. Let's hear the horns. And again, this is a pre-planned part. This is the head. The hits, hit me.

So that four-note riff is all it is. Yeah. They prepared it in advance. It reminds me, I remember I was in my first college, my first band was in college. And it would be the drums-based guitar singer, like we're kind of our own entity. And then the horned.

there were three horn players, a trumpet, my guy, Nick guitar, shout out to Nick if you're out there, and I can't remember the two other guys, but I remember as part of rehearsal, there would always be this interplay where the band would get together occasionally, but a lot of times the horns would be off on their own kind of getting their parts together.

Because you've got to interlock perfectly. You've got to have the same articulation, the same, like the note choice to create the chord, and your timing has to be tight. So that would be its own sort of sub-examination, sort of sub practice. So think of these six guys in James Brown's band are definitely having a sub practice to lock in together. Can I just say I miss being in the band? I miss the smell of the trumpets because they always have that oil that they have to use on their instruments. Well, they also have to like, they also have their own like their own breath, which forms like, you know, watery stuff that they have to dip out.

Disgusting. Horn water. You don't want to drink that horn water. Gross. But I do miss the smell of brass instruments. I feel like that's a distinct smell from my child. I was a drummer. Okay. And I feel like the drummers and the brass section always had a little bit of a rivalry, because we were like the cool guys,

was the other cool guys. A little bit, yeah. The woodwinds, they were fine. The horns, though, it's a different kind of sexy. It's a big sexy. It's like band sexy, you know, drummer sexy, face player sexy is one kind. It's like that kind of sexy.

But brass sexy is a different kind of sexy. I was always jealous because at the end of a performance, all they had to do is take out the mouthpiece, boom, boom, boom, boom, lock up and go. So they could go talk to the girls' drums. You had to break down the drum, the thing, the drum stand.

You had so much more to break down. At the time you were finished bringing it down, the trumpet players have walked off with all the girls. Fair point. So what's interesting about this song as we're breaking it down across the nine minutes. If it weren't for the funky drummer, that important historical moment,

that birthed a big portion of hip-hop, if not hip-hop completely. The song is mostly a vamp with the shine being on the sax, Macyo, and there's also an organ solo. And what's happening mostly in the song is an interplay between those two things. So while the other instruments are vamping,

we heard what the bass and guitar are playing mostly the whole time. They're not kind of having their own moments to shine. The moments to shine are really happening in the horns and in the organ. So the first moment where that happens, and I'll play you James announcing it, is the sax solo around the two-and-a-half minute mark.

And here's what that sounds like. Bring on the juice. Bring on the juice. Bring on the juice. So bring on the juice is obviously the cue. He's like horn or sax. I think Macyo in this case, get ready to solo.

So he's giving the heads up that it's about to be your time to shine. Bring on the juice. Make me sweat. Here it goes. The solo. That's Macyo, right? I believe that's Macyo, right?

I believe that's Macyo on tenor sex. And you can hear that there's at least three horn players crowded around one mic. Because as he's soloing, you can hear the rest of them still doing the hits. Yeah. But you notice it's missing the top note. The da-da-da-da is what Macyo would have been playing. So it's missing from the harmonized parts. That again, they would have been off in the other room preparing, locking it in.

So that once it comes time to perform, James does. doesn't notice, because it's very noticeable if any one of those six parts is slightly not exactly on. They're not absolutely locked in. That's how you get that $50 fine or whatever. With the clam. The clam. By the way, that reminds me of one of my favorite De La Sol albums on Blue Mind State. They have a song with Macio, which is a take on their whole theme of IMIB.

And he really does blow the mess out of that sacks. Love that song. So that's one of roughly three sax solos throughout the song. And it should be just pointed out that that is about half the song is soloing sax over the vamp, over the groove. It's a groove, you know? That's the thing about funk that, you know, probably takes directly from jazz even more than soul, which I think of soul is like having, you know, it's song construction more in like the pop vein. But like, especially with funk and this early sort of funk, it could just be a groove. That's how a song that can be like seven minutes on the, seven minutes on the vinyl and 20 minutes at the concert is just, they're just grooving out.

Funk is like the reintroduction, like the jazz on ramp, it comes back into the mix. It was always there in soul and R&B and blues. They have a lot of interplay. But jazz really comes back on the highway and gets in the fast lane with the whole stretching out, vamping, exploring, in between prepared parts, musical attention. It's the balance between what's been planned and prepared and what's. happening in real time is a lot more jazz than it is. I think that's why guys like Roy Ayers, Herbie Hancock, George Benson, they were so easy, they were able to make the transition from pure jazz into sort of like neo-funk so

easily in the 70s because it was a lot of the same techniques. It's how they came up. It's how they learned. Yeah. There's an organ on this song, and I wish I actually did not know who was playing it. This is James Brown on the Hammond organ. And it's really fun to listen to knowing that it's James Brown for two reasons. one, he's doing it in between doing vocal stuff.

It's one or the other. There's some overlap now and then, but for the most part, he's doing his looking around, listening, and then he's deciding, okay, sax solo time. And then he's like, hey, it's not for me to take a solo. I mean, here's my question. Was he playing the organ while singing,

or did he do it one at a time? Well, you can see literally in the stems that it's one or the other. So he's either calling stuff out or he's playing. All the time I've seen footage of this man performing, I've never seen him standing in an organ. Like doing it because like, how could he move? How could he get the James Brown steps if he's standing in an organ?

The other part that's fun to listen to is it's very churchy, it's very bluesy. Yeah. And it's also very, I mean, listen, the word amateur, he's not a professional musician. His musicianship, I should say, is not instrumental in origin. It comes from being a performer, a dancer, a singer, a scatter, a million things that he is. But he picked up along the way enough skills to percussively play the organ, and you'll hear what I mean. Let's listen to this churchy, bluesy, James Brown. ham and Oregon.

I love it. Like a handful of notes that aren't in the chords being played that the rest of the band are playing. They're bummed. He's playing clams, but he ain't charging himself. Well, he might be charged himself, all the clams. But here's the thing. It makes sense that guys like, you know, Iggy Pop and punk guys like James because he, like them, wasn't always the greatest musician.

But, like, those stabs are great. Like, those stabs are bringing so much emotion and vibe to the song that, like, How can you even hate on that? It's super punk rock. It's super protopunk because it's 1969. 100%. Here's my question. Do we think that he had to have an organ player who came out on the road with them then?

I would imagine. I mean, look, in the early days when they were the famous flames, because, you know, again, this is not the full James Brown's story. Right. But he does start life playing with Bobby Bird, whose band The Famous Flames starts to morph into James' band. And on stage in the early days, you know, Bobby Bird would be one of a handful of, you know,

potential keyboard players, for the most part. Right on. But listen to the second time around talking about punk rock. This second solo a little bit later is even more wonderfully random. Check it out. That second chord is like totally random notes. Yeah.

I mean, those are spicy notes that like if I were to sit down and try to break down, like is that a 13th or a 9th? It is in the like repertoire of what works in the song. Like it doesn't break the song at all, but it's clearly his hand pounding percussively in a kind of chord shape, you know, three fingers maybe down, and it just sounds good and it gives a little spice. Sounds so 90s hip-hop to be that. Yeah. But da-da-da-da-da-da-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-t. You know, like... He's playing the ham in the organ like a drum.

Yeah. It's percussive more than it is needing to contribute harmonically to the song. It's another reminder that sometimes if you have a song. musical thoughts, just get in front of an instrument and start doing it. Yeah. Yeah. Or play any instrument like a drum, by the way. Rhythm sometimes can be more important than melody.

A little bit. You can kind of get away with it if it's rhythmically contributing something or on time. I don't think he was that. Is that a 13? No, I don't think he was. It's so great. That habit was like, man, get Patrice Rushing back over here. This guy doesn't know what he's.

do it. Let's talk about one of the most important percussive instruments on this song, which is the voice of the one and only James Brown. And we've got those vocals. Where do you want to start? So I'm just going to call attention to listening for how he's deciding what to do is extremely spontaneous. You can hear him kind of coming up with a word and then like rhyming it in the next line. Maybe he had something written down, but I'm pretty sure this is full

improv. So remember, James Brown before you listen, it's important. Be in the headspace of James Brown you're about to hear. He's the bandleader, so he's listening to everybody else in the room. He is coming up with in real time what to sing into the mic or what to percussively kind of emote. And he's going back and forth between playing organ and calling for somebody else to do that.

This is a man doing a lot, doing a lot at once. Let's listen to what James Brown did in the room that day in November, 1969. Pull back the cover Shades God, it's a raid Shades, it's a raid That's it, he doesn't say raid again Oh, but I like the story

Call the Law Try it again Cut out the lights And call along Again, he's vamping, he's improving Just like he's having the band do He's looking for what the song is it about the raid?

No, it's not about the shades and the raid. He abandoned that after one effort. Now he's into lights and law, right? It's fun how he's like playing with these ideas. I mean, it's so rapy. It's so rapy. Pulled up the shades. Yeah.

Let's play a little more. Then he gets into this idea about calling the law. Call law. Call law. A devil son-in-law. The devil's son-in-law? Yeah. And that's it.

That idea, that's his third idea that he's trying. We're about a minute and a half into the song. We never hear those ideas again either. Like those lyrics never come back again. He comes into this new idea. That's the ball of a lyric. Yeah. The devil's son-in-law, so this guy married the devil's daughter? He's like, that's a great story.

And then literally a moment later, he gets into a fourth idea. That's this one here. Bring on the juice. Bring on the juice. Bring on the juice Bring on the juice Bring on the juice Bring on the juice

Make me sweat Now of course we now know Because we just heard the sax solo That that was his calling for the sax solo Like giving it a heads up Like hey it's about to be your solo But he also could have nodded over to Maseo And he could have been like

Bring on the juice and giving him a look Like it's about to be you But here's something controversial Okay He's recording recording this within a year of O.J. Simpson winning the Heisman trophy. That could have been it. Wow. He was, the nickname was the juice. Wow.

Bring on the juice. I mean, like, that could have any number of... Maybe they had the TV on and there's a football game. It's November. November 20th football season. I thought he's going to be talking about, like, dressing the turkey and stuff. I had no idea. But I just say real quick that I think that he has the coolest way of, you know, announcing, you know, instructions to his band. You know what I mean?

Like, he's literally telling them, like, to go places and do stuff. Sometimes he's talking about the devil's son-in-law, which I feel like that should be a whole movie. Yeah. But, yeah, come on. Like, you know, he's... Yeah, that's about to be what he does next.

So let's take it to that section that we've heard a few times in the other instruments. This is the moment where we leave idea one, vamp one, the two-cord vamp that we've been talking about. Yeah. It's the change back to the head and then the second idea,

which is just D. Here is what James is saying that gets us into that change and into that new section. Carry in the change. Take me in the change. Take me in the change. And you can hear the change in the bleed right here. And then he's going to say, Hit me now.

So hit me now. That's actually not just a James Brownism. It's not just a Shaman. It literally is functional to tell the band, it's an instruction, go back to the head, go back to the hits, and the hits are those percussive, pre-planned, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. I beg your pardon, but to the people on the dance floor, he's just rapping. He's just rapping.

It's just, it doesn't have any meaning, but it has meaning to the band, to the performers. What I'd say is, to the people on the dance floor, he's just rapping. Yeah. But suddenly, he's making things happen. Who? Is that cold? It's 1969. Is that cold?

Right there. There you go. But like, I love the fact that like, take me into change, hit me now. Like you said, these things have legitimate instructional value to his bandmails. That's right. And what's fun is, I mean, I'm going, it's fun to do this show where we're kind of in the chronology, the narrative of the song, where in real time we're two and a half minutes into the jam.

We're there in that day. Funky drummer hasn't happened yet. We have not gotten to that beat yet. So James Brown has just tried two, three, four lyrical ideas. Who knows what's happening in his head? Maybe he's like, man, this session's a total waste of time. I like some of the stuff they're doing, but I don't like anything. We don't know, but we do know that we have one more vocal idea coming up.

Before we get to what would be the legendary beat. Here it is. He's trying out this honky-tonk women idea a little bit later. This is at about four-minute mark. Honky-talk women is all I need I'm a member of the brand-new breed

Honky-talk women is what I want And then he just abandons that idea That just ends He tried that honky-talk women And breed and what I want I don't know about that, James That's pretty suspicious

So this song is recorded In Cincinnati, Ohio It's November 20th, 1969, so yeah, right around Thanksgiving time. It's at King Studios, and it's a recording studio right next to a pressing plant, which is interesting because in some of the documentaries, the musicians talk about how that all contributes to this feeling of speed and immediacy. Yeah.

So they would rehearse, they would jam, record it, and then send it right over to the pressing plant. It could come out as soon as, like, days or weeks later. I love that, and it's important to point out James Brown is on King Records. You know, a lot of people, you know, myself included, like, sort of like put him in the 60s so you assume he may be a Motown artist. He looked up to Barry Gordy's success as a businessman, but he had a very different philosophy in terms of like the music you wanted to make. In his opinion, Motown was like kind of soft, pop, polished.

That's right. And James wanted to make like sort of a raw sound. You've got to realize he's an independent artist in a lot of ways, even though he signed to King and eventually Polydor. But he sees his music as like closer to. the streets, what the streets won't. Yeah, and he's not working for anybody either. There's no one taking a cut of his publishing,

nor is he giving up any of his publishing, as we'll be talking about. Well, he, like I said, he respected Barry Gordy's business. That's right. That's right. Yeah, so what's interesting about that is think about, again, this is November 20th, 1969. Apparently.

In Ohio, for whatever reason I would have thought of it was New York or L.A. That's right. There's Cincinnati, Ohio, and the band has been called into, apparently, a late-night session. So just picture these seven or eight or nine musicians performing to James's instructions, and maybe they're a little tired. In the middle of the night.

The middle of the night. And as the stems unfold and as we listen, put yourself in the headspace of being a musician and unfolding over time. Like, as their parts are being played, the song is developing in real time. It's very much, with the exception of the pre-planned hits that happened a couple of times,

it's very much just an improvisational. They don't know what's in front of them. They don't know that the world's most famous drum break to say nothing of that. It's going to happen for five or six minutes into this, which is really interesting to kind of put your historical head on, the 1969 hour. You don't know that something that one guy is going to do is basically going to outlive everybody. They're all looking for ideas.

They're kind of figuring out what the most interesting, sexiest, kind of most functional part that fits into the rest of it is. They might just be trying to get to the end of the session. I once had to shoot a commercial with, a very famous rapper. What are the most famous rappers of all time? And it was about 3.45 in the morning, and all I wanted to do was just go somewhere and go to sleep.

I don't know why people want to operate at those hours. I don't know what's wrong with 10 a.m. But a lot of creative people swear that they get their best material done at night. I don't know what that is. We're now past that part where we've talked about, like the midpoint and some of the changes. Right. Now here comes a very important part of the problem.

This is the part where you can tell that James is locking into something. Because, again, the whole band started to do different stuff. after that second set of hits. Yeah. You know, we've gone into the D instead of vamping between two chords, and the drummer is starting to do something a little bit different, and you can kind of hear the part in James is what he's saying

when he notices that too. He catches James' attention. Fellas! One more time, I want to give the drummer some of this funky soul we've got, yeah. You don't have to do no solo, brother, just keep what you got. Don't turn it loose. Because it's the mother. Because it's a mother.

I love that. This is the moment James Brown. I like, hey, don't change. Don't try to do some crazy soul stuff because you locked in. Don't let it loose. Yeah, and you can hear when his voice is just isolated. Because these are famous lines, of course, historically documented in many recordings. But when you just hear James saying it, you can kind of picture James going like, whoa.

Yeah, he likes it. You're like, he legitimately like. He just noticed something and he's like, this is very important. Yeah. I found the core of the song. Honky Talk women, eh. You know, shades and raids, maybe not so much. But wait a second, what I'm hearing the drummer do is changing my life.

Because it's a mother, as he puts it, right? So let's keep listening to how James is hearing the drums in particular. Everything else, you can kind of picture one of those moments in the movie where, like, there's an explosion. And, like, you can't hear that sort of high-pitched? All he can hear is the drums. When I count the four, I want everybody to lay out and let the drummer go. And when I count the four, I want you to come back in. He's like, I don't want to hear anybody else anymore.

He said, I want to count the four. My collar. I got the holler. It's in my collar. I said it's in my feet. A fifth or sixth idea now. It feels so sweet. It's in my shirt.

Good God. About to wipe me to death. It's in rhyme that time. It's in my shirt. In my shirt. Something about his shirt in his collar. It's in my shirt. I mean, he's probably just like literally responding improvisation to like, he

He said, in my collar. He probably adjusted his collar. Yeah. And he's like, I'll just use that. He said, it's in my shake and then... In my shirt. First time, I think he said shake. Second time I say he's a shirt.

Okay. Neither time did he rhyme those words. He would have been a terrible freestyle. I walk the floor. I want to walk the flow. Here's the one, two, three, four. One, two, three, four. Get it.

And you can hear him hearing it. Good God. That's all he wants. Ain't a fucking. Ain't it fucking He's giving the guy eight bars Ain't it funky Ain't it fucking

A one two Three four Woo he didn't give them Any Any space to mess up Guys like he's coming back in That one two three four Because listen

I am not changed Obviously But I've counted bands back in When we did like Sherry Showcase live in Las Vegas If you don't give them Much of a count back in That's a real fast

One two three four That's the key came in Like They better have been baited There's no four bar heads up. It's barely even a bar. One, two, three. That's a good headway. One, two, three, four. Whoa, man, you better be ready to go. That's right.

And as we're listening just now to him listening to the drummer, like again, remember, nobody knows as the first bar is happening, nobody knows that there's going to be eight total empty bars of just drums. That hasn't happened before. When is it happened before that you have an eight bar break in 1969? The whole band is like, really? Another bar? All right. Another one? Another one? And then finally, to your point, it's a sudden comeback.

Because James felt that eighth bar happening. He's like, oh, that's a phrase. Okay. Yeah. Let's come back at nine. Okay, perfect. James was probably thinking, hey, I don't want to lose, I don't want to lose the party. Yeah.

By making this dance break too long. Yeah. Not realizing that by making it as long as it was, it would make DJs in New York and the 70s go to that break because, hey, it's much easier to loop eight bars than it is to loop two bars. That's right. And then just to cap it all off, he is pleased his punch. He lets another 16 or so bars go by. everyone's vamping, and he comes back to say one more important thing. Another historical document.

Put this in the Smithsonian. The name of those tunes, the funky drama. Say it again. The funky drama. The funky drama. The funky drama. Actually, you're incorrect. It's just called funky drama.

Right? He's so satisfied. We're seven minutes in and he's like, man, I was ready to give this tune up at minute three and a half. I couldn't find anything. I did my solo. I had some bum notes, but they sounded kind of cool. And then Clyde Stubblefield did his thing.

And now we have a song. And then I left everything that happened before it in the song. Yeah. Yeah. Like, he did not use that. It's all a historical document of this, like, again, I keep saying this, but like this mix of prepared,

but mostly improvisation. This document is incredible. This nine-minute document of a song. And for what it gave us culturally, of course. That's the icing on the cake. So what's fun is that that's all that was recorded on the day of the song Funky Drummer. The canonical version is, I should say that the version that came out first in 1970, I mentioned before was an A side and a B side of a 45, not on a record.

It actually didn't appear on a record until 1986. Which is crazy. Yeah, when it was on Jungle Groove kind of a compilation. But at the time, the song wasn't quite completed. And what's interesting is that the canonical version doesn't have what I'm about to play for you, which are these vocal overdubs. It's only on the 45 version, the two and a half minute version. So James decided to go back and add some more.

He's got these little percussive overdubs that I'm going to play for you now. Koocha, kutja, kutja. And it sounds like it might be him and a couple other guys. It sounds like one vocal. More than one voice. They're just doing this kutja kutja kutja. And that's just added, as an overdub it exists as a track. It's just him saying kucha, kucha, kucha.

And the original 1970 version has that overdub in it. They took it out for what is now the canonical re-release. The nine-minute version doesn't have the kutja-kut. I love it when we play something for the audience where like, hey, you may not have heard this unless you have a rare 45. Unless you have that original King 45 from 1970. So by the early 70s, the band itself became a bigger part of the James Brown experience. And even though there were some lineup changes, you know, Bootsie comes in, some of the horn players that we just mentioned leave.

The J.Bs start releasing records under their own name. Even while James remains the producer leader and gravitational center of the operation, you probably know this song for the JBs. This is The Grunt. The Grunt sampled in so many songs. What's your favorite? I mean, my favorite, I don't know, man. There's Rebel Without a Paws,

it's Night of the Living Base. Public Enemy. Public Enemy goes to the Grin'iard a lot. Like Terminator X at the edge of panic. Oh, that's such a good one. It's also Wutang, though, protect your neck. It's a cat cam, you can't slam. Don't let me get fools on a man.

The old dirty bastard is dirty and stink, they song, you need rolling. With the night of the creeps, niggas be rolling when the stas ain't saying. It's another one of the songs that literally has thousands of samples. It's another bedrock of hip-hop James Brown sample. Certain members of the J.Bs are, are like, incredibly important to the James, like, you know, Fred Wesley, you know, he gets his

shouts out, Macyo, Macyo becomes almost like a command in itself. It's just basically saying, hey, time to step out. No meeting, no email, no calendar invite. Do your solo now. Why don't we check out an example of that. You hear it on this class at doing it to death. By the way, sometimes you think of that song as like James Brown, Funky Good Time, when in fact it's called Fred Wesley and the J.B's doing it to death.

Yeah, the Funky People series, these were core. core, like two of my most listened to recordings in college, I would say, along with like the meters and the funkadelic, like, I was listening to the stuff nonstop, and these two records for some reason just really had their hooks in me, like all the good stuff. I'll take it a step further, even, whenever I'm doing

a wedding, it can be for white people, black people. If they're of a certain age, this is always one of the biggest songs of the night to this day doing it to death. Everybody knows it. And it has that skip step that we've talked about. 6-8, 1-3-4-5, 6, 1-2, 3, 4,000, or 128, 8, I guess.

But it's got the shuffle, it's got the groove. It's got the shuffle. It's three over four. Disclosure's latch, Gwynn Stefani's Great Escape, like certain songs always are. You're just reminding me. I mentioned last time, like sometimes we have phases of the show. We had a three over four phase. We did Blondie, Calmie.

We did a few songs. Heart has a little bit of a shuffle step in Barakuda. Anyway, it's fun to think about these rhythmic patterns and patterns of our show, too. It's fun to think about them. It's hard to mix in and out of as a DJ sometimes. So usually if you play one, you go into another. And going to straight eighth, it's difficult. But you can go into something with swing,

going into a jazz tune right afterwards. Yeah. And in so many of these songs, James is cueing the modulation. And the musicians are responding without losing the group. The instruction becomes a part of the entertainment. Yeah, it's so funny when you really isolated

as we've done on this episode. Like, we knew the whole time that he was talking to the band. But it's so stark when you just hear him doing it. He's like, he's just giving instructions. And it just sounds musical. It just sounds exciting to your... He's leaving the construction scaffolding.

in the movie. Yeah. You know, and I think watching the build the record, I think watching them build the record becomes a part of the record. Now, it has to be said, it wouldn't be the record

without the drums. But we've come to the end of this episode. This was part one. Next week, we are doing a deep, deep dive on the drums and the contributions of one, Clyde Stubble-

A.k.a. the funky drummer. A.k.a. the funky drummer. That's right. We're going to do better than give the drummer some. we're going to give him his own episode. We'll be talking about the famous break and all the musical genres it spawn

in our very next episode. So come back next week for that. Remember, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at, at Diallo, and on TikTok at Diallo riddle. And you can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-X-U-R-Y and on TikTok at L-U-X-X-U-X-U-X. And you can follow our podcast on Instagram

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Help me in this thing. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, musicologist. And every Friday night from 10 p.m. until midnight, KCRW DJ, Luxury. and I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diallo Riddle. And this is one song. We'll see you next time. This episode is recorded at KCRW headquarters, engineering by Katie Gilchrest, produced, edited, and mixed by Eric Hakes. We'll see you next time.