James Brown's "Funky Drummer" (Part 1)

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 gonna say hit me now so hit me now he that's actually not just a james brownism uh-huh it's not just a shamone 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 yeah but suddenly he's making things happen is that cold it's 1969 is that cold 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 you 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 gonna find out because the drummer ain't had any 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 showbiz ladies and gentlemen mr james brown one two three four hit it ♪ music playing ♪ This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast instead of doom-scrolling? Smart move. Another smart move? Getting help from one of State Farm's 19,000 local agents when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling, just another way to save with the personal price plan. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diallo Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist, Luxury, a.k.a. 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. Now, 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? 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, and then he's like, "Oh, I'm done." And then he's like, "I'm done." And then he's like, "I'm done." And then he's like, "I'm done." 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 drummers? 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 Cool 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 birth to like a million different life forms. Funky ooze, yeah. 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 record and 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, 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, was probably like in a movie trailer. Like, I feel like every movie trailer in the '80s is like, I feel good. Oh, definitely. It's like, what happens when he loses his job? Oh, my god. I knew that 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 IV," "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 fit. 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 unk 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, throwback-y. I knew it wasn't modern hair. And it's James Brown doing "Living in America." Absolutely. Great song. Listen, I always thought it was funny if like someone's, 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 that would piss people off. But-- But it's a good, solid tune, you know? I think the other place I got an 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. Sometime I make my break out in a cold sweat. One, two, three, four. Hot tub, hot tub, I'm full of water. Hot tub, hot tub, hot tub, hot tub. 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 hurt myself. Is it going to make me sweat? Ah! I can watch that. Did he put his toe in the water? It is the greatest-- It's the greatest entrance of all sketch comedy time. I mean, like, he just comes in so hot, no pun intended. And I could watch that thing for 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 the trombone 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." I'm beating my head against the wall and working for someone else. Say it loud! I'm black and I'm proud! Say it loud! James is a cultural 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 lady's 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. What do you think that is? I smell good. I feel good. And you sing good. And make love good. Oh. 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 just a 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, please, please, please, please, please, please, please. "Try Me." Try me, try me, try me, try me. Try me, try me, try me, try me. There's a lot of this 6/8 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 '60s. 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. Having talked to people who were live then, 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 to describe-- like sort of taking something that was you know sort of negative you you could say a normal american parlance you know like it was oh man the funk the musty smell literally the word is coming from smell stench 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 the unspoken of yeah the hoi you know the elite classes don't talk about the fuck it was 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 to jazz musicians i think so 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 uh that's sort of the first time we see it and you found a great song yeah from 1907 so one of the early songs with a title with funk in it the title it's unrecorded but in 1907 there was a buddy bolden song which at the time again unrecorded but existed and documented that people heard it would have been called funky butt which we believe which is really just too on the money for my 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 yeah musical form and also very important you know to black culture and would soon be important to all musicals so in this moment it's coming into being as it is 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 right 78 rpm or whatever right uh 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 bold and sharp open up that window and let that bad air out open up that window and let the foul air out i thought i heard buddy bold and safe by the way uh i love all the connotations that we're 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 you're not doing that could be it's it's it's a shared code right that not every if you're in the know you know if you know some hot jazz cat that's right but it's 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 the as he puts it in the sun stench in the air open that window it's funny because uh doing sherman showcase we had a uh cartoon character on our show that was sort of like the soul train train yeah it's a cartoon character on our show that was sort of like yeah but it was called the funk monster and uh 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 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 yes and what we're talking about which is james's funk era yeah 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 yeah mr fat's waller what is jazz and he replies lady if you gotta ask you ain't got it or alternatively as it's been reported madam if you have to ask you'll never know right 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 is all improv all the time of course it's not of course so with that said a little bit of a breakdown 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 don't don't get to get to get gecko in the beat those unexpected percussion things even though it's a loop and we hear it repeated every time it's sort of a loop and we hear it repeated every time it's sort of a loop and we hear it repeated every time it's sort of a loop and we hear it repeated every time it's sort of a loop and we hear it repeated every time it's sort of a loop and we hear it repeated every time it's sort of a loop and we hear it repeated every time it's sort of a loop and we hear it repeated every time it's sort of a loop and we hear it repeated every time it's sort of a loop and we hear it repeated every time it's sort of a loop and we hear it repeated every time it's sort of a loop and we hear it repeated every time it's sort of a loop and we hear it repeated every time it's sort of a loop and we hear it repeated but pocket i mean that's a very hard word to define uh 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 strictness like the time is strict in that you're gonna it's 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 i don't want to jump the gun but i do want to say there's usually one note out of those 16 notes that we always hit yeah 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 he 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 yeah sometimes it's a little ahead it go back to our far side episode where we talk about dilla always going a little bit behind your simultaneous doing something where the it's unmistakable where the where the groove is timbaland by the way also always a little bit behind where you can 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 130 bpm no not at all it can happen all you djs out there know everything is a wavelength and if you stretch that wavelength out at a lower tempo then you're just going to have more more spaces that's right you can have funk in disco music but the sort of bpm like continuum when you start getting into like 110 115 120 yeah 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 know i had someone tell me that if you were dj in a party in the 60s then you 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 you 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 but jerk your body to it and dance james was the kind of guy who had his ear to the street so to speak you know they they always said that like he he 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 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 yeah it's 1960 was actually written under the pseudonym ted wright but it's james brown and in his autobiography james says out of sight was another beginning of a new era of 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 papa's got a brand new bag so hearing them side by side is really interesting right it is it's the same song but the second one sharper 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 uh it's more percussive voice yes it's percussive to your point he would 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 yeah 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 you amazingly hear him doing that in real time on the song. He's Duke Ellington? Yes. Calling, is he the Duke Ellington of funk? Is he funk Ellington? He's funk Ellington. Absolutely. He's funk Dudamel, though, too, because he's an orchestrator. He's got the band. And in real time, he's telling them what, Ellington is sort of had done it ahead of time. Yeah. 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 is so incredible. He talks a lot about sweating when he wants particular people to. By the way, another song from the same period, Cold Sweat. Can we hear a little bit of Cold Sweat? That's absolutely right. So the development of the funk starting in 65 with Papa's. Got a brand new bag. Again, arguably, really the true beginning of what we in modern day would call funk and funk music and funkiness. Yeah. 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. 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. 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. I just have to get home by a certain time. What time is that? One. But then. I can do whatever I want, but back up 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, it's, it's, it's providing some, some atmosphere, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's bringing you to an event, but like pretty soon the music is the event. Yeah. And this goes back to that sort of, you know, 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, but as long as 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. 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 songs of all time. From 1970, same beat. Now check out the drums right here. It's cold sweat. I'd never thought of that. The snare. 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 Funhouse having that shared DNA. Exactly. One more thing about Cold Sweat. Pee Wee Ellis, James' band leader at the time, said he came up with that part, the horn part from this Miles Davis song. This is So What. Off of Kinda Blue. Off of Kinda Blue. Chords. I mean, So What is very swingy. Yeah. It ain't funky. It ain't funky. But it's amazing that they will take just those two notes and turn it into something drastically different. 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've got to do a Miles 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. Propel Fitness Water with Gatorade Electrolytes, Zero Sugar, and Vitamins. Propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self. What propels you? Propel with Gatorade Electrolytes. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast instead of doom scrolling? Smart move. Another smart move? Bundling. Just another way to save with the personal price plan. ♪ music playing ♪ 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 Shirell on bass guitar. He had just recently in 1968 replaced Tim Drummond, one of many personnel changes. There's always this constant rotation. Constant rotation of musicians in James Brown. They 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 Bootsy Collins. I know, which is a whole different episode. 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. ♪ music playing ♪ And we're just vamping between two chords. ♪ music playing ♪ And by the way, what you're hearing goes for many, many minutes with slight variations. An interesting kind of thing. The thing about it is that the song appears to have been recorded in this moment there 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. Uh, 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 Bootsy's gonna bring it to the band. Right, no, it could just be how it's miked and engineered. Like there could just be the highs are cut, 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. Those 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 vamp. In this case, the vamp is the two chords shuttling back and forth. But listen back again to that, 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, it's a little bit lower, a little bit slower, but that first 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 band leader to prepare it. Guys, we're going to do uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, 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. 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, 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 ahead 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. instructions yeah 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 the the musical table right uh so these are far more than just your typical session musicians oh they're top of their top of the line are 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 they're best of the best and what's what's interesting about their i suppose lot in life yeah 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 got something wrong you would be fine james would call it out you have to put money in the in the tip jar and yeah which is all the tips go to him if he called you know he'd call out a clam right in musical parlance like if you hit the bum note or a clam right james would call it out and he would find you and they all kind of lived in terror of that yeah 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 musical um performance yeah but they're also attentive to their band leader being a real strict band task master 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 that's what i was mentioning before we're going from c to f basically i didn't mean to put james in there but it was fun to hear so the first couple of minutes of the song basically looks like three minutes of the jam sweet charles cheryl or cheryl 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 his 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 in 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 and 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 bass line'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 you're just looking for james to be like okay oh in concert that might go on for 15 minutes you got to have strong strong strong fingers i imagine like 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 i'm going to play is 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 drummer part one and two but each of the a side and the b side are both two and a half minutes each yeah and the whole recorded performance is actually nine and a half almost 10 minutes long wow so he's playing essentially for like six more minutes so he's getting a workout 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 bootsy's brother catfish replaced him he was part of the uprising i suppose just a few months after he recorded 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 uh we'll we'll talk about them 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 with slight variation but that's pretty much what he's doing the whole time so i wow that's barely behaving like the guitar that we would usually imagine on a james brown well that's i think happening in the other one let's listen to the second guitar it is a little bit different than the first one it's a little bit different than the first one it is playing actually some jazz chords and important to mention too that throughout the course of the song you know 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 kellum but the second one is doing kind of more of a jazz thing like sevenths you get the full seventh chord with some extensions in there let's listen spicier 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 bass line 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 that's right it can change every time if they had performed a second take it might have been completely different you gotta wait for for him to say all right now yeah you gotta listen to james the creativity doesn't come until james tells you exactly so in part two after we hit the bass line we're going to hit the change remember we had the hit the change and then we go the head again and then we're into d they both changed 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 okay 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 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 yeah you might be like oh that's it you know what i mean they're very minimal they're sparse but i guarantee you could you play the song without those guitar parts like i have a theory all right let's give i just want to hear you want to hear everything with that with that with the exception of the guitars and james let me just hear the rest of the groove drums bass and horns yeah let's let's hear that yep i think i'm right here's my theory here's my theory yeah uh 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 i like a greasy groove that's absolutely right the bass isn't doing any 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 this that staccato that's happening in the strings is absolutely necessary it's doing the job perfectly because it's like a it's like a perfectly shot scene in a movie but there's no tension yeah those guitars are giving me the tension yes with all with all the little things that they're doing like it's just it's moving the air around my ear that's right 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 is 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 from bar to bar we're hearing that that seventh right there we're never right the root yes 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 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 it like the student like hey you like that jay's the jay's is like he's like ah 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 overdub situation so maybe he heard the second guitar player playing this new idea and he responded like oh wait a second i'm gonna dial my part back so let's listen to that here's the second part i'll play them together um 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's interesting to listen and try to get yourself in the all i'll say is uh me and michelle always call that monomena because monomena yeah when you do uh monomena and then everybody starts looking at you like those muppets see i'm sure you guys have seen that sketch monomena monomena every time i see that sketch i laugh because like 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 he's like 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 you're down from the head stop it stop it right that's all he does so funny so funny sorry man those rejections are tough when you have your heart on your 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 yeah and specific to james brown than the horns absolutely right that 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 maceo parker the horny horns wesley on trombone and maceo 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 ld williams and finally saint claire pickney on baritone sax can i just say fred and maceo got a you weren't an expert in all things james brown and the jbs you know those two names you know those because he calls them out every time yeah yeah maceo in particular gets a lot of maceo yeah i always wondered who's fred 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 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 bass guitar singer like we're kind of our own entity and then the horns there were three horn players uh 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 the note choice to create the chord and your timing has to be tight so that would be its own 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 um 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 uh but i do miss the smell of brass instruments i feel like i that's a distinct smell from my child i was a drummer okay and i feel like the drummers and the and the brass section always had a little bit of a rivalry because we were like the cool guys yeah the other cool guys a little bit yeah the woodwinds they they were fine the horns though it's a different kind of sexy because like band sexy you know drummer sexy if bass 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 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 but there's so much time you can finish 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 maceo and there's also an organ solo between the and what's happening mostly in the song is an interplay between those two things so while the other instruments are vamping we heard with the bass and guitar playing mostly the whole time they're not kind of having moments to show right 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 maceo 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 make me sweat here it goes the solo pretty clear that's maceo right i believe that's maceo on tenor sax so 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 is what maceo 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 doesn't notice because it's very noticeable if any one of those six parts is slightly not exactly on yeah on the they're not absolutely locked in that's how you get that fifty dollar fine or whatever with the clam the clam by the way that reminds me of one of my uh favorite de la soul albums on blue mind state they have uh a song with maceo which is a take on their whole theme of imib and uh he really does blow the mess out of that sax so so so 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 it's song construction more in like the pop vein but like especially with funk uh and this early sort of funk it could just be a groove that's how a song it can be like seven minutes on the seven minutes on the vinyl and 20 minutes at the concert it's just they're just grooving out funk is like the reintroduction like the the jazz on ramp yeah comes back into the mix it was always there in soul and r&b and 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 totally 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 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 the first time in a long time i think it's really cool to listen to james brown for two reasons one he's doing it in between doing vocal stuff it's one or the other he there's some overlap now and then but for the most part he's doing his like looking around listening and then he's deciding okay sax solo time and then he's like hey it's time for me to take a solo i mean here's my question uh 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 yeah so he's either he's either calling stuff out all the time i've seen footage of this man performing i've never seen him standing in an organ i've never seen him standing in an organ Like, doing it-- 'cause it's like, how could he move? How could he do the James Brown step? 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. 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 scatterer, 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, Hammond organ. 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. He might be charging himself all the clams. But here's the thing. It makes sense that guys like Iggy Pop and punk guys like James Brown is because he, like them, wasn't always the greatest musician. But those stabs are great. 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 proto-punk as 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 story. Right. But he does start life playing with Bobby Bird, who's banned the Famous Flames. Flames starts to morph into James's 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. Yeah. 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. It sounds so 90s hip hop to me. Yes. Yeah. You know, like He's playing the Hammond 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 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. Yeah. 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 thing. Is that a 13th? No, I don't think he was. It's so great though. That Hammond was like, man, get Patrice Resher back over here. This guy doesn't know what he's doing. 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? 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 band leader. 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. Pull back the cover. Shades. God, it's a raid. Shades. It's a raid. That's it. He doesn't say raid again. Cut out the lights. Oh, but I like the story. Call the law. Tries it again. Cut out the lights and call the law. Again, he's vamping. He's improv-ing just like he's having the band do. He's looking for what the song is. 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 rappy. It's so rappy. It's so rappy. It's so rappy. Pull down the shades. Yeah. Let's play a little more. Then he gets into this idea about calling the law. Ha! Call the law. Call the law. Ha! The devil's son-in-law. Yeah. Ha! 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 a hell of a lyric. Yeah. So this guy married the devil's daughter? He's like, no. 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. Make me sweat. Now, of course, we now know because we had 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 Maceo and he could have been like, bring on the juice and given them a look like it's about to be you. But, um. I mean, here's something controversial. Okay. He's recording this within a year of O.J. Simpson winning the Heisman Trophy. That could have been it. So, like, you know, he was, his nickname was The Juice. Wow. So, bring on the juice. I mean, like, that could have any number of, uh. Maybe they had the TV on and there was a football game. It's November. November 20th. Football season. I thought he was 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, uh, he has the coolest way of, you know, announcing, you know, instructions to his band. Yeah. 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, uh, 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-chord 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. Let's hear it. Yeah. Here is what James is saying that gets us into that change and into that new section. Yeah. Get 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 Brown-ism. Uh-huh. It's not just a Shamone. Hit me! 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-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, bro? 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 bandmates. That's right. And what's fun is, I mean, 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 do not, 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. 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. So here it is. He's trying out this honky-tonk women idea a little bit later. This is at about four minute mark. Honky-tonk women is all I need. What does that mean? I'm a member of the brand new breed. Honky-tonk women is what I want. And then he just abandons that idea. That just ends with honky-tonk 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 you 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 he 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, but 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, like I said, he respected Barry Gordy's business acumen. 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 it was New York or L.A. That's right. They're 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. 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, is going to happen four or five or six minutes into this, which is really interesting to kind of put your historical head on. I know. The 1969 album. You don't know something that one guy is going to do. Yeah. It's basically going to outlive everybody in the world. 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. Or they might just be trying to get to the end of the session. Or they might just be trying to get back to their normal bed. I once had to shoot a commercial with a very famous rapper. One of 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 the midpoint and some of the changes. Right. Now here comes a very important part. 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. I want to give the drummer some of this funky soul we got here. You don't have to do no soloing, brother. Just keep what you got. Don't turn it loose. Because it's a mother. I love that. This is the moment James found. I like how he's like, hey, don't change. Don't change. Don't try to do some crazy solo stuff because you're 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. Yeah. But when you just hear James saying it, you can kind of picture James going like, whoa. Yeah. He likes it. He likes it. You're like, he just noticed something and he's like, this is very important. Yeah. I found the core of the song. Honky Tonk 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 there's an explosion. And you can't hear that sort of high-pitched. All he can hear is the drums. When I count to four, I want everybody to lay out and let the drummer go. And when I count to 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 to four. It's in my collar. I got the holler. It's in my collar. I said it's in my feet. A fifth or sixth idea now. Feels so sweet. It's in my shirt. Good God. About to wake me to death. Didn't rhyme that time. It's in my shirt. In my shirt. Something about his shirt and his collar. It's in my shirt. I mean, he's probably just like literally responding improvisation to like. He said, it's in my collar. He probably adjusted his collar. 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 think he said shirt. Okay. Neither time did he rhyme those words. It would have been a terrible freestyle. I walk the floor. I want to walk the floor. Here's the one, two, three, four. Get it. And you can hear him hearing it. Good God. That's all he wants. Ain't it funky. Ain't it funky. He's giving the guy eight bars. Ain't it funky. Ain't it funky. He didn't give them any space to mess up. Guys, that's music history. He's coming back in with that one, two, three, four. Because listen, I am not James Brown, obviously. But I've counted. I've counted bands back in when we did like Sherwin Showcase Live in Las Vegas. If you don't give them a bunch of a count back in. That's a real fast one, two, three, four. Oh, dude. He came in like they better have been paying attention. There's no four bar heads up. It's barely even a bar. I know. You can go one, two, three. That's a good headway. 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 has 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 by making this dance break too long, not realizing that by making it as long as it was, it would make DJs in New York in the 70s go to that break and say, 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 as 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 this tune is the funky drama. Say it again. The funky drama. The funky drama. The funky drama. Actually, you're incorrect. The funky drama. It's just called funky drama. The funky drama. Right? He's so satisfied. We're seven minutes in and he's like, man, I was like, 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. Kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha. And it sounds like it might be him and a couple other guys. It sounds like one vocal. Yeah, it sounds like more than one voice. They're just doing this kucha, kucha. Kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha, kucha. 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. Yeah. They took it out for what is now the canonical re-release. That's so cool. The nine-minute version doesn't have the kucha, kucha. There it is. 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, Bootsy comes in. Some of the horn players that we just mentioned leave. The JBs 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. It's Rebel Without a Pause, Night at the Living Base, Public Enemy. Public Enemy goes to The Grunt a lot. Like Terminator X at the Edge of Panic. Oh, that's such a good one. It's also Wu-Tang, though. Protect Your Neck. It's another one of those songs that literally has thousands of samples. It's another bedrock of hip-hop James Brown sample. Certain members of the JBs are incredibly important to the JBs. Fred Wesley, he gets his shouts out. Maceo becomes almost like a command in itself. It just makes him say, 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 JBs 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 this 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 could 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. 6-8-1-2-3-4-5-6-1-2-3-4. Or 12-8, I guess. But it's got the shuffle. It's got the groove. It's got the shuffle. It's 3 over 4. Disclosures, Latch, Gwen Stefani's Great Escape. Like certain songs. You're just reminding me. I mentioned last time, like sometimes we have phases of the show. We had a 3 over 4 phase. We did Blondie, Call Me. We did a few songs. Heart has a little bit of a shuffle step in Barracuda. 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. That's true. So usually if you play one. You go into another. And go into straight eighths. It's difficult. But you can go into something with swing. You can go 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 groove. The instruction becomes a part of the entertainment. Yeah, it's so funny when you're 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 ear. He's leaving the construction. A few years. Scaffolding. Yeah. In the movie. Yeah. Yeah. You know. And I think. That's a great analogy. I love that. Watching them 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 Stubblefield. A.K.A. The Funky Drummer. A.K.A. The Funky Drummer. That's right. We're going to do better than give the best. 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 spawned 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-R-Y and on TikTok at L-U-X-X-U-R-Y-X-X. And you can follow our podcast on Instagram and TikTok at One Song Podcast. All kinds of exclusive content. You can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube and Spotify. Just search One Song Podcast. We'd love it if you like and subscribe. And be sure to check out the One Song Spotify playlist for all the songs we discuss in our episodes. You can find the link in our episode description. If you made it this far, you're officially part of the One Song Nation. So show us some love. Give us five stars. Leave a review and send this episode to a fellow music fan. 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