The funky drummer

The funky drummer, recorded on the 20th November 1969 and from the James Brown single of the same name, is possibly the most sampled break of all time as well as being one of the funkiest, syncopated, fattest drum breaks of all time. The drummer of the title is Clyde Stubblefield.

But did he come up with this spontaeously? Spurred into superfunk action when JB urges "1..2..3..4..hit it" or was he working up to it over his career so he could take funk drumming to the next level and launch a thousand MPCs? Where did that funkiest of drum breaks come from?

So I went looking and...

“That rhythm never excited me,” Stubblefield admits. “We went into the studio and it was a bad day. I just started playing a rhythm and the band jumped in. That’s where that came from. We all just said, ‘Okay, that’s fine. That’ll work.’ It wasn’t something we really grooved on. And everybody uses that to sample.”

(from this biography)

Oh well.