To celebrate 60 years since the birth of funk, in the next six weeks we’re digging six highlights from James Brown and the musicians who played with him.
‘Doing It To Death’ was first released as a 1973 single and credited to Fred Wesley & The J.B.’s. A 10-minute version then appeared on the album of the same name by The J.B.’s, released later that year.
Starting at 1:25, after Brown has yelled a couple of “Fred!”s, Wesley plays a trombone solo. On the fantastic documentary We Want the Funk (2025) (available on BBC iPlayer and PBS), Marcus Miller called Wesley’s solo “the funkiest trombone solo that ever got recorded.” (Discussion of the song starts at 18:42 on the doc.) Wesley said, “Everybody who hears that solo remembers it”. When people meet him, they sing the riff that arrives at 1:34. Miller said, “This was a funk solo, and a funk solo had repetition in it.”
If there was to be a fourth pillar of funk to be added to the three discussed in Friday Funk #3 – polyrhythms, syncopation, and the One – it would certainly be repetition. Repetition is everywhere in ‘Doing It To Death’: the melodies in Wesley’s solo, the bass that plays the same two-bar line throughout, the guitar chords, and Brown’s hook: ‘We’re gonna have a funky good time.” (It’s a rare Brown song where the title doesn’t appear in the lyrics.)
Wesley had previously said he didn’t have much of a concept of the One (in 1995, on the Rock & Roll Special Collection). But on We Want the Funk, Wesley spoke more clearly about it: “James Brown found out that if you hit the One strong – that what comes after that is funky.”
In that famous trombone phrase, Wesley plays his sustained, high-pitched note on the One. There’s more sustain all around than in most Brown tunes: the bass’s last note in its first phrase (before it hits the One on the second bar), the guitar’s last chord in its sequence, and Brown’s “We’re gonna take you hiiiiiiiiiiigher!”
After three minutes, Brown tells the band, “In order for me to get down, I need to get in D.” In typical fashion, he heightens the anticipation for a bridge section. This song’s bridge is unusual in that it modulates down. The band go from an F minor key to the D (minor) that Brown instructs, dropping three half steps (a minor third).
In the single’s closing, the band join in on the hook, and Brown and Wesley makes their studio chatter sound like more hooks: “Don’t moan so much. Don’t moan SO MUCH!”; “Maceo – you know, like ‘Maceo, won’t you blow?’”
In the 10-minute version, we get to hear Maceo Parker’s solo, which starts uncharacteristically tentatively – perhaps in part because he’s on flute, rather than saxophone. He soon introduces increasingly funky phrases, and like with Wesley’s trombone that means repetition. Brown returns to the hook, and Parker has the freedom to blow. When he’s on a roll, Brown winds him down and more studio chatter and laughter add to the house party feel. Parker gets to play some more after another instruction from Brown. Long after the latter’s “Make it soft”, the track fades out after 10 minutes. They did it to death.
Top image from Discogs.