This is the second week enjoying six classics from James Brown and his associated musicians in celebration of 60 years of funk.

James Brown’s ‘Funky Drummer’, first released as a 1970 single, is an extreme example of his rhythm-over-melody approach. Although he rarely played drums on record, Brown’s keenness might have stemmed from his drumming lessons as a kid. He had learned the drums from “A man named Mr. Dink”, Brown wrote in his memoir, when music was “just there in the community.” At the birth of funk with ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’, Brown had “discovered that my strength was not in the horns, it was in the rhythm. I was hearing everything, even the guitars, like they were drums.”

‘Funky Drummer’ is also an example of how misleading artist credits can be: this is a ‘solo’ release, but it’s arguably Clyde Stubblefield’s song as much as it is Brown’s. The drummer became known as the Funky Drummer for his drum break, which was the foundation of hundreds of ’80s and ’90s hip-hop tracks. For much of the 9-minute mix of ‘Funky Drummer’, released on the 1986 compilation In The Jungle Groove, there is only drums. Not even guitars and horns playing like drums – just Clyde Stubblefield’s kit.

The single reached no. 51 on the pop chart at a time when Brown’s emphasis of rhythm was a stark outlier. In March 1970, songs like The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ and Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ were topping the chart.

It’s not just melody that rhythm is prioritised over, but also lyrics and conventional song structure. The first two minutes have a minimal vocal from Brown, with only one real line: “Cut out the lights and call the Lord.” They’re built on a four-punch horn line and Stubblefield’s fidgety beat. He kicks on the One and the second eighth-note, and plays a flurry of ghost notes on the snare and hi-hat. Stubblefield’s feel was instinctive: “I came up with that out of the blue” (11:10 on the below video, with discussion and a demo of the song starting at 9:20). Throughout the syncopation, the snap of his snare bites through.

Brown’s encouragement of his band – very much a recurring theme in this era – starts towards the end of the a-side (‘Part 1’). In ‘Part 2’, Brown improvises more lyrics, before telling the band, “I want to give the drummer some”, an instruction that has become about as famous as many of his song titles. He tells Stubblefield, “You don’t have to do no soloing, brother. Just keep what you got.” He counts the band out and Stubblefield shines.

Music historian Uchenna Ikonne said in We Want the Funk (2025),

“James Brown is one of the great musical geniuses of the 20th century. Because the rhythmic concept that James Brown introduced to American popular music basically brought the elements that we thought of as being background into the foreground. And because what James Brown did was so simple – or at least it seemed simple – it’s hard for people to understand that it is genius.”

Perhaps no song better embodies that background-into-foreground concept better than ‘Funky Drummer’, the song most sampled in hip-hop, a music built on drums.

Top image from Discogs.