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James Brown

Love him, I saw him live just like a year before he died. That was definitely a once in a lifetime moment and I feel so lucky and privileged to have seen him perform live in concert, as I would seeing MJ perform live.
 
By Daniel Kreps • February 18, 2017 • Rolling Stone
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Clyde Stubblefield, James Brown's one-time drummer and the creator of one of hip-hop's most popular samples, has died at the age of 73. Stubblefield's wife, Jody Hannon, confirmed the drummer's death to Rolling Stone. The cause of death was kidney failure.

"The Funky Funkiest Drummer Of All Time," Questlove wrote on Saturday. "Clyde Stubblefield thank you for everything you've taught me. The spirit of the greatest grace note left hand snare drummer will live on thru all of us."

Stubblefield, while a member of Brown's backing unit, performed on the funk legend's classic cuts like "Cold Sweat," "Ain't It Funky Now," "I Got the Feelin'" and Brown's landmark LP Cold Sweat and Sex Machine.
However, it's a 20-second drum break, a snippet of a Stubblefield solo found on Brown's 1970 single for "Funky Drummer," that marked the drummer's biggest impact on music.

The drum break served as the backbeat for countless hip-hop tracks, ranging from Public Enemy's "Fight the Power," "Bring the Noise" and "Rebel Without a Cause" to N.W.A's "**** tha Police" and Dr. Dre's "Let Me Ride" to LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out," Run-D.M.C.'s "Run's House" and Beastie Boys' "Shadrach." Even Ed Sheeran's "Shirtsleeves" and George Michael's "Waiting For That Day" were among the over 1,000 songs to sample Stubblefield's beat.

"We were sitting up in the studio, getting ready for a session, and I guess when I got set up I just started playing a pattern. Started playing something," Stubblefield said of creating the famous drum break. "The bassline came in and the guitar came in and we just had a rhythm going, and if Brown liked it, I just said, 'Well, I'll put something with it.'"

Stubblefield was not listed as a songwriter on the track and therefore didn't see much royalties from the decades of sampling.
"All the drum patterns I played with Brown was my own; he never told me how to play or what to play," Stubblefield told SF Weekly in 2012. "I just played my own patterns, and the hip-hoppers and whatever, the people that used the material probably paid him, maybe. But we got nothing. I got none of it. It was all my drum product."

Stubblefield added in a 2011 New York Times interview, "People use my drum patterns on a lot of these songs. They never gave me credit, never paid me. It didn't bug me or disturb me, but I think it’s disrespectful not to pay people for what they use."

Born in Chattanooga in 1943, Stubblefield served as a session musician and toured under Otis Redding before becoming Brown's drummer from 1965 to 1971. During his tenure with Brown, he partnered with drummer John "Jabo" Starks to form the powerhouse rhythm section that helped write the definition of funk music. In 2016, Rolling Stone placed the Stubblefield/Starks combo as Number Six on the list of the 100 Greatest Drummers of All Time. "Starks was the Beatles to Clyde's Stones. A clean shuffle drummer to Clyde's free-jazz left hand," Questlove told Rolling Stone for the feature.

"You have to understand this: We're two different drummers," Starks told NPR in 2015. "Clyde plays the way that Clyde plays, which, nobody's gonna play like Clyde. I play like I play. We can play the same tune, but different ways. You never played together on James' shows, but when he wanted to hear something different from Clyde, he'd point to me."

Years after Stubblefield left Brown's band, he and Starks reunited to form the Funkmasters, resulting in a pair of albums as well as an instructional video. Stubblefield, a resident of Madison, Wisconsin since the early Seventies, also released a handful of solo albums, including 1997's Revenge of the Funky Drummer.

In recent years, Stubblefield dealt with numerous health issues: In 2002, he had a kidney removed, and he suffered from end-stage renal disease in the last decade.

While Stubblefield did not have health insurance, in April 2016, Stubblefield revealed that Prince secretly paid the $90,000 in medical bills the drummer accumulated while undergoing chemotherapy for bladder cancer. Prince considered Stubblefield one of his "drumming idols," Stubblefield told Billboard following Prince's death.

"We lost another Pillar Stone that held up the Foundation of Funk," Bootsy Collins, who performed with Stubblefield on Sex Machine, wrote on Facebook Saturday. "Mr. Clyde Stubblefield has left our frequency. I am lost for words & Rythme right now. Dang Clyde! U taught me so much as I stood their watchin' over u & "Jabo" while keepin' one eye on the Godfather. We all loved U so much."
 
Wow-guess you don't have to pay for sampling-but amazing that it was used in over 1300 songs. Who would think that just jamming with other musicians would create this whole new genre?

Good for Prince for taking care of that hideous medical bill too-sad all around.
 
sampling

barbee0715 said:
Wow-guess you don't have to pay for sampling-but amazing that it was used in over 1300 songs. Who would think that just jamming with other musicians would create this whole new genre?

Good for Prince for taking care of that hideous medical bill too-sad all around.
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The record label that owns the original recording and the credited songwriters & publishing company get paid for samples. Session musicians don't generally get royalties, they usually get a flat fee for a session. In the mid-1980s when sampling first came about, no one really paid or credited the original songs. But around 1990 laws were created to stop illegal use, and a sample had to be cleared (approved) afterward.
 
Re: sampling

DuranDuran said:
The record label that owns the original recording and the credited songwriters & publishing company get paid for samples. Session musicians don't generally get royalties, they usually get a flat fee for a session. In the mid-1980s when sampling first came about, no one really paid or credited the original songs. But around 1990 laws were created to stop illegal use, and a sample had to be cleared (approved) afterward.
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But that still made sure royalties went to the songwriters and publishing companies, right? Not the session musicians. I was just really surprised to see that his drum jam was used so often-I went over to YouTube to check it out and there are quite a few examples of them talking about that one.
 
By Daniel E. Slotnik<time class="css-3u3suj eqgapgq0" datetime="2018-05-01" itemprop="datePublished" content="2018 - 05 - 01"> | May 1, 2018 | New York Times</time>
<time class="css-3u3suj eqgapgq0" datetime="2018-05-01" itemprop="datePublished" content="2018 - 05 - 01">
02STARKS-jumbo-v2.jpg

</time>Jabo Starks, a drummer on James Brown hits, in an undated photograph.

Jabo Starks, a drummer steeped in blues whose steady groove became the backbone for many of James Brown's hits, died on Tuesday at his home in Mobile, Ala. He was 79.

His manager, Kathie Williams, confirmed the death. He had leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes and had been in hospice care for about a week, she said.

Mr. Starks, whose first name was John and whose nickname was sometimes spelled Jab’o, was one of two drummers closely identified with Brown during his heyday in the 1960s and ’70s. The other was Clyde Stubblefield, remembered for his indelible drum solo on Brown’s “Funky Drummer,” perhaps the most sampled drumbeat of all time. (Mr. Stubblefield died last year).

Both drummers played on some of Brown’s best-known albums, including “Sex Machine,” “I Got the Feelin’,” “Say It Loud — I’m Black and I’m Proud” and “Cold Sweat.” Mr. Starks drummed on singles like “Get Up I Feel Like Being a Sex Machine,” “Super Bad” and “The Payback.”

<aside class="css-15v9f0h emamhsk1"></aside>All those songs, like most of Brown’s work, have had long afterlives. They have been sampled in songs by hip-hop artists like L. L. Cool J, Kendrick Lamar, A Tribe Called Quest, the Roots, the Black Eyed Peas and Kool Moe Dee.
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<time class="css-3u3suj eqgapgq0" datetime="2018-05-01" itemprop="datePublished" content="2018 - 05 - 01"></time>Mr. Starks shared the spotlight with Brown during a performance at the Regal Theater in Chicago in 1967.

Mr. Starks and Mr. Stubblefield appeared together onstage and on records, seeing each other as partners and not competitors, they said.

“You have to understand this, we’re two different drummers,” Mr. Starks said in an interview with NPR in 2015.

Mr. Starks came from a blues background, while Mr. Stubblefield came up playing soul and funk. Mr. Starks’s style was more straightforward, without some of Mr. Stubblefield’s flourishes, but it drove Brown’s songs and got audiences on their feet.

<aside class="css-15v9f0h emamhsk1"></aside>“If you can’t pat your feet and clap your hand to what I’m doing, then I’m not doing anything worthwhile,” Mr. Starks said.
02starks3-jumbo-v2.jpg

Mr. Starks at the 57 Club in Los Angeles in the early 1960s.

Brown was a demanding boss, known to fine his musicians for errors. But according to both Mr. Starks and Mr. Stubblefield, Mr. Starks was never fined. By his account, he sometimes caught Brown in a mistake.

“Sometimes James would miss a change or a cue, but I wouldn’t,” he was quoted as saying in a profile in Mobile Bay magazine in 2015. “He’d turn around and say, ‘You got me, Jab!’ ”

John Henry Starks was born in Jackson, Ala., on Oct. 26, 1938. His father, Prince Starks, worked in a lumberyard, and his mother, Ruth Starks-Watkins, worked in food services at a public school.

Mr. Starks, who acquired his nickname as a baby, grew up listening to gospel and blues. He became enamored with drums while watching a marching band in a Mardi Gras parade in Alabama.

“You could tell when that drummer stopped playing and when he started playing, he had that much command over the band,” Mr. Starks said in 2015. “I must have walked two miles with that band, watching and listening to him. And I made up my mind and said, ‘I’d sure like to be able to play just like that.’ ”

He taught himself to play on an improvised drum kit — a bass and snare drum tied to a chair, and cymbals on a stand — but received little formal instruction. After graduating from high school in the mid-1950s he started playing with blues artists like John Lee Hooker, Smiley Lewis, Howlin’ Wolf and Big Mama Thornton at the Harlem Duke Social Club in Prichard, Ala., a famous venue on the so-called chitlin’ circuit.

Mr. Starks joined Bobby (Blue) Bland’s band in 1959 and played on some of his hits, including “Turn On Your Love Light,” “I Pity the Fool” and “That’s the Way Love Is.” He left to join Brown’s band in 1965 and stayed with him until the mid-1970s, when he began touring and recording with B. B. King.

He is survived by his wife of 58 years, Naomi Starks (formerly Taplin); two sisters, Ruth Brown and Sally Bumpers; a daughter, Sonya Starks; a son, Mark; and two grandchildren.

Mr. Starks and Mr. Stubblefield played together again years after they parted ways with Brown. They formed a duo called Funkmasters, which released music and recorded instructional videos, and also worked together on the soundtrack for the 2007 movie comedy “Superbad.”

Ms. Williams, his manager, said that Mr. Starks last performed in March, at the Red Bar in Grayton Beach, Fla., where he had played since the mid-1990s.

Mr. Starks said that even after decades onstage he never lost the joy of playing music.

“When I’m playing music, man, let me tell you one thing: There ain’t nobody in the world higher than I am,” he said. “I get so high playing music, it scares me.”
 
The greatest entertainer of all time James Brown. His heyday from 1959-1973 was filled with classics after classics after classics.

Papa's got a brand new bag, soul power, I feel good, sex machine, try me, please please please,King heroin, cold sweat etc
 
I will add: there was a time, night train, it’s a man’s world, doing the best I can, forever suffering, mind power etc
 


@filmandmusic has posted lots of fab JB vids elsewhere on the board. I have been meaning to re-post them over here, I'm finally getting on it. Let's go!

P.S. Hope @filmandmusic doesn't mind but I need to re-post his original comment from the other thread where he originally posted this vid. f&m always writes good stuff but this was one of his finest moments, imo. He said:

"Sorry it is not MJ but this James Brown performance is possessed. What a ride, listen to the crowd going nuts. I feel like I can take on Mike Tyson after this. If I was captain of a football team this is the stuff I’d play in the dressingroom to get the adrenaline flowing. The hairs on my arm were pointing at the sky and my jaw is currently missing this was Spectacular!"
 
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DuranDuran said:
[youtube]7e1b2OIj3-w[/youtube]
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This (↑) is why it always is a good rule to include some basic information about what media you’re linking. I’ve personally adopted Zinnia’s model of

[Artist] / [Title]
 [duration]
 
Agonum said:
This (↑) is why it always is a good rule to include some basic information about what media you’re linking. I’ve personally adopted Zinnia’s model of

[Artist] / [Title]
 [duration]
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I agree. JB captions will follow later today. In a mad rush right now, just wanna get 'em posted.

When vids get taken down and I don't know what was posted it drives me nuts. Bc you almost def would be able to find it again if you knew what had been posted. I've never been about trying to tell peeps how to do their own postings. We all have our own style. But, for me, I really love to know what was posted even if it's now gone.

It looks a bit mad, sometimes, bc you're often repeating the info that's visible on the vid itself. But I don't care.

Enough! There are more f&m vids to re-post!
 
zinniabooklover said:
I have never seen this!

I've re-posted it over on the JB thread. Agonum, I tagged you so hopefully you'll catch it.

omg!!!!!!!!!!

Dead on the floor!
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Quoting your post from the R’n’B thread, but do so here in the JB thread, since you were so kind and rightfully place the video where it belong.

zinniabooklover said:
P.S. Sudden thought - f&m probably HAS seen it since it comes from a documentary. OK, so I'm probably the only person in the Western world who hasn't seen the doc. :ROFLMAO:
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Well, he might’ve, but it all depends. That particular film unfortunately had very lacking distribution. And then it comes down to f&m’s level of JB obsession, of course, which triumphs any such things as poor distribution.

I freakin’ LOVE the clip!! I tend to fire it up every now and then just for inspiration. The discipline in that studio is mental!
 
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