Living Legend

Tries to Make a Living

Benjamin Franzen

Clyde Stubblefield, shown playing in 2010, would like respect and royalties.

By BEN SISARIO

Published: March 29, 2011

If you’ve heard Public Enemy’s “Bring the Noise” or “Fight the Power,” you know his drumming. If you’ve heard LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out,” or any number of songs by Prince, the Beastie Boys, N.W.A., Run-D.M.C., Sinead O’Connor or even Kenny G., you definitely know his drumming, even though Mr. Stubblefield wasn’t in the studio for the recording of any of them.

That is because he was the featured player on “Funky Drummer,” a 1970 single by James Brown whose 20-second drum solo has become, by most counts, the most sampled of all beats. It’s been used hundreds of times, becoming part of hip-hop’s DNA, and in the late 1980s and early ’90s it was the go-to sample for anyone looking to borrow some of hip-hop’s sass (hence Kenny G.).

Yet Mr. Stubblefield’s name almost fell through the cracks of history. The early rappers almost never gave credit or paid for the sample, and if they did, acknowledgement (and any royalties) went to Brown, who is listed as the songwriter.

“All my life I’ve been wondering about my money,” Mr. Stubblefield, now 67 and still drumming, says with a chuckle.

A new project tries to capture at least some royalties for him. Mr. Stubblefield was interviewed for “Copyright Criminals,” a documentary by Benjamin Franzen and Kembrew McLeod about the gray areas of music copyright law, and for a special “Funky Drummer Edition” DVD of the film released on Tuesday, Mr. Stubblefield recorded a set of ready-to-sample beats. By filling out a basic licensing form, anyone willing to pay royalties of 15 percent on any commercial sales — and give credit — can borrow the sound of one of the architects of modern percussion.

“There have been faster, and there have been stronger, but Clyde Stubblefield has a marksman’s left hand unlike any drummer in the 20th century,” said Ahmir Thompson, a k a Questlove of the Roots, who was to play “Fight the Power” with him and Public Enemy’s Chuck D. on NBC’s “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” on Tuesday. “It is he who defined funk music.”

Born in Chattanooga, Tenn., Mr. Stubblefield was first inspired by the industrial rhythms of the factories and trains around him, and he got his start playing with regional bands. One day in 1965 Brown saw him at a club in Macon, Ga., and hired him on the spot. Through 1971 Mr. Stubblefield was one of Brown’s principal drummers, and on songs like “Cold Sweat” and “Mother Popcorn” he perfected a light-touch style filled with the off-kilter syncopations sometimes called ghost notes.

“His softest notes defined a generation,” Mr. Thompson added.

“We just played what we wanted to play on a song,” Mr. Stubblefield said in a telephone interview last week, referring to himself and his fellow Brown drummer John Starks, better known as Jabo. (Brown died in 2006.) “We just put down what we think it should be. Nobody directs me.”

You might expect Mr. Stubblefield, who has appeared on some of the greatest drum recordings in history, to have gone on to fame, or at least to a lucrative career playing sessions. But for the last 40 years he has happily remained in Madison, Wis., playing gigs there with his own group and, since the early 1990s, playing on the public radio show “Michael Feldman’s Whad’Ya Know?”

Alan Leeds, whose time as Brown’s tour director overlapped with Mr. Stubblefield’s period in the band, remembers him as a gifted but not terribly ambitious musician. “He was a fun guy,” Mr. Leeds said. “But if one guy was going to be late for the sound check, it was Clyde.”

The technology and conventions of sampling — isolating a musical snippet from one recording and reusing it for another — also kept him from greater recognition. “Funky Drummer” didn’t appear on an album until 1986, when it was on “In the Jungle Groove,” a Brown collection that was heavily picked over by the new generation of sampler-producers.

The lack of recognition has bothered Mr. Stubblefield more than the lack of royalties, he said, although that stings too.

“People use my drum patterns on a lot of these songs,” he said. “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.”

In 2002 Mr. Stubblefield had a tumor in his kidney removed, and now he suffers from end-stage renal disease. He qualifies for Medicare but has no additional health insurance.

The “Funky Drummer Edition” of “Copyright Criminals” includes Mr. Stubblefield’s beats both on vinyl and as electronic files, and in addition to any licensing, he also gets a small royalty from the DVD, said Mr. McLeod, an associate professor of communications at the University of Iowa. As in his days with Brown, Mr. Stubblefield was also paid a fee for the recording session.

“Breaks” albums with ready-made beats are nothing new in hip-hop. By his reckoning, Mr. Stubblefield has done four or five such collections, but not all of those have paid him his royalties either.

“They sent us royalty papers, but no checks,” he said of one such album made for a Japanese company.

 Benjamin Franzen

Clyde Stubblefield, 67, in Madison, Wis.

 

For Mr. Stubblefield, lack of credit is not only an issue with D.J.’s and producers sampling his beats. It was also a bone of contention with Brown, who was famous for running a tight ship — he fined his musicians for missing a beat or having scuffed shoes — and also for not giving his musicians more credit.

“A lot of people should have gotten a lot of credit from James Brown,” Mr. Stubblefield said, “but he only talked about himself. He may call your name on a song or something, but that’s it.”

This raises the question of whether Mr. Stubblefield is himself violating any of Brown’s copyrights by recording beats in the style of those original recordings in Brown’s band. Mr. McLeod dismissed that suggestion, saying that the beats are not identical, and that the original copyright registration forms for Brown’s songs mention melody and lyrics but not rhythm.

And besides, Mr. McLeod added, what you’re getting is simply a great drummer doing his thing.

“This differs from buying a sample pack for GarageBand,” he said, referring to Apple’s home-recording program, “because you know that what you are listening to and what you are sampling is the genius labor of this incredible musician. It’s Clyde Stubblefield.”

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Clyde Stubblefield :

When The Funk Hits The Fan

A search of the name Clyde Stubblefield is likely to yield a more unfortunate set of results than most fans of his work might expect — a barrage of text dedicated less to glowing reviews of a storied career than bitter derision of the many who have ceaselessly borrowed from his catalog of work without properly crediting or compensating him.  It is a scene punctuated by the heart-wrenching notes no one ever wants to read about the musicians they have revered all their lives; written confirmation of growing medical bills and dwindling income or royalties that have never been paid.  Ironically, the inappropriate referencing of Stubblefield’s catalog is likely responsible for the massive proliferation of his drum breaks and possibly behind the phenomenon of people falling in love with his sound without any idea that the pop and swing of that snare was not manufactured by one of their favorite producers, but instead born decades before beat machines had ever appeared.  From devotees of Public Enemy to ardent followers of Mr. Please Please Please, Stubblefield’s star wades in murky territory behind a set of much more recognizable faces that, whether they have properly credited his contributions, may be the most visible impediment to getting to know the real Funky Drummer.

What has saved the legend of Clyde Stubblefield from fading into obscurity is the archival and referential efforts of beat diggers, DJ’s, rising drummers, and children of the “Cold Sweat” era, who have never been able to forget the first time they heard that infamous drum break and almost broke their necks to dance to it.  Stubblefield’s drum breaks have survived and been relevant through almost every era of music since those songs first made waves during the late 60′s and 70′s.  Before laying the rhythmic foundation for much of the music that would later be dubbed classic hip-hop, Stubblefield began in Chattanooga, Tennessee, drumming as a child.  His story bears the hallmarks often associated with percussion prodigies; no household item was off limits as he sought to scratch the musical itch that plagued his early life.  From there, James Brown hired him on the spot in 1965 after a chance meeting at a nightclub.  He made his mark on many of Brown’s most popular tunes, including “Say It Loud”, “Ain’t It Funky Now”, “Mother Popcorn”, and “Funky Drummer”; a heavily syncopated performance and a ridiculously dexterous left hand as his signature – Stubblefield’s beat punctuated every spastic movement of Brown’s dancing and still kept impeccable time.

“Funky Drummer”, recorded in 1969 and released as a 45 in 1970 by KING, is credited as Stubblefield’s seminal work and is touted by many as the most sampled song in hip-hop history; it vies with the Amen break from The Winston’s “Amen, Brother” for the title.  The aforementioned J.B. break is a pillar of modern soul music, not just hip-hop, and falls in line with other breaks, like Lyn Collins’ “Think” and The Honeydrippers’ “Impeach The President”, as components of the sound that no real student of the genre can do without.  Along with Jimmy Nolen, Charles Sherrell, and Alfonzo Kellum, he is considered by some to belong to the best rhythm section in funk and soul.  Whether hip-hop artists rely on samples or live breaks, it is likely that the “Funky Drummer” will never go out of rotation as a staple of hip-hop aesthetic.  How, then, does the author of the original sound find himself perpetually idolized and simultaneously so far from grace?  When hip-hop awards air and the sampled artists are never thanked or recognized for their contributions, while the sampling artists make livings and win awards for songs based upon those compositions, it becomes a little clearer that youth and ignorance may do as much to hurt the cause as improper publishing.

James Brown (with Clyde Stubblefield) perform “Cold Sweat”  The Boston Garden in 1968, the day after Martin Luther King passed away.

Conversely, it is not easy to stand in the shadow of a star like James Brown; a difficult fact that bassist Bootsy Collins realized quite early in his career with the Godfather of Soul.  While Clyde Stubblefield anchored James Brown’s band for a bit longer than Bootsy participated, he reaped few of the longterm financial benefits of that position as a session drummer; a sad circumstance facilitated in part by the nuance of contractual detail, careless hip-hop producers, and the unfortunate fact that James Brown is credited as the writer of the songs that Clyde Stubblefield’s drumming, in tandem with Jabo Starks, ultimately made.  Digest everything at once and Stubblefield is suddenly buried in the red tape of putting out a hit without protection.  One can only imagine the watershed effects such a point of contention could have on any relationship, least of all a fruitful professional arrangement between a group of pioneering musicians who happened to be fronted by arguably the greatest entertainer to ever grace a stage.  The chitlin circuit that helped James Brown and his band to emerge was probably plagued by financial impropriety; musicians being paid under the table in cash without proper taxation, songs being rushed to radio without real concern for where the royalty check would eventually land or how it would be split amongst the contributors, if at all.  The fallout following James Brown’s death, as his family members began a legal battle over his royalties and their subsequent entitlements that may have yet to end, is probably the biggest indicator that Stubblefield is not alone in the quest to claim what should have come from his time with the J.B.’s; his handful of the popcorn — something many in hip-hop, contrary to popular belief, have vocally advocated.

Stubblefield has released new material and performed regularly in his hometown of Madison, Wisconsin over the last decade.  He has released official breaks for pay that can be purchased for a small fee with the agreement that any resulting sales of music referencing his material will compensate accordingly.  He has even been featured in a sampling rights documentary series entitled Copyright Criminals, which highlights his struggles with procuring career compensation.  On a more positive note, a resurgence of James Brown’s material following his death has led younger listeners to investigate the architects of his sound.  Not only do people want to know more about Brown, but his band — the very visible saxophonist Maceo Parker and cape man Danny Ray aside — has experienced a renaissance; a phenomenon that may also be due to the renewed public interest in live music, vinyl production, vinyl sales, and DJing.  The idea that Stubbliefield’s performance proliferates throughout much of modern American music in the way that it does, makes the thought of him languishing without the accompanying wealth nonsensical and largely offensive, even if it is just enough to stay out of debt.  It is as ridiculous as the recent and no less strange occurrence of the Black Jazz catalog’s master tapes going up for sale on Craigslist to the tune of twelve thousand dollars, each.

The nauseating feeling that lurks in every unfortunate circumstance and every unwritten check belonging to the musicians who have built movements, only to be stuck playing spot dates in small clubs or buried in paupers’ graves, is fueled by the lack of fairness that rules the business of music to begin with.  Whether the fault of irresponsible artists who lack the business acumen, fans who refuse to pay for product, or labels and peers intent to exploit them for invaluable gains, there is a huge culture of failing to reciprocate in the interest of the artist.  While a foundation has been put into place to gently massage Stubblefield’s fan base into paying more than homage, many musicians have come and gone without as much.  The lecherous culture resulting from the entitlement people feel as producers and consumers of music with little desire to spend in support of their favorite musicians, has left everyone in danger of losing the very thing that allows scores of people to dance to the drummer’s beat; the drummer himself – Stubblefield having been in recent medical need after being diagnosed with kidney failure.  While there is no doubt that Clyde Stubblefield’s drumming has left him with an impenetrable legacy — one that is punctuated by extended takes of percussive genius — he should be spared the inhumanity of having done it all for free.

Words by Karas Lamb

>via: http://revivalist.okayplayer.com/2011/08/09/clyde-stubblefield-when-the-funk-...