So I love Tomo's thing about musical ancestors. Over the holidays, I did a pretty deep dive into the history of funk. The "origin story" basically comes down to "second line" drumming from New Orleans funeral parades:
I've created a playlist to kind of highlight this drum motif as a through-line through early NOLA funk evolution, and including James Brown. Not trying to debate "who invented funk," but just had a blast exploring, and in my own mind, convinced myself that the thing that holds the funk family tree together are these drums - even if you can only hear a distant echo.
So even though people will argue that Brown's "Out of Sight" or "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" are his first funk songs, I only included Cold Sweat (1967), because it has this rhythm DNA that I can't hear in the others.
Anyway - hope you explore and enjoy. Not perfectly chronological, but the idea was to focus on the continuous thread of that rhythm / drum sound through the early evolution of funk:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi-S58_vOSY_8DGKt7_E0U-Hvltax_aq3&si=TiNnA-UorojFxYrM
Love this, Clay! I listened to the Second Line piece, and yeah, it's like the tuba is playing a funk bass line. Lots of other stuff I didn't know here, so looking forward to diving in more.
Related to that, I enjoyed this video, which traces the development of funk guitar in James Brown's recordings, showing how it emerged gradually from the many guitarists that were involved (there's also a part 2, which goes 1969 - 74).
Watched the whole thing - good stuff! Thanks!
Thanks Andy! I learned a lot from this.
I appreciate you!
Kurt
Thank you Clay! Good job!
Tomo