0:05

Hello everyone, Kirk here, currently beginning

0:07

work on Strong Songs Season 6

0:09

which will come out in February,

0:11

February 9th for Patrons, and February

0:14

23rd for everyone in the main feed. I

0:16

am super excited about it, and while I

0:18

work on it, I thought I'd drop a

0:20

few more old bonus episodes into the main

0:22

feed. Each of these had previously been Patreon

0:24

exclusive and now I'm releasing them to everyone.

0:26

The first one here is an addendum to

0:28

an episode from 2022, it's episode 97, Strong

0:30

Grooves volume

0:34

1, in which my friend Russ

0:36

Kleiner came on to explain a handful

0:38

of iconic Funk Grooves to me and

0:40

we recorded way too much to include

0:42

in that episode. So I put together

0:44

this bonus which is actually a really

0:46

great discussion of Funk legend Clyde Stubblefield

0:48

who actually recently got name checked in

0:50

the new Spider-Man PlayStation game, you love

0:52

to see it. Anyways this is an

0:55

add-on to an existing episode, so definitely

0:57

listen to that first before you listen

0:59

to this episode because it really is

1:01

just kind of an index or an

1:03

appendix to that episode, some extra stuff

1:05

that I didn't have room for in

1:07

the episode that just flushes out a

1:09

little bit of what we talked about.

1:11

So in the main feed we did

1:13

Strong Grooves volume 1 where I analyzed

1:15

three famous Funk Grooves with an extra

1:17

focus on the drum parts with James

1:19

Brown's drummer Clyde Stubblefield, the Meters' Zigaboo

1:21

modal this day, and the great Bernard

1:23

Purdy and some playing he did with

1:25

Aretha Franklin. I don't know why

1:27

I said Bernard Purdy was great and I didn't say

1:30

that Zigaboo or Stubblefield were great because they're all great,

1:32

I just kind of felt like saying the great Bernard

1:34

Purdy and I mean he was pretty great. Anyway, I

1:37

had my old buddy Russ Kleiner join the show

1:39

to explain and demonstrate some of the grooves, it

1:41

was super fun to have him, I've never quite

1:43

done that before bringing in a friend, a sort

1:45

of guest expert to sit in a recording studio

1:47

and actually play and demonstrate things, but it was

1:49

really fun. Definitely a lot of extra work for

1:51

the episode so I won't do it all the

1:53

time, but definitely something I want to do more

1:55

of in the future. So we covered

1:57

a lot of ground, way more ground than I could fit into the

1:59

episode. almost

4:00

every beat that we'll talk about today does. Generally

4:03

don't sit exactly straight or exactly

4:05

swung. They're somewhere in the middle

4:07

where the grease happens and the

4:09

funk happens and the fill happens,

4:11

all the good stuff. So here

4:13

is the cold sweat groove with

4:15

a more typical two

4:17

and four sort of rock beat, which you may

4:20

have heard in a gajillion pop songs over the

4:22

years before this game. No,

4:27

I didn't even do it there. Cool,

4:33

a little bit square. Here's that same

4:35

beat. We're going to add some ghost

4:38

notes, add the displaced snare

4:40

hit. I'm also

4:44

adding an open hi-hat. Cold

5:00

sweat wasn't the last

5:03

song to feature this kind

5:05

of beat and Subblefield recorded several

5:10

more songs that incorporated elements of fatback

5:13

in new and interesting ways. One of

5:15

my favorites is actually one of my

5:17

favorite James Brown songs. It's also one

5:20

of Russ's favorites, 1968's I Got the

5:22

Feelin'. I think Russ actually suggested

5:24

this song as one for me to work on

5:26

when I was practicing my funk drumming. And when

5:29

I'm warmed up and I have this song on

5:31

my headphones and I'm playing along, there aren't many

5:33

songs that are as fun to play as this

5:35

one. God, I mean listen to

5:38

the drums. It is ridiculous.

5:41

And this song is one

5:44

of my favorite songs. Man,

6:00

it truly extended the boundaries

6:02

of what could be. A

6:14

Bear Bear This and that has seen.

6:17

The musicianship. It's a Subway. This is

6:20

as a dexterity that facility must have

6:22

heard on last and he has to

6:24

the left hand playing you ate a

6:26

level a rhythm and coming that I

6:29

don't think had been experienced before. It's

6:31

it's still one of us. Have

6:33

ever heard that. They're

6:43

all about those the things we talked

6:45

about that guy like times ago. Snouts,

6:51

That's. Really? what's happening in our. I

6:59

mention that I'm not the greatest drummer in

7:01

the world, but when I'm pretty warmed up

7:03

liking tend to get it done on the

7:05

instrument and when I'm playing to the song

7:07

and really ceiling lose it's a pretty wild

7:10

ceiling. It's like you're almost just dancing your

7:12

drumsticks along the drums because the goes, those

7:14

are happening so fast and you so quickly

7:16

some dividing between your left and right hands.

7:18

on the i hadn't the snare drum, it's

7:20

a really cool feeling, it almost feels like

7:22

skipping along the surface of water. Or

7:28

city listen to me isolated away from the

7:30

recording nearly as good as rest of With

7:32

and again that's kind that a trimmer. That's

7:39

I got the feeling. I also talked a little

7:41

bit about the Nineteen Sixty Nine son mother popcorn

7:43

it's in the Mean episode and played a little

7:46

bit of restless demonstration of it's but during our

7:48

conversation of it, he went into a little bit

7:50

more detail. So

8:01

I got the feeling 1968, in 1969, a continued evolution of

8:03

sorts with Clyde Subblefield's playing

8:11

and the Fat Bat beat. This one to

8:13

me sounds very much like a fusion of

8:17

the cold sweat beat and I

8:19

got the feeling it has elements of

8:21

both of them. A

8:29

big difference that's happening on that tune is

8:32

Clyde is playing an accented

8:34

hi-hat part on every downbeat.

8:36

So he's going... That

8:41

creates a very different kind

8:43

of motion and feel and

8:45

propels it in a different kind

8:48

of way. Additionally, the accents in

8:50

the second half of the phrase are

8:52

a little bit more random, kind of

8:54

that, well, like popcorn. It's a good

8:56

name for the song. It's kind of

8:59

popping out like popcorn in different little

9:01

places. That second part of the

9:03

answer to me feels like the I got the

9:05

feeling. The first measure to

9:07

me feels like cold sweat. Cold

9:09

sweat questions a

9:13

take of I got the feeling answer. That's what

9:15

it feels like to me. So

9:19

I want to go back over that because it's really

9:22

cool. So first came cold sweat, 1967. Then

9:25

came I got the feeling, 1968. Then

9:28

in 1969 came mother popcorn. Mother

9:31

popcorn combines the first part of cold sweat

9:33

and the second part of I got the

9:35

feeling into a third kind of groove. If

9:37

you remember from the main episode, Russ talked

9:40

about how these stubble-field fatback grooves were

9:42

generally organized in two-bar phrases where the

9:44

first bar is a question and the second

9:46

bar, the second half of the phrase

9:48

is the answer. So like

9:50

Russ was just saying, the mother popcorn groove

9:52

has the cold sweat question and the I

9:54

got the feeling answer and it's at a

9:57

little bit of a different tempo. So let

9:59

me reproduce that. for you using Russ's

10:01

examples that he recorded. Here's Cold

10:03

Sweat. So

10:08

it's not too busy and naughty compared to

10:11

those later grooves. The ghost notes are pretty

10:13

minimal by comparison. It kind of just

10:15

cruises along. Okay,

10:21

and now here's I got the feeler. Way

10:28

more going on, way more ghost notes. This

10:30

one is just burning. So

10:35

now here's Mother Popcorn. Hear

10:40

it? First

10:44

part is simpler, sounds kind of like Cold

10:46

Sweat. And

10:49

the second part is a lot busier and sounds

10:51

more like I got the feeling. That's

10:55

such a cool thing that I never would have noticed

10:58

on my own. And it's a smart way to take

11:00

two grooves that you've already come up with and by

11:02

combining them and changing the tempo, you get a third

11:04

pretty different groove. The

11:07

final James Brown

11:09

tune that we

11:12

talked about

11:14

was 1970's

11:16

Funky Drummer, another

11:19

Clyde's double field

11:28

beat that has gone on to become

11:30

what I believe is the most sampled

11:32

recording in history. I talked about this

11:34

on a recent Q&A episode since Funky

11:36

Drummer was used on George Michael's Freedom

11:38

and there had been a question about

11:40

freedom. But seriously, this drum break is

11:42

literally everywhere from Nicki Minaj songs to

11:44

Ed Sheeran, the Powerpuff Girls theme. I

11:46

listed a whole bunch more in that

11:48

episode, but it's just wild how many

11:50

times. So

12:00

1970, Clyde's Double Fields, the funky drummer beat,

12:03

often imitated, never duplicated, and

12:12

it won't be duplicated today either. But

12:15

I'll do my best. Clyde's

12:18

beat, the beat that most of

12:21

us know and have heard a bajillion times, has

12:23

been sampled by everyone you can think of. It

12:26

really doesn't happen until, oh, I don't know,

12:28

five and a half minutes or so into

12:30

the tune. One of

12:32

the most melodic breakdowns that

12:35

you could really hope to hear, which I think is

12:37

why so many people have used it

12:39

in their own music. And

12:41

the feel is such, and

12:44

his idiosyncrasies of his playing are such,

12:46

that it just will never be replicated

12:49

in that way, which is why it's

12:51

sampled. You're only going to get that

12:53

kind of feel with the actual playing

12:56

of Clyde's double. So

13:05

now, because

13:09

we've heard this

13:12

kind of rhythmic

13:14

information for 60 years since then, 60,

13:25

65 years, this was something really new at

13:27

the time. Because we're not

13:29

really doing this. We're playing 16th

13:31

notes and certainly weren't adding

13:33

all this beautiful improvisatory stuff

13:35

underneath it. He makes it

13:37

sound so effortless.

13:40

Any drummer, even a very accomplished drummer,

13:43

will tell you this is an extremely

13:45

hard groove to make sound effortless. The

13:47

facility it takes, the way you need

13:50

to relax your body to keep that

13:52

hi-hat really

13:54

nice and light, is incredibly

13:56

difficult and he makes it sound like

13:58

he's just hanging out reading the

14:00

newspaper. So

14:14

this hi-hat groove sounds like he's

14:16

playing with kind of the tip of the stick. It's left

14:19

here where he has the meat

14:22

of the stick and kind of

14:24

here's the tip of the stick. Alright,

14:27

meat of the stick, tip

14:29

of the stick, which gives it a lighter

14:32

kind of more floating feel. So

14:34

instead of... Also

14:54

one thing I adore about this

14:56

groove is just the contour that

14:59

he achieves through not just the

15:01

ghosted notes, the accent of notes,

15:03

but by opening up that little

15:05

hi-hat in this unexpected place. It's

15:21

a very musical, extremely musical

15:23

statement. Not just a funky

15:25

beat, obviously. It's a killer.

15:27

But to me it's

15:30

just got this lovely musical shape

15:32

and contour to it, which says

15:34

something for his ability to go

15:36

beyond just in something super groovy,

15:39

but something incredibly musical as well.

15:42

It's a very beautiful, very

15:44

beautiful, very beautiful, very beautiful.

15:54

It's made Of old recordings in four years, 1967, 68, 69, and

15:56

70. The

16:00

and a clear evolution and Clyde some

16:02

of your technical and stylistic approach as

16:04

he almost like casually tossed out groove

16:06

that we still literally here and pop

16:08

songs the top the charts today. I

16:11

hope it does. Chronology has given you

16:13

a stronger sense of how James Brown's

16:15

grooves changed over the years and just

16:17

how musical and complex and fascinating a

16:19

musician Clyde Stubblefield was so here at

16:21

the end as promise. I thought that

16:23

would be fun to do a little

16:26

quiz to see if you can identify

16:28

which of the for grooves you're hearing.

16:30

at any given moment, so we're going to

16:32

just go through a few of maybe some

16:34

will play twice. They're not going to be

16:36

in chronological order or play a bit of

16:38

the groove and the way to listen to

16:40

what's happening. What Russes playing on the Hi

16:42

Hats of He's Feeling it's how much swing

16:44

it's got, what part of the stick is

16:46

using on the high hat, where the goes

16:48

nuts are turning up and see if you

16:50

can tell which song it's friend and I'm

16:52

not actually gonna say the answers right here.

16:54

Let's say I'll put the answers at the

16:57

very end after the music of them playing

16:59

and everything. If you. Want to hear that Nasa

17:01

put them down in the So notes so you won't

17:03

know what the answers are unless you really wanna hear

17:05

with the answers. Are you think he figured out you

17:07

want to check them in the show notes? Okay here

17:10

we go. Number one. Number

18:07

four. Number

18:26

five. Number

18:58

six. Number seven. Number

19:16

eight. And

19:42

that'll do it for this latest bonus mini. So

19:44

this was a lot of fun and I was

19:47

glad to get to fix that chronology in here

19:49

just because Clyde Sebelfeld is so amazing and the

19:51

evolution of his drumming is really interesting. I loved

19:53

Russell's examples and explanations and it was nice to

19:55

have somewhere to put it. Thanks again so much

19:57

to Russ Kleiner for taking the time to request.

19:59

for this and also thanks to Nick Derrico

20:02

again for engineering and overseeing the recording session.

20:04

It was just a really great process working

20:06

with both of those guys and of course

20:08

great fun to have one of my old

20:10

friends on the show. At any rate, I

20:12

really hope that you all enjoyed this Odyssey

20:14

into Funk Drumming. I had a great time

20:17

doing it. I'm definitely going to have Russ

20:19

back to do this again, probably to get

20:21

into the next generation of Funk Drumming. Russ

20:23

is actually a Dave Garibaldi master, like he

20:25

knows everything about Garibaldi's playing. So if I

20:27

ever talk about Tower of Power, I will

20:30

probably bring Russ on as well. And hey, this

20:32

is Modern Day Kirk chiming in to say that

20:34

while I did talk about Tower of Power and

20:36

didn't manage to get Russ to come back on

20:38

the show to talk to me, I did use

20:40

some of the playing of his that we recorded,

20:42

so it was cool to get to work with

20:44

him again, even if in a kind of a

20:46

remote capacity. Just a note to

20:48

say that if you want to support Strong

20:51

Songs, you can do so at patreon.com/Strong Songs

20:53

and thanks so much to all of my

20:55

patrons who make this show possible. All

20:58

right, I'm going to sign off for now. The answers

21:00

to the quiz will be after the music ends. So

21:02

if you don't want to hear that, pause it, go

21:04

back, see if you can figure them all out. And

21:06

like I said, they're all set down in the show

21:08

notes. Good luck. I hope you get all the answers

21:10

right and I'll see you next time around. Okay,

21:28

the answers to the quiz

21:30

are number one was mother

21:33

popcorn. Number two was

21:35

I Got the Feelin. Number three was

21:38

Cold Sweat. Number four was

21:40

mother popcorn. Number five Funky

21:43

Drummer. Number six Cold

21:45

Sweat. Number seven I Got

21:48

the Feelin. And number eight Mother

21:51

Popcorn. Congratulations to everyone who got

21:53

them all right. I'll be mailing you a vintage

21:56

1963 Ludwig drum set.

21:58

So just send me your address. I'll

22:00

send it to you. No, no prizes for this,

22:02

but this was kind of fun. And if you

22:04

liked this, maybe I'll do quizzes like this again

22:06

in the future. Alright. Thanks everybody. Bye