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Further Explorations of Funk, part 1: To Hit the One or Not To Hit the One?
Further Explorations of Funk, part 1: To Hit the One or Not To Hit the One?
Further Explorations of Funk, part 1: To Hit the One or Not To Hit the One?
Earlier this year, we examined the origins of funk with James Brown’s ‘Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag’ and ‘Cold Sweat', and climbed onto the Mothership with George Clinton and Parliament. There’s so much more to explore, so this article is kicking off a series on funk.
We’re starting by further examining how the One was utilised by Brown. Later, we'll delve into Brown's fascination with bridges, explore how horn motifs were a central theme of his 1970s work, look at the similarities between Brown and Fela Kuti, and then we’ll enjoy some of his acolytes and the ways they took funk into new territories. But let’s begin on the first beat.
The One
In 1970, most of Brown’s touring band quit over financial disputes, so he told his right-hand man Bobby Byrd to recruit the young musicians he’d used on some recent recordings. The key stars among these Cincinnati cats were brothers Bootsy and Catfish Collins, who would later become major players in P-Funk.
The new band became known as the J.B.’s. They were already good musicians, but Brown had to teach Bootsy about the One. Brown remarked in his autobiography how Bootsy had been playing “a lot of bass--the ifs, the ands, and the buts. I got him to see the importance of the one in funk--the downbeat at the beginning of every bar. I got him to key in on the dynamic parts of the one instead of playing all around it. Then he could do all his other stuff in the right places--after the one.”
Bootsy explains The One
In surely the greatest one minute and twenty seconds clip on YouTube, Bootsy Collins explains his basic funk formula. And it’s that simple yet incredibly powerful idea he learned from James Brown. “You hit it on the One,” Bootsy says. “ONE, two, three, four. ONE, two... You know?” Being one of the funkiest musicians on Earth, even Bootsy’s “You know?”s are cool, and as commenter @mrscojoe points out, his “uh”s add funky syncopation. “And then you would try to fit your different notes, what you felt, in between that.” Bootsy’s more adept than your average bass player at conjuring up magic between the Ones, of course.
To Hit the One or Not To Hit the One?
Confusingly, on 'Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine', one of Brown’s most famous songs and the one most synonymous with Bootsy, Bootsy doesn’t play on the One.
Bootsy was interviewed by Mitch Gallagher in a conversation that largely revolved around the One. Gallagher repeatedly (and politely) presses Bootsy on what makes him decide to play on the One or just before it.
Bootsy admits, “I never really thought about it and I never got a question about it until now,” which says as much about the lack of depth in most musician interviews as it does Bootsy’s creative process. “That’s probably the answer – is I never really thought about it.” He plays what feels good. “Wherever [Brown] was at with the One, it kind of evolved into what I was feeling.”
Bootsy explains that knowing about the One in the first place is the most important thing, and from there he learned he can sometimes hit it, and sometimes play around it. “I can purposely play on the One when I’m feeling that, but I don’t wanna be locked into having to play on the One.”
On ‘Sex Machine’, Bootsy says, “I come in before the One, and I was saying to myself, ‘James liked that.’ I mean, he liked that, so I don’t know. Even though he told me, ‘Gimme the One,’ when I played ‘Sex Machine', that’s just something I came up with, and he liked it. So anything that he would like, I was like, ‘Okay. Well...’ Either I got away with it or he just feels like he likes it.”
It seems James was like Bootsy: he would be down with something as long as it made him feel good (geddit?).
'Sex Machine' is the ultimate Brown and Byrd call-and-response track. Brown calls on the listener to "Get up!" and "Stay on the scene" ("Like a lovin’ machine," "Like a Sex Machine") so many times that Byrd has to respond with 50 (50!) "Get on up!"s.
(It may be repetitious but not one element of the song comes close to getting old – not even on the 10:49-minute version released later as the title track of the Sex Machine album. Even the questionable decision to overdub fake echo and corny audience noises for a faux live album couldn’t hold back the funk.)
‘Sex Machine', in comparison with previous funk milestones ‘Brand New Bag’ and ‘Cold Sweat’, features relatively minor horn parts. The stars are Jabo Starks' drums, bass and guitar courtesy of the Collins brothers, and vocal tradings between Brown and Byrd.
The horns (two trumpets) are restricted to six beats of repeated notes when Brown gets them to "Hit it now!", which began a long line of '70s tracks when he calls on the horn section to hit it.
The bridge is a good place to feel the One, particularly in the guitar. Around 2:10 minutes in, that first strum is the heaviest in the pattern and a downstroke (the guitarist’s hand goes down towards the floor, with the deepest note played first). The final three strums in the progression are all upstrokes (and thus sound more high-pitched), giving the downstroke on the One contrast and extra impact.
That guitar part is the only part that matches the relentless energy of Bootsy’s bassline. In a flurry of notes, Bootsy frantically switches between higher and lower pitches, never coming close to settling on anything after the six repeated notes at the beginning. While not hitting the One, Bootsy’s just a hair’s width from it. The final note in most of his phrases are just a sixteenth note before the One. (In other words, he’s even closer to it than the last ‘and’ in “three and four and ONE.")
To return to Bootsy’s interview with Gallagher, the latter mentions ‘Snow Bunny’ from the 2017 album World Wide Funk as another example of Bootsy leading up the One but leaving the kick drum to actually hit the One.
It’s a little easier to hear than on ‘Sex Machine.’ There are fewer bass notes, and the whole track is generally sparser. Bootsy’s bassline leads up to the One. “You know it’s coming. Something is coming,” said Bootsy.
Another Brown and Byrd classic, and another featuring the original J.B.’s, ‘Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved’ (Brown and Byrd really liked the word ‘get’), uses another technique to emphasise the One. The relentless trumpet and saxophone riff features only one note with any real sustain, and it arrives on the One. Most of the following notes are short and sharp, running into each other, with the sustained blast on the One standing out.
The bass and guitar run their fastest and gasp for air trying to keep up with the horns. The two play slightly different versions of the same riff. The bassline doesn’t share the same sustained note as the horns on the One, instead only letting the next-most sustained note of the horn riff ring out.
The guitar’s tone resembles an early electronic toy from the ’60s approaching breaking point. The section featuring only drums and guitar, starting just after the 3-minute mark, is a great place to hone in on this tone. The precision of the playing, too, sounds almost computerised. It’s incredibly tight. The guitar line features many more notes than the horns and bass, creating the impression of the instruments flitting in and out of time each other.
In ‘Get Involved,’ Bootsy both leads up to the One and hits it along with the kick drum and the other instruments. Why’d he play the One on this track? We can safely guess: because he was feeling it.
To close out this first part of funky explorations, check out this live performance of ‘Soul Power’ and ‘Get Involved,’ featuring a masterful transition between the two songs. A teenage Bootsy can be seen on bass, holding his instrument as if it were an upright bass.
“They had this grace,” Bootsy says of upright bass players. “I always loved that look.” He tried out the instrument at school, but “the bass beat [him] up.” Pupils took their instruments home, and Bootsy lived almost three miles from the school, which meant “carrying that mother home” was a problem. “It was like, ‘I gotta learn how to play something else, man.’”
Earlier this year, we examined the origins of funk with James Brown’s ‘Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag’ and ‘Cold Sweat', and climbed onto the Mothership with George Clinton and Parliament. There’s so much more to explore, so this article is kicking off a series on funk.
We’re starting by further examining how the One was utilised by Brown. Later, we'll delve into Brown's fascination with bridges, explore how horn motifs were a central theme of his 1970s work, look at the similarities between Brown and Fela Kuti, and then we’ll enjoy some of his acolytes and the ways they took funk into new territories. But let’s begin on the first beat.
The One
In 1970, most of Brown’s touring band quit over financial disputes, so he told his right-hand man Bobby Byrd to recruit the young musicians he’d used on some recent recordings. The key stars among these Cincinnati cats were brothers Bootsy and Catfish Collins, who would later become major players in P-Funk.
The new band became known as the J.B.’s. They were already good musicians, but Brown had to teach Bootsy about the One. Brown remarked in his autobiography how Bootsy had been playing “a lot of bass--the ifs, the ands, and the buts. I got him to see the importance of the one in funk--the downbeat at the beginning of every bar. I got him to key in on the dynamic parts of the one instead of playing all around it. Then he could do all his other stuff in the right places--after the one.”
Bootsy explains The One
In surely the greatest one minute and twenty seconds clip on YouTube, Bootsy Collins explains his basic funk formula. And it’s that simple yet incredibly powerful idea he learned from James Brown. “You hit it on the One,” Bootsy says. “ONE, two, three, four. ONE, two... You know?” Being one of the funkiest musicians on Earth, even Bootsy’s “You know?”s are cool, and as commenter @mrscojoe points out, his “uh”s add funky syncopation. “And then you would try to fit your different notes, what you felt, in between that.” Bootsy’s more adept than your average bass player at conjuring up magic between the Ones, of course.
To Hit the One or Not To Hit the One?
Confusingly, on 'Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine', one of Brown’s most famous songs and the one most synonymous with Bootsy, Bootsy doesn’t play on the One.
Bootsy was interviewed by Mitch Gallagher in a conversation that largely revolved around the One. Gallagher repeatedly (and politely) presses Bootsy on what makes him decide to play on the One or just before it.
Bootsy admits, “I never really thought about it and I never got a question about it until now,” which says as much about the lack of depth in most musician interviews as it does Bootsy’s creative process. “That’s probably the answer – is I never really thought about it.” He plays what feels good. “Wherever [Brown] was at with the One, it kind of evolved into what I was feeling.”
Bootsy explains that knowing about the One in the first place is the most important thing, and from there he learned he can sometimes hit it, and sometimes play around it. “I can purposely play on the One when I’m feeling that, but I don’t wanna be locked into having to play on the One.”
On ‘Sex Machine’, Bootsy says, “I come in before the One, and I was saying to myself, ‘James liked that.’ I mean, he liked that, so I don’t know. Even though he told me, ‘Gimme the One,’ when I played ‘Sex Machine', that’s just something I came up with, and he liked it. So anything that he would like, I was like, ‘Okay. Well...’ Either I got away with it or he just feels like he likes it.”
It seems James was like Bootsy: he would be down with something as long as it made him feel good (geddit?).
'Sex Machine' is the ultimate Brown and Byrd call-and-response track. Brown calls on the listener to "Get up!" and "Stay on the scene" ("Like a lovin’ machine," "Like a Sex Machine") so many times that Byrd has to respond with 50 (50!) "Get on up!"s.
(It may be repetitious but not one element of the song comes close to getting old – not even on the 10:49-minute version released later as the title track of the Sex Machine album. Even the questionable decision to overdub fake echo and corny audience noises for a faux live album couldn’t hold back the funk.)
‘Sex Machine', in comparison with previous funk milestones ‘Brand New Bag’ and ‘Cold Sweat’, features relatively minor horn parts. The stars are Jabo Starks' drums, bass and guitar courtesy of the Collins brothers, and vocal tradings between Brown and Byrd.
The horns (two trumpets) are restricted to six beats of repeated notes when Brown gets them to "Hit it now!", which began a long line of '70s tracks when he calls on the horn section to hit it.
The bridge is a good place to feel the One, particularly in the guitar. Around 2:10 minutes in, that first strum is the heaviest in the pattern and a downstroke (the guitarist’s hand goes down towards the floor, with the deepest note played first). The final three strums in the progression are all upstrokes (and thus sound more high-pitched), giving the downstroke on the One contrast and extra impact.
That guitar part is the only part that matches the relentless energy of Bootsy’s bassline. In a flurry of notes, Bootsy frantically switches between higher and lower pitches, never coming close to settling on anything after the six repeated notes at the beginning. While not hitting the One, Bootsy’s just a hair’s width from it. The final note in most of his phrases are just a sixteenth note before the One. (In other words, he’s even closer to it than the last ‘and’ in “three and four and ONE.")
To return to Bootsy’s interview with Gallagher, the latter mentions ‘Snow Bunny’ from the 2017 album World Wide Funk as another example of Bootsy leading up the One but leaving the kick drum to actually hit the One.
It’s a little easier to hear than on ‘Sex Machine.’ There are fewer bass notes, and the whole track is generally sparser. Bootsy’s bassline leads up to the One. “You know it’s coming. Something is coming,” said Bootsy.
Another Brown and Byrd classic, and another featuring the original J.B.’s, ‘Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved’ (Brown and Byrd really liked the word ‘get’), uses another technique to emphasise the One. The relentless trumpet and saxophone riff features only one note with any real sustain, and it arrives on the One. Most of the following notes are short and sharp, running into each other, with the sustained blast on the One standing out.
The bass and guitar run their fastest and gasp for air trying to keep up with the horns. The two play slightly different versions of the same riff. The bassline doesn’t share the same sustained note as the horns on the One, instead only letting the next-most sustained note of the horn riff ring out.
The guitar’s tone resembles an early electronic toy from the ’60s approaching breaking point. The section featuring only drums and guitar, starting just after the 3-minute mark, is a great place to hone in on this tone. The precision of the playing, too, sounds almost computerised. It’s incredibly tight. The guitar line features many more notes than the horns and bass, creating the impression of the instruments flitting in and out of time each other.
In ‘Get Involved,’ Bootsy both leads up to the One and hits it along with the kick drum and the other instruments. Why’d he play the One on this track? We can safely guess: because he was feeling it.
To close out this first part of funky explorations, check out this live performance of ‘Soul Power’ and ‘Get Involved,’ featuring a masterful transition between the two songs. A teenage Bootsy can be seen on bass, holding his instrument as if it were an upright bass.
“They had this grace,” Bootsy says of upright bass players. “I always loved that look.” He tried out the instrument at school, but “the bass beat [him] up.” Pupils took their instruments home, and Bootsy lived almost three miles from the school, which meant “carrying that mother home” was a problem. “It was like, ‘I gotta learn how to play something else, man.’”
Earlier this year, we examined the origins of funk with James Brown’s ‘Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag’ and ‘Cold Sweat', and climbed onto the Mothership with George Clinton and Parliament. There’s so much more to explore, so this article is kicking off a series on funk.
We’re starting by further examining how the One was utilised by Brown. Later, we'll delve into Brown's fascination with bridges, explore how horn motifs were a central theme of his 1970s work, look at the similarities between Brown and Fela Kuti, and then we’ll enjoy some of his acolytes and the ways they took funk into new territories. But let’s begin on the first beat.
The One
In 1970, most of Brown’s touring band quit over financial disputes, so he told his right-hand man Bobby Byrd to recruit the young musicians he’d used on some recent recordings. The key stars among these Cincinnati cats were brothers Bootsy and Catfish Collins, who would later become major players in P-Funk.
The new band became known as the J.B.’s. They were already good musicians, but Brown had to teach Bootsy about the One. Brown remarked in his autobiography how Bootsy had been playing “a lot of bass--the ifs, the ands, and the buts. I got him to see the importance of the one in funk--the downbeat at the beginning of every bar. I got him to key in on the dynamic parts of the one instead of playing all around it. Then he could do all his other stuff in the right places--after the one.”
Bootsy explains The One
In surely the greatest one minute and twenty seconds clip on YouTube, Bootsy Collins explains his basic funk formula. And it’s that simple yet incredibly powerful idea he learned from James Brown. “You hit it on the One,” Bootsy says. “ONE, two, three, four. ONE, two... You know?” Being one of the funkiest musicians on Earth, even Bootsy’s “You know?”s are cool, and as commenter @mrscojoe points out, his “uh”s add funky syncopation. “And then you would try to fit your different notes, what you felt, in between that.” Bootsy’s more adept than your average bass player at conjuring up magic between the Ones, of course.
To Hit the One or Not To Hit the One?
Confusingly, on 'Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine', one of Brown’s most famous songs and the one most synonymous with Bootsy, Bootsy doesn’t play on the One.
Bootsy was interviewed by Mitch Gallagher in a conversation that largely revolved around the One. Gallagher repeatedly (and politely) presses Bootsy on what makes him decide to play on the One or just before it.
Bootsy admits, “I never really thought about it and I never got a question about it until now,” which says as much about the lack of depth in most musician interviews as it does Bootsy’s creative process. “That’s probably the answer – is I never really thought about it.” He plays what feels good. “Wherever [Brown] was at with the One, it kind of evolved into what I was feeling.”
Bootsy explains that knowing about the One in the first place is the most important thing, and from there he learned he can sometimes hit it, and sometimes play around it. “I can purposely play on the One when I’m feeling that, but I don’t wanna be locked into having to play on the One.”
On ‘Sex Machine’, Bootsy says, “I come in before the One, and I was saying to myself, ‘James liked that.’ I mean, he liked that, so I don’t know. Even though he told me, ‘Gimme the One,’ when I played ‘Sex Machine', that’s just something I came up with, and he liked it. So anything that he would like, I was like, ‘Okay. Well...’ Either I got away with it or he just feels like he likes it.”
It seems James was like Bootsy: he would be down with something as long as it made him feel good (geddit?).
'Sex Machine' is the ultimate Brown and Byrd call-and-response track. Brown calls on the listener to "Get up!" and "Stay on the scene" ("Like a lovin’ machine," "Like a Sex Machine") so many times that Byrd has to respond with 50 (50!) "Get on up!"s.
(It may be repetitious but not one element of the song comes close to getting old – not even on the 10:49-minute version released later as the title track of the Sex Machine album. Even the questionable decision to overdub fake echo and corny audience noises for a faux live album couldn’t hold back the funk.)
‘Sex Machine', in comparison with previous funk milestones ‘Brand New Bag’ and ‘Cold Sweat’, features relatively minor horn parts. The stars are Jabo Starks' drums, bass and guitar courtesy of the Collins brothers, and vocal tradings between Brown and Byrd.
The horns (two trumpets) are restricted to six beats of repeated notes when Brown gets them to "Hit it now!", which began a long line of '70s tracks when he calls on the horn section to hit it.
The bridge is a good place to feel the One, particularly in the guitar. Around 2:10 minutes in, that first strum is the heaviest in the pattern and a downstroke (the guitarist’s hand goes down towards the floor, with the deepest note played first). The final three strums in the progression are all upstrokes (and thus sound more high-pitched), giving the downstroke on the One contrast and extra impact.
That guitar part is the only part that matches the relentless energy of Bootsy’s bassline. In a flurry of notes, Bootsy frantically switches between higher and lower pitches, never coming close to settling on anything after the six repeated notes at the beginning. While not hitting the One, Bootsy’s just a hair’s width from it. The final note in most of his phrases are just a sixteenth note before the One. (In other words, he’s even closer to it than the last ‘and’ in “three and four and ONE.")
To return to Bootsy’s interview with Gallagher, the latter mentions ‘Snow Bunny’ from the 2017 album World Wide Funk as another example of Bootsy leading up the One but leaving the kick drum to actually hit the One.
It’s a little easier to hear than on ‘Sex Machine.’ There are fewer bass notes, and the whole track is generally sparser. Bootsy’s bassline leads up to the One. “You know it’s coming. Something is coming,” said Bootsy.
Another Brown and Byrd classic, and another featuring the original J.B.’s, ‘Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved’ (Brown and Byrd really liked the word ‘get’), uses another technique to emphasise the One. The relentless trumpet and saxophone riff features only one note with any real sustain, and it arrives on the One. Most of the following notes are short and sharp, running into each other, with the sustained blast on the One standing out.
The bass and guitar run their fastest and gasp for air trying to keep up with the horns. The two play slightly different versions of the same riff. The bassline doesn’t share the same sustained note as the horns on the One, instead only letting the next-most sustained note of the horn riff ring out.
The guitar’s tone resembles an early electronic toy from the ’60s approaching breaking point. The section featuring only drums and guitar, starting just after the 3-minute mark, is a great place to hone in on this tone. The precision of the playing, too, sounds almost computerised. It’s incredibly tight. The guitar line features many more notes than the horns and bass, creating the impression of the instruments flitting in and out of time each other.
In ‘Get Involved,’ Bootsy both leads up to the One and hits it along with the kick drum and the other instruments. Why’d he play the One on this track? We can safely guess: because he was feeling it.
To close out this first part of funky explorations, check out this live performance of ‘Soul Power’ and ‘Get Involved,’ featuring a masterful transition between the two songs. A teenage Bootsy can be seen on bass, holding his instrument as if it were an upright bass.
“They had this grace,” Bootsy says of upright bass players. “I always loved that look.” He tried out the instrument at school, but “the bass beat [him] up.” Pupils took their instruments home, and Bootsy lived almost three miles from the school, which meant “carrying that mother home” was a problem. “It was like, ‘I gotta learn how to play something else, man.’”