Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / [EP 424] James Brown’s Funky Drummer: The Beat That Changed Music but Left Clyde Without Credit — with D. Leah Steinberg

Transcript

[EP 424] James Brown’s Funky Drummer: The Beat That Changed Music but Left Clyde Without Credit — with D. Leah Steinberg · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: A lot of times they were paid minimally or not
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: at all. James Brown, if he didn't like some little
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: nuance of what somebody was doing, or they came in,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: you know, a half a second too late, or he
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: didn't like the way their shoes were polished, he would
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: stand up and point to them on stage, $ 2, $ 5,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: and he would keep it all in his head. And
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: at the end of the day, he would total it
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: up and take that out of their paycheck. Welcome back
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: to Booked on Rock, conversations with authors, musicians, and insiders
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: revealing the stories behind classic rock's.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Greatest songs, albums, and artists.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: I'm Eric Senech.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Before we get started, if you are looking to get
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: some great classic rock merchandise, you can save 15% at OldGlory.com
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: with the promo code BookedOnRock. Just click the link in
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: the show notes or visit BookedOnRock.com and head to my deals.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Now onto our show. Clyde Stubblefield helped change the sound
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: of modern music as James Brown's drummer, creating the legendary
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: funky drummer break that would become one of the most
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: sampled rhythms in history and a foundation of hip hop.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: In Clyde Stubblefield, Rhythms of the Funky Drummer, Leah Steinberg
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: tells the story of the man behind that beat, from
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: his beginnings in Chattanooga and years with James Brown to
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: his life later in Madison, Wisconsin, and the recognition and
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: compensation that largely eluded him. Leah, welcome to the podcast.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: Nice to meet you.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Nice to meet you. Thank you for having me.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: You first met Clyde in a nearly empty Madison bar
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: without knowing him as James Brown's drummer. What do you
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: remember about that first encounter? Tell us about that.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Well, I had just got off work. I was working
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: at a sleep research lab at the University of Wisconsin.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: And someone had told me that there was this really
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: good band at the chamber on Blue Monday and Monday nights.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: And one Monday night, I thought, you know, I'm not
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: ready to go home yet. And so I think I'll
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: go over there and check it out. And I walked
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: up and paid my $ 5 and sat down at a
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: little table and was blown away. And I was like, well,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: who's this man? Who is he? And so over time,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: I got to know him. And because there wasn't too
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: many people coming at midnight on a Monday night in
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: the middle of Wisconsin winter, And so that's kind of
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: how I got to know him.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: When was that? What year?
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: That was about 1992.
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: What led to writing the book?
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Well, after a few years of going to see him
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: and becoming his friend, I said, you know, you never
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: really got your due, and I want to write a
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: book about you. And he said, yeah, okay, sure. And
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: he gave me names of people he knew in Chattanooga
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: growing up that were in his first bands and people
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: he met who were kind of his mentors, so to speak,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: on the street. He never actually took lessons. And so
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: he said, here, he scribbled them down on a little
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: piece of paper, and he said, you should go to
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Chattanooga and talk to these people. And I said, okay.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: So I went down. A friend of mine was going
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: to visit another friend in Atlanta. And so we stopped
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: in Chattanooga, and I met a few of his early bandmates. Slim,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Robert Eppinger, who went by Slim, took me on a
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: tour of Chattanooga and told me all about the old
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: days when the Big Nine was kind of the center
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: of music. back then, and it was kind of like
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: the Southern Harlem. Everybody came through there, and it was
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: just blocks and blocks and blocks of music happening all
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: the time. And so I had taken, I also did
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: two other interviews with people from Chattanooga, and I painstakingly
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: transcribed them on a typewriter, inch by inch on microcassettes,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: And no, it was a computer. That's right. It was
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: a computer. I printed it out on the dot matrix printer,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: ripped all the things apart and thought, write a book.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: I don't know what I was saying. And so I
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: kind of put them in a box and carried them
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: around with me from place to place and across the country.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: And a couple decades later, I thought, you know, I
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: really should do something with these interviews because they're very
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: unique and give a part of blues history that most
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: people don't know about. And I eventually, I wrote another
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: book that I self-published and I thought, okay, I'm going
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: to get back to those. I wrote an article and
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: got in Salon and then I kept going. And just
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: as I was starting to get back into it seriously,
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: after I retired, um, I, uh, Clyde passed away and
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, now what? You know, I was
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: really like, really? Uh, you know.
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: And that was 2017. Yeah.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then a few weeks after that happened, I
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: had a dream and he came to me in the
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: dream and he said, do it anyway. and in a
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: very Clyde voice. And I said, okay. Wow. Wow.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: That's a, yeah, the book, it's a full story of
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: his life right up until 2017. So let's go back
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: to the beginning. He grew up hearing rhythms and trains
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: and factories and washing machines. How did those everyday sounds
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: shape the way he played drums?
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: He always talked about the fact that he, heard rhythms
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: in everything. So when he was a kid, he would
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: walk down the street and he would listen to the
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: rhythms of his footsteps. He would listen to the rhythms
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: of the factories that kind of made a sound. He
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: would listen to the river sounds. And he just kind
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: of incorporated all that and I think he just had
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: the rhythm inside him that kind of reflected what was
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: out there. And he never took drum lessons and he
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: just played what he felt. That's what he always said,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: that he played what was inside him.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Which led to that individual style that he had. Yes.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Before James Brown, he played with the Cascades, which was
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: a Chattanooga band that mixed styles and created its own
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: So again, how did that experimentation shape his sound?
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: Slim had told me about, I always kind of wonder
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: why Clyde didn't really talk about all this, but he
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: was kind of private and he didn't really talk about
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: his early life or his time with James Brown. As
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: a matter of fact, I start the book with James who?
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: Because he always would, people ask him about it. He
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: would just, you know, try to deflect it.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: What was the reason? Was he humble?
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: He was humble, but it was also not a good
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: time in his life. James Brown was very difficult, too.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: But going back to the Cascades, they played lots of
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: different kinds of music and incorporated them together. So they
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: would take show tunes, they would take blues, they would
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: take jazz, and they would just kind of blend it
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: all together. depending on what Slim had talked about, that
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: they would kind of know what each other was thinking.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: And so they just put it all together in a
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: unique format. And they never really practiced that much, which
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: kind of reflects later on in Clyde's life when he
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: said he never would practice. He would talk about how
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: playing music was like having a conversation. And so you
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: don't practice your conversations. So someone would play something on
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: the guitar or on the bass or sing something, and
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: it would be like they would just change depending on
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: what the mood was. So I think that all use
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: the different and all of the different music that he
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: would hear in the big nine growing up, I think
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: led into his interest in all different kinds of music.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: Basis Linnell glass. I think it's pronounced that Linnell.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Linnell. Yes.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: Linnell glass recalls playing alongside Clyde for white audiences while
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: being forced to use back doors.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: Talk about how segregation shaped their lives as working musicians.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: They were asked to play at a lot of different places,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: but white people could sometimes join in. but black people
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: couldn't join in with white bands. So they would have
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: to play for white audiences and then come in the
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: back door and leave the back door. And so Linnell,
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: he was older than Clyde. And I think he just
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: took that as part of this is just the way
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: it is. And I got to play with lots of
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: different kinds of people. So it was okay. I don't
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: really know if he deeply felt it was okay. But yeah,
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: Clyde grew up in a very segregated Chattanooga. So I'm
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: sure that that, had a big effect on how he
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: looked at the world. But he never acted like that
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: when I knew him.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: Let's get into James Brown now, his time with James Brown.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Clyde said that the band would jam in the studio,
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: and then James would pick out an idea and add lyrics.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: Can you walk us through how those jams became songs?
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: The biggest one, Cold Sweat, he was just... Clyde said
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: that James never really told him what to play. He
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: would just be in there practicing or fooling around or
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: doing something. And occasionally, James Brown would walk in, like
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: what he heard, and say, OK, I'm putting words to this.
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: And that's how Cold Sweat occurred, which was one of
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: the biggest hits.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: There were two drummers.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Two drummers. Right.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: So there's Clyde and then the fellow drummer, Jabbo Starks
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: as well. They had different styles, very different styles. How
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: did Brown decide which drummer had the right feel for
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: a particular song?
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: I always thought until later in doing my research that
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: they had played double drumming, but that wasn't true. Like
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: he would, from what I understand, he would point at
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: one of them and then do a song that would
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: reflect the kind of drumming that one of them had.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: So they would kind of go back and forth.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: Funky drummer's another great one. Clyde called that a simple beat.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: What makes its groove, including those quiet notes between the
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: main beats, so distinctive and difficult to reproduce?
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: He used ghost notes, which are the barely heard notes
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: in between notes. And he had a polyrhythmic feel to
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: his drumming, which many different rhythms on top of each other,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: which actually goes back to Africa, even though I don't
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: think Clyde ever saw that or read about it or anything,
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: but it was just kind of a rhythm that I
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: think wound its way through the Delta. And so he
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: put it, People have tried a lot to reproduce this rhythm,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: and it's very difficult, and not too many people have succeeded,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: which is one of the reasons, I think, that that
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: was taken and used in hip-hop, because nobody else could
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: really reproduce it.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: Sure, which would lead to, because there's a question I
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: was going to ask about his work with the band Garbage.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: So I think that partly answers that question, but we'll
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: get to that. But sticking with this period, Leah Steinberg,
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: by the way, is the author of Clyde Stubblefield, Rhythms
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: of the Funky Drummer. He explained, Clyde, how small changes
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: in his playing helped distinguish Cold Sweat from a song
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: like I Got the Feelin'. What do those recordings reveal
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: about his creative instincts?
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: He, again, had this innate capacity to hear a rhythm
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: that nobody else can hear. And if he heard it,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: he said, if I hear it, I can play it.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: So I think that in his psyche, he heard it
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: and he just would come up with things.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: Instinctive.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: If Clyde created grooves that Brown built songs around, do
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: you believe that he deserved songwriting credit?
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: Considering the fact that James Brown had heard Clyde's rhythms
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: and knew what he was looking for and found it
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: and Clyde brought him into the band and then after
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: a while he made all of the rhythms of the
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: different instruments reflect that drum rhythm. So it's really the
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: basis of what James Brown had between 1965 and 1970.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: And whether he deserves, quote, songwriting credits or not, he
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: was never really given the credit due him in terms
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: of what he contributed to James Brown's funk success. Everything
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: changed when he came on.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: No publishing credits given to him.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: So is that part of why I'm assuming that that
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: experience wasn't great for him? Because Brown's musical director, Fred Wesley,
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: says that Clyde disliked how Brown treated the band. Oh, yeah.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Yes. It was one of the reasons. The other reason
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: was that a lot of times they were paid minimally
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: or not at all. And James Brown had a way of,
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: even when they were up on stage, he would, um,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: if he didn't like some little nuance of what somebody
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: was doing or they came in, you know, a half
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: a second too late, or he didn't like the way
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: their shoes were polished, he would stand up and point
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: to them on stage like $ 2, $ 5 and would, he
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: would keep it all in his head. And at the
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: end of the day, he would, um, total it up
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: and take that out of their paycheck. Wow. And so,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: you know, it, he was a perfectionist and, um, that
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: came because of a lot of reasons. Um, you know, his,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: his growing up and, and everything. Um, But he was very,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: very difficult to deal with, and he did not treat
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: his bandmates or women in his life well at all.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: And that is what ultimately drove Clyde to leave?
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: What year did he leave the band?
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: Well, it's 1970, but there was things that I found
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: out where he came back a few times that year.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: as a lot of them did because once people left,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: and he fired the whole band in 1970 and brought
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: on Bootsy Collins, who had a little band and had
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: never even been on an airplane at that point. But
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: he blocked when Maceo Parker went out to have his
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: own band that year, he would go and put up
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: signs that now they were going to have a show
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: that night, wherever it was, and he would call up
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: the radio stations and say, don't play their music. And
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: eventually all of them came back for a while, except
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Pee Wee Ellis. And so I believe in doing the
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: research that he came back to do, three or four shows.
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: And so I think the official date of him leaving
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: was 71.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: And what did he do after he left James Brown's band?
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: His brother, Frank, lived in Wisconsin and in Madison. And
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Frank told me that they were doing a show in Madison.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: And after the show, he went over to Frank's house
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: and hid out. and basically left in the middle of
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: the tour, and Brown didn't know where he went or why. Well,
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: he probably knew why, but where he went, and he
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: didn't know that he had a brother that lived there,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: and basically James Brown never talked to him again in
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: his life. So he mainly settled in Madison because of family,
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: his brother, and... He just started over.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: Played locally.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Played locally. For anybody who would ask, he played everything
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: from over the 45 years that he lived in Madison,
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: he played with Ben Sidron, jazz. He played with Chris Plata,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Tex-Mex music. He played blues and rock and country even.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: Anybody who asked him He would basically go and play
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: with them. And didn't really have to. Chris Plata tells
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: a funny story of how he went to ask him
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: to be on his album. And he said, yeah, I'll
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: come over and we can just record it. And he says,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: you don't know anything about this music. You've never heard it.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: And you're just going to come over and record it?
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: And he said, yeah. And so that's what happened. And
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: he started a 40-year friendship with Chris Plata. And he
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: ended up playing in every album that Chris Plata had recorded.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: Bringing R & B to this South Central Wisconsin area
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: made him prouder than his work with James Brown.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: What made that so meaningful to him?
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: I think because he was able to really be himself.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: And he was able to... live a more comfortable, um,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: free life, being able to not be so regimented. Like
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: when he played with James Brown, it was like, you
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: play this and you play it the way I tell
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: you to play it. And, um, you know, there wasn't
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: much creativity other than the fact that he gave James
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Brown his rhythms. Um, And Clyde was able to decide
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: who to play with, when to play, and just created
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: a life for himself there.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: Butch Vig brought Clyde onto the album For Garbage on
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: two songs, their 95 debut album, Queer and Not My Idea. Now,
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Butch Vig is from the area, right? So that's how
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: he finds out about Clyde.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Basically, you know, Madison was, you know, it's about 180,000 people,
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: but it became a small town if you were there,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: you know, five to 10 years. And in the music world,
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: pretty much everybody knew everybody. And, um, Butch had started, uh,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: smart studios there. And, um, I think he His comment was,
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: you don't put on a sample when the person who
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: created it lives down the street from you.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: And that leads to what we were talking about earlier,
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: his own individual style. It's not something that you could
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: sample and really create the same vibe, right? I mean,
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: what did his live playing offer that the sampling couldn't?
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: The instinctive feel and the inclusion of... The rhythm on
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: the one and the ghost notes and the polyrhythmic interchange
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: that he created.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: Public Enemy built tracks around his beat for Funky Drummer.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: How did he feel about that? How did he feel
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: about becoming a foundation of hip-hop while receiving little recognition
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: or compensation?
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: He felt that it was kind of an arc from
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: James Brown to hip-hop. that he never was concerned so
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: much that he didn't get royalties, but the recognition really
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: bothered him, not getting a recognition. And Public Enemy did
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: acknowledge him later on, and some other people did. Melissa
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: Etheridge did. But the vast majority amount of people, uh,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: hip hop bands who didn't was pretty vast. And, and
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: he's been sampled on like about 2000 different.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Holy wow.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: Career. Well, I know early on there was the, that
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: was the issue where credit wasn't given. And then once
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: hip hop became huge, that became something more that, uh,
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: that the artists who were sampled a little more aggressive about, Hey,
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: you know, I want my credit. You know, like Beastie
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: Boys sampled a lot of stuff back in the day,
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: and I don't think they got permission on it. But anyway, yeah,
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, that many. And again, no compensation for that.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: No compensation.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because I worked with somebody who was a drummer,
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: and he did talk about that. I think he was
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: talking about copyright. You can copyright a guitar riff or
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: a melody, but drum beats you can't.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and that was the movie documentary Copyright Criminals that
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: goes into that.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: Well, one guy who was a big fan was Prince,
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: quietly paid more than $ 90, 000 in Clyde's medical bills. How
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: did that unexpected gesture affect Clyde?
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, he was really surprised and honored that Prince did that.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Never met him before?
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Or had he known him? Well, it's up for debate.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Clyde was up recording something at the studios. What's it called?
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: Prince Studio.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, Paisley Park.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: Yes, Paisley Park. And supposedly they met, but there's no complete,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: it was kind of a, Somebody told me that, who
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: knew about that time at Paisley Park. And supposedly they
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: played a ping pong game together.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: They were both really into ping pong. And if he
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: did meet him and talk to him, Clyde probably wouldn't
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: have made a big deal about it.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: He passed in 2017, like we stated earlier, but his
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: rhythms still reach people who don't know his name. I mean, I,
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: and this is why one of the reasons I love
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: doing this show is because it introduces me to some
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: of these names and I, I hate to say it,
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: but I didn't know his name until reading the book.
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: And now I know it's him. So now I go
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: to Spotify and I listen to him like there's Clyde,
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: you know, listening to his, you know, his amazing work,
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: the body of work. What do you want listeners and
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: viewers of this to, of this show to understand about
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: the man behind those beats.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: He was a very kind and giving person. And the
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: way he would, anybody who was a drummer would eventually, well,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: in Madison, he would eventually go up to him and say,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: do you get blossoms? And he would say, no. And
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: then he would say, well, you just come and listen
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: to me. And so a number of people, including Wally Ingram,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: who eventually played with David Nelson Band, and well, he
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: still plays with David Nelson Band. He eventually went on
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: a tour with Phil Lesh and Bob Weir one time.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: So his basis of drumming came from watching Clyde, and
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: eventually he was there one day, and as Clyde would do,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: he would say, oh, you come up and take over
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: for a while. I'm going to take a break. And
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: that's how a lot of people got started drumming. He
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: was just wanting to leave the door open to anybody
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: who wanted to drum and help.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: Clyde Stubblefield, Rhythms of the Funky Drummer, out now. Find
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: it wherever books are sold. Also look for it at
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: your nearest independent bookstore. You can go to bookdownrock.com to
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: find your nearest bookstore. And Leah, can people find you online?
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: I'm putting together a website now.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: I do have.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: Facebook, Twitter.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm on Facebook a little bit.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Leah, thank you very much for coming on the show.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: Thank you for writing this book. It was much needed,
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: I'm sure. Clyde's looking down, smiling.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: I think he is. Yes. He's been pushing me for years.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Leah.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, too, for loving me.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: It's in the books.