Clyde Stubblefield (April 18, 1943 – February 18, 2017) was an American drummer best known for his work with James Brown. A self-taught musician, Stubblefield was influenced by the sound of natural rhythms around him. His drum patterns on Brown’s recordings are considered funk standards. He recorded and toured with Brown for six years and settled in Madison, Wisconsin, where he was a staple of the local music scene. Often uncredited, samples of his drum patterns were heavily used in hip-hop music.
Born to Frank D. and Vena Stubblefield on April 18, 1943, he grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. As a youngster his sense of rhythm was influenced by the industrial sounds of factories and trains around him. He was inspired to pursue drumming after seeing drummers for the first time in a parade. He played professionally as a teenager. In early 1960s he worked with guitarist Eddie Kirkland and toured with Otis Redding.
In 1965 he joined the James Brown band. Over the next six years the band had two drummers, Stubblefield and John “Jabo” Starks who had joined the band two weeks earlier. Starks’ style was influenced by the church music he grew up with in Mobile, Alabama. The two drummers had no formal training. According to Stubblefield, “We just played what we wanted to play (…) We just put down what we think it should be.” The two “created the grooves on many of Brown’s biggest hits and laid the foundation for modern funk drumming in the process.”
Stubblefield’s recordings with James Brown are considered to be some of the standard-bearers for funk drumming, including the singles “Cold Sweat”, “There Was a Time”, “I Got The Feelin'”, “Say It Loud – I’m Black and I’m Proud”, “Ain’t It Funky Now”, “Mother Popcorn”, “Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved” and the album Sex Machine.
His rhythm pattern on James Brown’s “Funky Drummer” is among the world’s most sampled musical segments. It has been used for decades by hip-hop groups and rappers such as Public Enemy, Run-D.M.C., N.W.A, Raekwon, LL Cool J, Beastie Boys and Prince, and has also been used in other genres. Stubblefield was featured in the PBS documentary, Copyright Criminals, which addressed the creative and legal aspects of sampling in the music industry.
Stubblefield died on February 18, 2017, from kidney failure. He survived cancer in 2000 and coped with kidney disease since 2002. Pop icon Prince, who considered Stubblefield a drumming idol, was a major financial supporter, and had paid for about $80,000 of the drummer’s healthcare costs, it was disclosed in 2016, since Stubblefield had no health insurance.
In a 1991 interview with Isthmus, Stubblefield said: “What influenced me mainly was sounds. Train tracks. Washing machines. I just put patterns against natural sounds, and that’s what I do today. I could be walking down the street in time and put a drum pattern against it while I’m walking (…) That’s the same thing I’m doing now when I sit down behind the drums. I put a pattern behind what everyone else is doing.”
Read the whole article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Stubblefield
* * * * *
Other Notable Musicians’ Deaths… February 2017
21: Leah Adler, 97, American pianist; Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, 93, Polish-American conductor and composer.
20: Huang Feili, 99, Chinese musician and conductor; Elric Pronce, 21, Belgian pianist and 3D-designer, train derailment.
19: Larry Coryell, 73, American jazz guitarist.
18: Clyde Stubblefield, 73, American drummer (James Brown), kidney failure.
17: Peter Skellern, 69, English singer-songwriter, brain cancer.
16: Pericoma Okoye, Nigerian singer; Maurice Vander, 87, French jazz pianist and composer.
15: E-Dubble, 34, American rap artist, blood infection; Tibério Gaspar, 73, Brazilian musician and composer.
14: Tony Särkkä, 45, Swedish multi-instrumentalist (Abruptum, Ophthalamia).
13: Carol Lloyd, 68, Australian rock singer, interstitial lung disease.