RIP Clyde Stubblefield

One day after Junie Morrison, a month after Jaki Liebezeit.

http://fb.me/4T1TQNFDm

Incredible guy. The samples will always be his legacy, but I'll remember him from this residency he held down in Madison for two decades. Every Monday night you could see him and his band for free, in a city that didn't usually have much else going on. Made us feel like we had major bragging rights

listening to the Star Time box with a friend when it was new -- I was maybe 22 years old -- being late to the night class we took together at the community college because our jaws were on the floor listening to these tracks, amazed, beyond amazed, sitting there in wonder at this music, all the space created in it, freaking the fuck out at these beats

few greater, ever

Aw RIP. Knew he was not well lately.

RIP. What a legend.

RIP

The man. And I love how he didn't think the "Funky Drummer" break was him at his best.

Been watching through some amazing footage tonight. Paris Olympia 67, Boston 68, Mother Popcorn 69.
But not sure who is doing what of the drum duo.
Or who the sole drummer on Hollywood Palace is.
Probably ought to know what the 2 look like individually by now.
Jabo's pretty good himself isn't he. Or was.

I can totally hear what he said about Funky Drummer - it is generally a mellower/looser/lazier groove than they tended to knock out, it does sound like it was recorded late at night while they were tired. And even still he was tight as hell

It's def not his best break/bear imo

RIP total giant

So many great bears

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPbSSRpln-o
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnO8sHmkbv4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SV95pdw3pDw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB4VgoJwNNM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBAnUiCDujI is 2 drummers whereas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NoH4RoCaf8 is one, is that him?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKLfwsN_c20 is a clip i took a still of JB duetting with Maceo from youtube printed it out and stuck on my wall several years back. I have another of him dancing stuck in my hall.

otherworldly so rip doesn't quite fit.

it is generally a mellower/looser/lazier groove than they tended to knock out, it does sound like it was recorded late at night while they were tired.

This is insane to me, Funky Drummer is an intricate clockwork masterpiece to my ears. So many nuances, so hard to reproduce accurately, so perfect.

As many times as I've seen Clyde I've hardly ever seen him play a groove like this live (16th notes on the right hand). Maybe at a Clyde & Jabo clinic in high school (which was amazing), but to my foggy memory it was mostly Jabo playing that stuff. Jabo is also amazing btw.

I'll always feel bad about not going to see Clyde more often here, but did have some great experiences doing so. Got to play percussion on stage with him once during college, which was a great physical experience, locking in with that groove.

My other favorite Clyde break:
https://youtu.be/921kqkHOHDo?t=297

Yep, the Sex Machine 'Give It Up'. I've long thought that that's the single most exciting moment in popular music - after that long breakdown, Brown suddenly calling "Clyde!" and Stubblefield instantaneously slamming back into that irresistibly syncopated pattern. (The *second* most exciting moment in popular music, of course, occurs eight seconds later when Brown calls for Bootsy.)

The live version of "There was a Time" that is a million miles an hour is flat out filthy. That is some of my all time favorite drumming.

The funk band in Valhalla got a bit better this week having both Clyde and Junie Morrison exit this spectrum in the same week. RIP.

I was at this John Scofield show where Clyde sat in, didn't know there was video until now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZbZy8AgE9A

Since George Porter was on bass it definitely felt like a moment in funk history, a little meeting of the Meters and JB rhythm sections. You could feel they were all so excited about Clyde.

🤩

Aww thanks.

Looks like only the bottom 2 YouTube videos Steveolende posted are still accessible, as others are blocked by copyright infringement claims. Bottom 2 are great. Not sure who was drumming with James Brown when I saw him in the early 1980s .

You could feel they were all so excited about Clyde.

man yeah Scofield is just BEAMING. how amazing to be playing Cold Sweat with Stubblefield, just unbelievable. Stubblefield smiling right back at him, this is an incredible groove.

To go even deeper, I heard someone say on a podcast that Clyde subbed on a portion of Scofield's A Go Go tour with Medeski & Wood, which totally seems to be the case:

DB: After that record came out you went out on tour with Clyde Stubblefield. How did that come about?JS: Well Billy got married and he went out on a honeymoon so he wasn’t available.DB: How did you find Clyde?JS: I was a fan of his because he had played on all those James Brown records that we all grew up on. He was part of that generation that invented funk. Medeski and Wood were real into him too, and when we were talking about the different possibilities on drums, they said that they had played with Clyde when they were out in Wisconsin and that he was in great shape. So we decided to call him and he agreed to do it. I loved it. He’s a great man, a wonderful guy and he really does sit in the groove like nobody else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3x_7w5i1uwo

Btw that podcast has lots of good nuggets, going into his life in Madison and why he was perfectly happy kicking back with local bands rather than being on the road with someone like James Brown (also stories about doing liquid opium on a military base in Vietnam with JB).

It also reminded me why I didn't go see him more often in all those years even though he's one of my absolute favorite drummers, you had to really work to appreciate him with some of those bands he was playing with on Monday nights.

Sounds like you have some great memories and didn’t ruin them by spending too much Monday night time with bad bar bands ( except for their drummer).