Six seconds of drumming from 1969 built entire genres.
Near the end of 'Amen, Brother', a B-side by the funk band The Winstons, drummer G. C. Coleman plays a four-bar solo lasting about six seconds. Sampled and sped up, it became the backbone of hip hop, jungle and drum and bass, and one of the most sampled recordings ever.
In 1969, The Winstons, a soul and funk group from Washington, DC, released 'Color Him Father', which became a hit. On the B-side was an instrumental version of the gospel standard 'Amen', called 'Amen, Brother'. Partway through, the band drops out and drummer Gregory Sylvester Coleman plays a brief four-bar drum break.
In the 1980s, hip hop producers began digging through old records for drum breaks they could loop. The Amen break was compiled on the 1986 record Ultimate Breaks and Beats, which made it easy to find. Early samplers could capture short snippets of audio, and producers chopped the break, rearranged its hits and changed its speed.
In the early 1990s, British producers pushed it further, speeding it up and slicing it into complex, rolling patterns. It became the foundation of jungle and then drum and bass. It has also shown up in rock, pop, advertising and video game music. Estimates of how many tracks use it run into the thousands, making it one of the most sampled recordings in history.
For decades, the band received almost nothing from its reuse. G. C. Coleman died in 2006, reportedly homeless. In 2015, fans raised about £24,000 through a crowdfunding campaign for Richard L. Spencer, the band's leader and copyright holder. The Amen break has become a symbol of both the creativity of sampling culture and its unresolved questions about credit and payment.
Source: Wikipedia — Amen break · Text summarised from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
