60 Fun Facts About Funk

Before it named a music genre, what did the word 'funk' originally refer to?

In Black communities the sweaty connotation was a compliment: honest, hard-working effort on the bandstand produced a superlative performance.

James Brown's command 'On the one!' told his band to hammer which count?

Traditional soul accented the backbeat; shifting the weight to the downbeat is the single most-cited definition of what makes funk funk.

Which 1964 James Brown single is credited with launching his one-three beat shift toward funk?

Two 1965 hits followed and cemented the style; by 'Cold Sweat' in 1967 he had thrown out the twelve-bar blues form altogether.

In which city were Dyke and the Blazers, who released 'Funky Broadway' in 1967, based?

Wilson Pickett covered the song the same year and took it into the pop top 10.

What is Tower of Power's 1970 debut album, titled after the band's home turf, called?

The band formed in Oakland in 1968; the other three titles are real later Tower of Power albums.

Which New Orleans band defined the city's funk with 1969's 'Sophisticated Cissy' and 'Cissy Strut'?

The instrumental 'Cissy Strut' has a half-swung feel that funk drummers still study, and a Hammond B-3 organ carrying the hook.

Which 1969 Isley Brothers R&B No. 1 is cited as bridging Brown, Hendrix and Sly Stone?

The Isleys recorded it on their own T-Neck label right after leaving Motown, which is partly why it sounds so unbuttoned.

Which Motown producer's psychedelic soul hits include 'War' and 'Papa Was a Rollin' Stone'?

He pushed the Temptations from three-minute pop-soul into long, funky, socially charged epics at the end of the 1960s.

Rose Royce scored a No. 1 hit in 1976 with which purely dance-funk record?

It was the title song of the 1976 comedy film of the same name, starring Richard Pryor.

Which singer, heavily influenced by James Brown, is credited with creating Afrobeat?

The Nigerian bandleader fused Brown's grooves with highlife and jazz into songs that often ran past ten minutes.

Afrika Bambaataa's 1982 single 'Planet Rock' launched which minimalist, machine-driven subgenre?

Its DNA came from Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra rather than from horn sections and slap bass.

Which singer is nicknamed the Queen of Funk?

She fronted Rufus before going solo; 'I'm Every Woman' is one of the disco hits built on funk riffs.

Digital Underground's 'The Humpty Dance' is built on a sample of which Parliament song?

George Clinton returned the compliment by branding the group 'Sons of the P', which became the title of their second album.

Which producer is considered the progenitor of G-funk?

He has said that in the 1970s everyone was 'getting high, wearing Afros, bell-bottoms and listening to Parliament-Funkadelic'.

Prince formed which band, first meant as his opening act, to showcase the Minneapolis sound?

Morris Day fronted the group, which later stole scenes from Prince in Purple Rain.

Which percussive keyboard drives Stevie Wonder's 'Superstition' and Bill Withers' 'Use Me'?

Its strings are struck by rubber tips, which is why it sounds halfway between a guitar and a harpsichord.

Which synthesizer was most often used for funk synth bass lines?

Bernie Worrell's Minimoog on Parliament's 'Flash Light' is the template that later boogie and G-funk copied.

Funkadelic guitarist Eddie Hazel shaped his famous distorted lead sound with which pedal?

It is the same fuzz box Keith Richards used on '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction'.

Which guitar hero temporarily lived in the Isley Brothers' household and tutored a young Ernie Isley?

He was playing in the Isleys' backing band then, years before the Experience.

James Brown's longtime guitarist who developed the 'chicken scratch' rhythm technique was who?

He got his clean, trebly tone from hollow-body jazz guitars with P-90 pickups run through a Fender Twin Reverb with the treble cranked.

Which James Brown drummer did Pee Wee Ellis credit as the basis of modern funk?

His break on 'Funky Drummer' became one of the most sampled pieces of drumming in hip-hop.

Parliament's 1975 song 'Chocolate City' is a metaphor for which US city?

The track floated the idea of a Black president three decades before it happened.

Which Parliament song's title contains the made-up word 'Psychoalphadiscobetabioaquadoloop'?

It topped the R&B chart in 1978 despite a title almost nobody could say twice.

To dodge radio obscenity rules, the Ohio Players titled a song with a sound-alike for a banned word. What was it?

Funk lyricists leaned on double entendres and near-homophones throughout the 1970s to get spins.

Which all-Black rock band did Rolling Stone call 'funk-metal pioneers'?

Vernon Reid's group hit big with 'Cult of Personality' in 1988.

Which New Orleans-born drummer is said to have been the first to use the word 'funky' to tell musicians to play more syncopated and danceable?

He went on to become one of the most-recorded session drummers in Los Angeles.

Which harmony-driven Parliament-Funkadelic spinoff group was made up of women?

Parlet was the other female vocal spinoff in George Clinton's orbit.

George Clinton's original doo-wop group, the Parliaments, took its name from what?

Clinton was fifteen when he formed the group in Newark in 1956.

What was George Clinton's Plainfield, New Jersey barbershop, where the Parliaments rehearsed, called?

Future Funkadelic guitarist Garry Shider was a customer there as a child.

Which musician coined the name 'Funkadelic' after the band moved to Detroit?

Clinton had temporarily lost the rights to the name 'the Parliaments', so the backing band was pushed to the front.

Funkadelic's early albums were released on which Detroit label?

On those records the five Parliaments singers were credited only as 'guests' while the five musicians were the official group.

Parliament's 1974 album Up for the Down Stroke was its debut for which label?

The label's collapse at the end of the 1970s was one reason Clinton dissolved Parliament and Funkadelic as separate names.

What was the giant sci-fi stage prop that landed during the 1976 P-Funk Earth Tour?

A recreation of the prop is now in the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.

How many members of Parliament-Funkadelic were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997?

It was the largest band ever inducted to that point.

Which Funkadelic track is a ten-minute guitar solo that shares its name with the 1971 album it opens?

Eddie Hazel was reportedly told to play as if he had just learned his mother had died.

In which city was Bootsy Collins born?

He has stayed loyal to the town, writing a fight song for the Bengals and planning a restaurant with a local restaurateur.

Bootsy Collins's older brother Phelps, also a P-Funk guitarist, went by which nickname?

The two brothers played together in the Pacemakers, James Brown's J.B.'s and later Bootsy's Rubber Band.

Which Bootsy's Rubber Band single from Player of the Year hit No. 1 on the R&B chart?

The name doubled as one of his alter egos: 'the world's only rhinestone rockstar monster of a doll'.

Which of these was one of Bootsy Collins's stage alter egos?

The other three belong to George Clinton's P-Funk mythology rather than to Bootsy's own storyline.

Bootsy Collins played bass on which 1990 Deee-Lite hit?

His Rubber Band then became Deee-Lite's de facto backing group on a world tour.

What does Bootsy Collins call his star-shaped signature instrument?

The original was stolen and later turned up in a local pawn shop.

Sly and the Family Stone were formed in 1966 in which city?

They were the first major American rock group with a racially integrated, mixed-gender lineup.

Sly Stone was born under what name?

Before the band he was a DJ at KSOL and a producer at Autumn Records, where he cut Bobby Freeman's hit 'C'mon and Swim'.

Bassist Larry Graham joined Sly and the Family Stone as the cousin of which bandmate?

Graham's thumb-slapping technique became the foundation of funk bass and later powered his own Graham Central Station.

Which Sly and the Family Stone hit popularized the phrase 'different strokes for different folks'?

It was the band's first No. 1 and a protest against prejudice of every kind.

'Family Affair', a 1971 No. 1, was the lead single from which darker Sly and the Family Stone album?

The record swapped optimistic rock-soul for murky drum-machine grooves and plaintive vocals.

Earth, Wind & Fire was formed in 1969 in which city?

Maurice White had been a session drummer for Chess Records there before moving the group west.

Maurice White named Earth, Wind & Fire after the elements linked to which zodiac sign, his own?

His sign's classical triplicities cover fire, earth and air, so water was left out of the band name.

Before Earth, Wind & Fire, Maurice White drummed in which jazz pianist's trio?

The band later backed that pianist on Sun Goddess, produced by White in 1974.

Which Earth, Wind & Fire single won the 1975 Grammy for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group?

It came from That's the Way of the World, an album first commissioned as a film soundtrack.

Earth, Wind & Fire's own horn section went by what name?

The Memphis Horns backed Isaac Hayes and the Horny Horns backed Parliament; White loaned his section out to other projects too.

Which African thumb piano became a signature sound of Earth, Wind & Fire?

White carried one on stage and even named his publishing company after it.

The Godfather of Soul's given names were meant to be reversed. What was he supposed to be called?

A clerical slip on his birth certificate reversed them, so the world got James Joseph Brown.

Who founded the Famous Flames, the vocal group James Brown fronted in the 1950s?

Byrd stayed by Brown's side for decades and is the second voice on 'Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine'.

'Please, Please, Please' was inspired when which star scrawled the title on a napkin?

Brown was so taken with the words he insisted on turning them into a song, which became his first R&B hit in 1956.

Who paid to record the 1962 album Live at the Apollo, over King Records boss Syd Nathan's objections?

Nathan thought nobody would buy a live album; it reached No. 2 and stayed on the chart for 14 months.

Which 1965 single gave James Brown his first top-ten pop hit and his first Grammy?

He recorded it while between contracts, and it became the record that carried funk into the pop mainstream.

James Brown was among the first ten inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In what year?

He was inducted alongside Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry and Ray Charles in the Hall's inaugural class.

James Brown died on Christmas Day 2006. What was the cause?

He had been due to perform in New York on New Year's Eve and was still touring at 73.

Which 1968 James Brown hit became a civil-rights-era anthem?

He recorded it with a group of children shouting the response, and it topped the R&B chart for six weeks.