Capt. Gene | FunkManiac

Norm

I asked CaptGene for something funky, trusting that a fishing guide from Babsom Park would know exactly what I was talking about. He did. The Captain knows funk.

I used to have a link to his original version here, but that is no longer available. Has the Captain moved on to deeper waters?

For those of you not from Babsom Park, Funk is an American musical style that originated in the mid to late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, soul jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. By mid-1960s, funk pioneer James Brown had developed his signature groove that emphasized the downbeat, rather than the backbeat that typified American soul music, as well as most Rock And Roll. For me, I consider funk rhythm patterns to have beats on the first 3 beats of the first bar, and a beat on the 4+ of the second bar.

James Brown often cued his band with the command “On the one!” changing the percussion emphasis/accent from the one-TWO-three-FOUR backbeat of traditional soul music to the ONE-two-THREE-four downbeat - with an even-note syncopated guitar rhythm (on quarter notes two and four).

The word “funk”, once defined in dictionaries as body odor or the smell of sexual intercourse, commonly was regarded as coarse or indecent. James Brown and others have credited Little Richard’s mid-1950s road band, with New Orleans-born Earl Palmer on drums, as being the first to put the funk in the rock ‘n’ roll beat. According to one source, Palmer “was the first to use the word “funky” to explain to other musicians that their music should be made more syncopated and danceable.”