who invented fingerstyle funk bass?

[behemecoytl]

my drummer and I were talking after a gig the other night about who invented "funk bass"... he was under the impression that Bootsy Collins invented the fingerstyle funk way of playing. I told him his timeline was off, since it at least goes back as far as James Jamerson, but maybe there were jazz players doing stuff sortof like that at the time...??? (my drummer had Never heard of Jamerson, and I know it's a bassist thing, but this never ceases to amaze me how someone that innovative for an instrument can still be relatively unknown...)

so I got interested to find the Inventor, but can't find much info- especially when sites say that Sly Stone invented funk bass, or that George Clinton did... it occurs to me that only our little subculture of bassists would know

my money is on Jamerson, since i can't think of anything before Motown that sounded remotely like funk...

anyone know any obscure funksters from the 50's who taught Jamerson everything and promptly disappeared?

[DWBass]

Hmmm........dunno 'bout Jamerson being the first. He was more about R&B and Soul than about Funk, IMHO. Maybe "Sweet" Charles Sherrell, Fred Thomas or another James Brown bassist was doing the 'funk' thing early on.

[behemecoytl]

well, Jamerson called his bass "The Funk Machine" and carved the word "Funk" into the back of it... and the Motown Band called themselves the "Funk Brothers", so i think it's splitting hairs to call Jamerson R&B or Soul, but not quite funk... certainly James Brown was probably one of the first bands to refer publicly to their music as "funk", since back in the early 60s it was probably regarded as a dirty word-- but that 16th note fingerstyle funk feel Bass playing didn't originate with JB's bands...

[DWBass]

Originally Posted by behemecoytl

my money is on Jamerson, since i can't think of anything before Motown that sounded remotely like funk......

Oh, there was a ton of soul, funk and r&b music out there. Check out the early Stax records roster! The Bar-Kays were killin' it before becoming Otis Redding's backup band!

From Wiki:

Late 1960s: invention of funk by James Brown

James Brown, one of the founding fathers of funk by the mid-1960s, James Brown had developed his signature groove that emphasized the downbeat – with heavy emphasis on the first beat of every measure to etch his distinctive sound, rather than the backbeat that typified African American music.[6] 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 – but with an even-note syncopated guitar rhythm (on quarter notes two and four) featuring a hard-driving, repetitive brassy swing. This one-three beat launched the shift in Brown's signature music style, starting with his 1964 hit single, "Out of Sight" and his 1965 hit, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag".

Brown's innovations pushed the funk music style further to the forefront with releases such as "Cold Sweat" (1967), "Mother Popcorn" (1969) and "Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine" (1970), discarding even the twelve-bar blues featured in his earlier music. Instead, Brown's music was overlaid with "catchy, anthemic vocals" based on "extensive vamps" in which he also used his voice as "a percussive instrument with frequent rhythmic grunts and with rhythm-section patterns ... [resembling] West African polyrhythms" -- a tradition evident in African American work songs and chants.[7] Throughout his career, Brown's frenzied vocals, frequently punctuated with screams and grunts, channeled the "ecstatic ambiance of the black church" in a secular context.[7]

In a 1990 interview, Brown offered his reason for switching the rhythm of his music: "I changed from the upbeat to the downbeat.... Simple as that, really."[8] According to Maceo Parker, Brown's former saxophonist, playing on the downbeat was at first hard for him and took some getting used to. Reflecting back to his early days with Brown's band, Parker reported that he had difficulty playing "on the one" during solo performances, since he was used to hearing and playing with the accent on the second beat.[9]

Other musical groups picked up on the riffs, rhythms, and vocal style developed by James Brown and his band, and the style began to grow. Dyke & the Blazers based in Phoenix, Arizona, released "Funky Broadway" in 1967, perhaps the first record of the soul era to have "funky" in the title. Meanwhile, on the West Coast, Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band was releasing funk tracks beginning with its first album in 1967, culminating in the classic single "Express Yourself" in 1970.

The Meters defined funk in New Orleans, starting with their Top Ten R&B hits "Sophisticated Cissy" and "Cissy Strut" in 1969. Another group who would define funk in the decade to come were The Isley Brothers, whose funky 1969 #1 R&B hit, "It's Your Thing", signaled a breakthrough in African-American music, bridging the gaps of the rock of Jimi Hendrix and the upbeat soul of Sly & the Family Stone and Mother's Finest.

[dgordonhill]

Enlighten the masses: Give the people what they need knowledge!!!!!! The bassplayer's job! keep the bottom moving

[dgordonhill]

GREETINGS DW:
WHAT IT IS

[cnltb]

Who was the first bassist to get an electric bass...
I suppose that that person would have "invented" finger style.

[JimmyM]

monk montgomery is considered one of the very first major players to record with an electric bass, possibly the first. but he used his thumb.

[guitfiddle0409]

Larry Graham didn't invent it but he definitely took it a step further and helped make the style what it is today.

[Mark Perry]

Guess it could have only been the dude who played on Papas' got a new bag... Sam Thomas.

I'd imagine Funk (or elements of it) are rooted far back in African history. George Porter Jr. claims the Meters' sound was influenced purely by music from New Orleans. Not by James Brown. And the same goes for James Jamerson I guess.

[plangentmusic]

The bass can defined into two distinct eras. Before Jamerson and after Jamerson.

[Mark Perry]

Originally Posted by guitfiddle0409

Larry Graham didn't invent it but he definitely took it a step further and helped make the style what it is today.

Larry Graham made a point of NOT using fingerstyle I'm loving Early Sly and the Family Stone stuff atm btw. He wasn't doing much, if any "thumping" or "Plucking", but the bass lines are all incredible.

[onomatopoeia]

Jimmy Blanton. Funk master before there was funk.

[whocaresnotme]

I am thinking, as we know funk today, the roots of that style (arguably) rest with James Brown.

I remember seeing James in concert in about 1966 and the bassist was white and I was completely tripped by the rhythm. At the time I was completely into black R&B and soul and blues and didn't listen to white rock at all. James , in my experience and at the time, was the only one playing that rhythm style.

[Dr. Cheese]

Originally Posted by whocaresnotme

I am thinking, as we know funk today, the roots of that style (arguably) rest with James Brown.

I remember seeing James in concert in about 1966 and the bassist was white and I was completely tripped by the rhythm. At the time I was completely into black R&B and soul and blues and didn't listen to white rock at all. James , in my experience and at the time, was the only one playing that rhythm style.

That was Tim Drummond on bass, but I guess that probably more like 1969.

I agree with DWBass that James Brown's bassists invented figner funk since James Brown created funk.

[jerry]

Originally Posted by DWBass

Oh, there was a ton of soul, funk and r&b music out there. Check out the early Stax records roster! The Bar-Kays were killin' it before becoming Otis Redding's backup band!

From Wiki:

+1, James Alexander has to be up there on the list, I even remember him using a fuzz early on.

[Caca de Kick]

Plenty of bassist playing that grooving stuff on upright in jump bands well before Motown or JB came along. The players just adapted to the 'new' instrument.

[Dr. Cheese]

Originally Posted by Caca de Kick

Plenty of bassist playing that grooving stuff on upright in jump bands well before Motown or JB came along. The players just adapted to the 'new' instrument.

None of it was funk. Find me a clip of someone in the jump band era playing a groove like "Sex Machine," and maybe I will change my mind. Even if you did, it was not a hit or it would be in the common memory.

[GM60466]

I vote James

[JAUQO III-X]

James brown did not invent funk. James brown took elements of funk(heavy groove orientated bass lines) before him and placed an emphasis on the one.



Funk minley gets it's ingrediants from soul, soul jazz and R&B. And that was taking place before James Brown took the one and ran with it.

James Brown himself was playing these other genres and mixtures of it as well.