As
legend has it, after recording this song with
James Brown,
Clyde Stubblefield quit the band. He decided he would never deliver something that great again, and it would be better to go out on top. I read this in a
Modern Drummer article on James Brown's numerous drummers. I'm sorry: I don't remember which edition of Modern Drummer it was.
One of the things that makes this beat so widely sampled, is that it's about nine minutes worth of ever-shifting, though slightly shifting pure funk. As a loop tends to be only one measure long, this allows for many different samples to be pulled from this one recording without all that much repetition. Still, though, there's something about the tone of Clyde's drums on the track, especially the snare drum, that makes it very easy to distinguish.