This week’s Musical Moment is brought to you by our Events Technician, Mr Benji Page…
Amen, Brother! by The Winstons
At 1 minute and 26 seconds into “Amen, Brother”, the other musicians stop playing and drummer Gregory Coleman performs a four-bar drum break. You will probably recognise it! This is ‘The Amen break’. It comes from the 1969 track “Amen, Brother” by soul group “The Winstons”, released as a B-side. The drum break lasts about seven seconds, performed by Gregory Coleman, and unwittingly created possibly the most sampled recording in history.
With the rise of hip hop in the 1980s, the break was widely sampled, and in the 1990s, it became the staple of drum and bass and jungle music.
“The Winstons” received no royalties for its use, bandleader Richard Lewis Spencer said it was unlikely Coleman, who died homeless and destitute in 2006, realized the impact he had made on musical history.
Take a look at WhoSampled.com, a user-generated website cataloguing samples, to see lists of its use! On the subject of samples, take a listen to DJ Shadows’ ‘Endtroducing…..’ (1996). This is a Guinness World Record holding album as the first album to be recorded entirely using only sampled sounds.
