A Little Bit About "Cold Sweat"

A Little Bit About "Cold Sweat" #samplehistory #musichistory #drumandbasshistory #drumandbass #dnb #jungle #electronicmusic #edm #DNBProper #TallyGTuesdays #ColdSweat #JamesBrown

May of 1967 brought us a ditty from James Brown entitled “Cold Sweat”.  Like 1971’s “Hot Pants”, “Cold Sweat” is about how women make him feel and has been often referred to as the first true funk song.  Musicians were deeply affected by it, mostly positively, but many were incensed and found it simplistic.

This seven-minute song was written by Brown and his bandleader Alfred “Pee Wee” Ellis and was recorded in one take.  It is also notable that it was recorded without the use of overdubbing—an extremely common recording technique where the producer builds richness by creating audio layers that build upon one another, beginning with percussion and ending with vocals.

“Cold Sweat” was extremely important in the evolution of funk music.  Brown’s earlier works “Out of Sight” and “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” were based on the well-established “twelve bar blues” chord progression, which is “one of the most prominent chord progressions in popular music”.  “Cold Sweat” only undergoes one chord change.  Like the earlier songs, all of the musical instruments are used percussively in “Cold Sweat”.  According to Wikipedia, "the main drum part is a two-bar pattern with a snare hit on the two and four beats (a standard 4/4 rock pattern) with a simple variation:  the four beat hit in the first measure is delayed by one eighth note.  The snare pattern contributed greatly to the funky feel of the arrangement" (2024).

“Cold Sweat” became the basic formula in later James Brown songs and by other musical artists.  This song is especially important in music history because it is the first instance in which a drum solo is called for by Brown, which began the tradition of the drum break and thus the foundation of sampling (2024).

Most of the drum and bass tracks that sample “Cold Sweat” were created in the 1990s including Roni Size’s 1997 sensation “Brown Paper Bag”. You can first hear it sampled at 2:39.

1995 brought us the once-ubiquitous “Super Sharp Shooter” by DJ Zinc. The sample occurs throughout the track, beginning at 0:47.

A more recent sampling occurred in 2018, a bootleg by Rowpieces of Kool and the Gang’s “Summer Madness”.  "Cold Sweat" can be heard the entirety of the track.

As all things circle back again, maybe we will see a resurgence of tracks created utilizing this drum break.

Till next time,

Tally G