Who is popular today?

The drummer, who has died aged 78, pushed a relentless beat loved by dance floors and hip-hop samplers alike
Hamilton Bohannon dies
In 1973, Hamilton Bohannon, who died on Friday aged 78, released his debut album, Stop & Go. It was a solid set of tough, largely instrumental funk tracks, the kind of album that was destined to get lost amid the glut of incredible soul music pouring out of American studios – 1973 was the year of Funkadelic’s Cosmic Slop, Sly and the Family Stone’s Fresh, Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions and Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get it On – and to be rediscovered years later by crate-diggers and sample hunters, which it duly was: plundered for tracks by Jay-Z, Mary J Blige, Public Enemy, the Ultramagnetic MCs and Pete Rock.
You would say it sounded like the work of a musical journeyman, which pretty much describes Hamilton Bohannon in 1973 - he’d spent the 1960s drumming for Stevie Wonder before putting together the Motown Sound, a kind of touring equivalent of the label’s legendary sessioneers the Funk Brothers, who played gigs with Marvin Gaye, the Four Tops and Martha and the Vandellas and leading the house bands at a variety of Detroit nightclubs – but on its title track it contained the germ of an idea. Bohannon’s drumming stripped away the syncopated style that was standard on funk tracks in favour of a simple, driving rhythm, the bass drum playing four beats to the bar, or four-to-the-floor. Continue reading...