Samples on singles that are better known than the original

[andrew7610]

Like how Funky Drummer has seemingly appeared on every rap track ever?

Not every rap track - just the ones that don't use the 'Amen break' from Amen Brother by The Winstons

[gjw100]

Portishead used Wayne Shorter's descending soprano saxophone intro from 'Elegant People' to perform the same function on 'Strangers', but took it down an octave.

Massive Attack sampled the main riff from Billy Cobham's 'Stratus' on 'Safe From Harm'.

[3 Colours Red]

Not every rap track - just the ones that don't use the 'Amen break' from Amen Brother by The Winstons

Touche.

[Bored Of Education]

Schooly D's 'P.S.K. What Does It Mean' is sampled on a ton of songs, but most recognizably Kiss Them For Me by Siouxsie.

James Brown's 'Static' is also on about a million 80s and 90s house tracks.

It was the "Looking at my Gucci, it's about that time" from "Gucci Time" sampled in "Time to get ill" by the Beastie Boys that got me into Schooly D. Similarly, it was the "ba-ba-ba-ba, ba-ba, ba. Ba, ba, ba-pa" horn refrain in BB's "Slow Ride" (SWTDT?) that led me to "Low Rider" by War. I had got into The Meters via hearing "Cissy Strut" on a 60's compilation but, upon exploring more of their stuff, I realised that they had been sampled loads.

To be honest, the theme of this thread is how I do a lot of my DJing. As well as "Low Rider", I regularly play the aforementioned "Are you my woman", "I got the..." by Labe Siffre (from the terrible "My name is.."), usually at least one Meters song and others that I momentarily have forgotten. It is quite nice to see people look in recognition and then realise that they haven't heard the song before. I will be adding "Superbad" to the list now.

[danielmak]

By the way, there's a podcast called the Bob Lefsetz podcast that is about 90% focused on music industry stuff and the other 10% is interviews with authors and other people getting some kind of popular culture news attention. Anyway, the interview with Peter Paterno, who is a music lawyer, is particularly interesting. About 3/4 of the way into the podcast they talk about copyright lawsuits, focusing on the Blurred Lines case. Paterno is very critical of relying on jurors who don't understand the nuances of music making decisions about massive copyright settlements. I tend to agree with him. This is obviously different than a sample but certainly connected.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

By the way, there's a podcast called the Bob Lefsetz podcast that is about 90% focused on music industry stuff and the other 10% is interviews with authors and other people getting some kind of popular culture news attention. Anyway, the interview with Peter Paterno, who is a music lawyer, is particularly interesting. About 3/4 of the way into the podcast they talk about copyright lawsuits, focusing on the Blurred Lines case. Paterno is very critical of relying on jurors who don't understand the nuances of music making decisions about massive copyright settlements. I tend to agree with him. This is obviously different than a sample but certainly connected.

I've listened to one of those after your recommendation - it was with another music industry lawyer (forget his name) whose view on the return of live music to its pre-Covid status was that it would be summer 2021 at the earliest and may even be into 2022.

That's not relevant to this thread of course. But separately there was a discussion on the Word podcast where a guest was involved in sample clearance and was reporting on a recent case he had where the sample had 19 different named songwriter credits (made more complicated by the fact there was a sample within the sample).

[Satchmo Distel]

'Yellow Submarine' contains a sample from a recording of Georges Krier and Charles Helmer's 1906 composition "Le Reve Passe", according to George Martin.

[danielmak]

I've listened to one of those after your recommendation - it was with another music industry lawyer (forget his name) whose view on the return of live music to its pre-Covid status was that it would be summer 2021 at the earliest and may even be into 2022.

That's not relevant to this thread of course. But separately there was a discussion on the Word podcast where a guest was involved in sample clearance and was reporting on a recent case he had where the sample had 19 different named songwriter credits (made more complicated by the fact there was a sample within the sample).

Probably Don Passman, who is also a music attorney and wrote a book called Everything You Need to Know about the Music Business (or something along those lines).

About the sample clearance part, there was another episode of that Lefsitz podcast with Leor Galil, who became part owner of Def Jam early on and is now head of YouTube's global music division. He shared some fascinating insights about the limits when it come to generating income from rap catalogue songs. The sample clearance process early on was fairly lax, so now when someone wants to license a song for a movie, TV show, or commercial those songs need to go through a much more rigorous process. If I remember correctly, Galil said that in some instances the company that wants to license the song just moves on or, in some cases the songs will be re-done. I think Galil was specifically talking about RZA from Wu Tang, re-doing some songs to dump a bunch of samples. But man, I have listed to a lot of music business stuff in the past 2 months so I might have heard a different interview or podcast, but I could swear this was Galil.

[willie1foot]

Rick James' Superfreak was never a big hit in the UK so I instantly think of MC Hammer's 'U Can't Touch This' when I hear the intro. However, Superfreak was a big hit in the US so maybe this happens less so over there.

Superfreak was a hit here and I picked it when U Can't Touch This came out but I must admit I thought it would have got higher than #26 which is it's peak position according to wikipedia.

[Jah Womble]

Yep, it was big in the clubs rather than a massive chart-topper across the world.

[Giggler]

The squiggly middle eight in Can I Kick It? by A Tribe Called Quest is probably better known for its place there rather than in the original What A Waste by Ian Dury and the Blockheads. The bassline is probably better known from the original Walk On the Wild Side.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Probably Don Passman, who is also a music attorney and wrote a book called Everything You Need to Know about the Music Business (or something along those lines).

About the sample clearance part, there was another episode of that Lefsitz podcast with Leor Galil, who became part owner of Def Jam early on and is now head of YouTube's global music division. He shared some fascinating insights about the limits when it come to generating income from rap catalogue songs. The sample clearance process early on was fairly lax, so now when someone wants to license a song for a movie, TV show, or commercial those songs need to go through a much more rigorous process. If I remember correctly, Galil said that in some instances the company that wants to license the song just moves on or, in some cases the songs will be re-done. I think Galil was specifically talking about RZA from Wu Tang, re-doing some songs to dump a bunch of samples. But man, I have listed to a lot of music business stuff in the past 2 months so I might have heard a different interview or podcast, but I could swear this was Galil.

Yes it was Don Passman (from the description of the book).

On another podcast related tangent The Rewatchables recently covered Pump Up The Volume (movie not song, the latter being a whole other story of course) and there was a long pre-amble about it not being available on streaming services, which got into the requirement for a lot of the original music licensing for movies having to be re-negotiated for new formats which weren't foreseen when the original agreements were made (and/or that the original agreements were time-limited). In the case of Pump Up The Volume there is a part which is not easily edited out, where the Christian Slater character plays an unreleased Beastie Boys song, which all these years later still remains unreleased - whether the use of this song is actually what is preventing it being cleared for streaming I don't know, but they were using it as an example of how these things can get bogged down.

[Lang Spoon]

That Paul's Boutique era Beastie Boys then? I'd like to hear that (as opposed to their earlier frat boy schtick).

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

That Paul's Boutique era Beastie Boys then? I'd like to hear that (as opposed to their earlier frat boy schtick).

No, it was left off Licensed To Ill. The track is called The Scenario and has turned up on bootlegs apparently, and can probably be found on You Tube / file sharing.