The First Coast of Funk

Nov 27, 2023 • Guest editorial by Leo Esclamado

As Hip Hop celebrates 50 years, the First Coast is where James Brown and crew crafted Hip Hop’s iconic funky rhythms. Read about how James Brown got his groove in Jacksonville.

**The Palms **

Top to Bottom: Front view of The Two Spot; The Two Spot hosting socials within the African American community, ex. The Afro American Life Insurance Company hosted an annual fundraiser gala; Two Spot staff members with house band setting up. Courtesy of the Jacksonville Historical Society

James Brown often frequented 45th and Moncrief Avenue’s Palms Ballroom (formerly the Two Spot) that boasted an oak dance floor that could fit 2,000 dancers, which he recalls was “one of the biggest venues to perform as a Black musician during 1960s segregation.” When Ashley Street’s kingpin, Charlie Edd Craddock, passed in 1957, one of his largest investments, the Two Spot, changed hands to Miami-based Ernie Busker, who renamed the venue, The Palms. For multiple nights, Busker would book R&B acts for all three Palms venues he owned - located in Jacksonville, Bradenton, and Hallandale outside of Miami. He booked R&B artists with Ben Bart’s Universal Attractions, James Brown’s talent agency. It was an oasis for Black musicians who preferred securing a week’s worth of gigs, versus one-night joints stretching from Atlanta to New Orleans. At The Palms, James Brown would also discover master trumpeter, LaVilla-raised musician Teddy Washington, who would play with the James Brown Band for 7 years.

On James Brown’s next stop to Jacksonville, Fillyau would be ready to audition for the Godfather of Soul. He was swiftly rejected. The Godfather didn’t give him a chance when asked to sit in as a drummer. Determined, Fillyau pursued musical connections he made in Jacksonville and connected with James Brown’s former sax player, Alfred Corley, who contacted Brown’s bandleader, J.C. Davis. Davis would help him land a gig with singer Etta James. As Etta co-starred with James Brown on tour, Fillyau would upstage James Brown’s entire band with his new rhythm. “Where did you find that drummer?!” the Godfather asked his former bandleader.

Collage of Clayton Fillyau at the Apollo Theater by Gordon Anderson Courtesy of Jim Payne

“That’s that drummer you told in Jacksonville he couldn’t play good enough!” shouted Davis, and the Godfather of Soul hired Clayton Fillyau in 1961. Fillyau’s drumming was so unique that Brown’s contract demanded he play exclusively for the Godfather, who nicknamed Fillyau “Biggun.”

Fillyau would actually be the third Jacksonville-based musician who performed and recorded with James Brown’s band in the early 1960s. Alfred Corley studied saxophone with Cannonball Adderly. “He was the greatest (sax player) who ever lived, he beat Cannonball and everybody,” Brown shared. Corley is credited with James Brown’s releases “(Do the) Mashed Potatoes” and “Think.” Local Hall of Famer, Teddy Washington, grew up playing with Ray Charles, toured with B.B. King, and his trumpet can be heard on James Brown’s pre-Brand New Bag record “Out of Sight,” “I enjoyed working with Teddy Washington, he was a very fast and accurate musician,” Brown said.

Are you ready for star time?

In 1962, Fillyau recorded “I Got Money” with James Brown and it’s one of the first records featuring the iconic “James Brown Beat.” “This is really early for a funk drum break,” local Jacksonville rare groove selector, Buddy “Dj Basic” DeCastro, shares. “Most of the era that deejays look for is always 1967 to 1974.” “I Got Money” and other Fillyau-backed tracks such as Yvonne Fair’s “Say Yeah Yeah” foreshadows grooves of the Funk era of “Cold Sweat” by 5 years.

Later that year, Fillyau would also be James Brown’s featured drummer on the trailblazing “Live at the Apollo” album alongside Jacksonville trumpeter, Teddy Washington, recorded in the New York’s famed Apollo Theater in Harlem. It was one of the first successful live albums by a Black musician and captured James Brown’s explosive energy of his show. Brown would follow with another live album “Pure Dynamite” filmed in Baltimore, where Fillyau funktifies a rendition of “Signed, Sealed, and Delivered.”

Fillyau’s grooves and ideas would influence or mentor future James Brown drummers - Melvin Parker (“Out of Sight,” “Brand New Bag,” “I Got You”), Clyde Stubblefield (“Cold Sweat” and “Funky Drummer”), and Jabo Starks (“The Payback” and “Sex Machine”). Clyde is often referenced as the original funky drummer and his legacy is unquestionably one of the most sampled artists of all time in Hip Hop, but Fillyau’s work connects Clyde to a larger tradition that the funky drummer built on. The Godfather would put forth a vision where countless legendary musicians (assembled by Brown himself) to further improvising and solidifying the new genre that Fillyau put down as an essential syncopated foundation for Funk and Hip Hop to flourish.

“Ladies and gentlemen, y’all want to know how I got my beat, my sound? I’m going to introduce you to the man who created all this you hear up here - the man who put the Funk in the funk, Mr. Clayton Fillyau,” declared James Brown in a concert near Fillyau’s hometown.

We seek human dignity & respect

News clipping from The Florida Star, August 20, 1960

Funk historian Rickey Vincent observes the Black musical revolution spread across the country alongside the social upheaval of the 1950s and 60s. The social intensity ushering in the new musical Funk era was already evident in Jacksonville: residents fought for aspirations of integration and others sought to violently keep segregation in place. In the face of Ku Klux Klan cross-burnings on Highway 1, Jacksonville’s NAACP Youth Council declared the local sit-in movement as a protest of Jim Crow, and mobilized selective buying campaigns to “acquire first class citizenship, lift all restrictions based on race, we want better jobs, we seek equal justice under the law, we seek human dignity and respect.” The new rhythms and politics of Funk was bold and unapologetically Black (see “I’m Black and I’m Proud). It was an uninhibited exploration of freedom. Pretty soon, James Brown would unleash this Funk bomb on America.

Excerpts from “Jax NAACP Youth Council to Continue Counter Sit-ins,” from The Florida Star, December 17, 1960

Though Jacksonville is often overshadowed in the national record of the Civil Rights movement, the Jax band members who joined James Brown serve as a soundtrack of the urgent activism of a changing time, and is a reminder of the city as a constant battleground for civil rights.

Ad placed in the Florida Star, July 7, 1962 Courtesy of the Florida Digital News Library

James Brown would return to Jacksonville in 1962 no longer at the Palms, but headlining the Jacksonville’s Coliseum with Clayton Fillyau. According to Brown, unfortunately after municipal buildings opened up to Black performers, most of the Black clubs disappeared; “after integration took hold, those places just evaporated.” Along with urban renewal, The Palms, much like other Black establishments, declined in business and were torn down, transformed into a housing development, which sits to this day.

From the first documented performance of the Blues, Jacksonville can also be known where the Funk - the groove that ushered in a new era and a new politics of music - was passed down with New Orleans rhythm traditions, from Congo Square to the newly-named James Weldon Johnson Park, where Clayton Fillyau’s hands laid down James Brown’s groove in the First Coast of Funk.

Special thanks to Jim Payne who provided additional material from his original interview with Clayton Fillyau from his book, “Give the Drummer Some!”