This was an interesting piece/video that was in Cracked. If you don't read the text, the video that they embedded into the article is still interesting on its own, for those into in this sort of thing. It's basically a sample from the 60's that's basically been the basis for genres like Hip Hop, and especially stuff like Drum n Bass/Jungle. Also the video has some points about the way copyright works and how people get screwed over. It's about sampling and the like.
Cracked.com wrote:
The modern world is full of little sound clips that you know somebody has to have invented, but you never know who. Like that ding that every elevator does right before the door opens, the sound Windows makes when it boots up or the chirp you get when you turn off a car alarm.
The Amen Break is kind of like that.
It's a five-second snatch of drums that has been sampled on hundreds--or thousands--of songs. You've heard it this week. You can find the Amen Break in countless hip-hop, acid house, trance and rave songs. You'll even hear it in ads. Its been slowed down, sped up, spliced, chopped, split, dismembered and used as the basis for seemingly every other song that doesn't use a live band. Experts have even tried to figure out the scientific reason as to why it's so popular.
Maybe they should ask The Winstons, since they came up with it. The Amen Break is just a five-second loop of a drum solo from the middle of one of their songs (called "Amen, Brother") which was just a B-side to a single released in 1969
The Winstons played in an era when trying to establish copyright on a five-second hunk of drums seemed insane. We're guessing their drummer (G.C. Coleman) didn't finish playing and think, "Damn, I bet that drum solo is going to become the cornerstone of several genres of music a generation from now!"
http://www.cracked.com/article/207_6-in … ern-world/But even after people started "borrowing" it at will, The Winstons intentionally let the Amen Break spread without ever trying to collect from anyone... even after another company named Zero G copyrighted the Amen break as their own so they could try to cash in instead.
Either The Winstons have reached a greater plane of enlightenment, or they've just been higher than Sputnik for the past 40 years.