Clyde Stubblefield, a drummer best known for his association with soul entertainer James Brown and who created one of the most widely sampled drum breaks of all time, died Feb. 18 at a hospital in Madison, Wis. He was 73.
He had been suffering from kidney disease for 10 years, and the cause was widely reported to be kidney failure.
Mr. Stubblefield was a veteran of Otis Redding's group by the time he joined Brown in the mid-1960s. Over the next several years, he and John Starks, known as Jabo, became the two drumming mainstays of Brown's band.
Mr. Stubblefield performed on several of Brown's classics in the 1960s and early 1970s, including "Cold Sweat," "Say It Loud — I'm Black and I'm Proud," "I Got the Feelin' " and the album "Sex Machine."
He was best known for a 20-second solo on Brown's 1970 single "Funky Drummer," in which he explodes into a drum blast at the singer's command.
Rolling Stone magazine said the solo was sampled on more than 1,000 songs and served as the backbeat for countless hip-hop tracks, including Public Enemy's "Fight the Power," Dr. Dre's "Let Me Ride," LL Cool J's "Mama Said Knock You Out" and Run-D.M.C.'s "Run's House." It even turned up on Ed Sheeran's "Shirtsleeves" and George Michael's "Freedom '90," the magazine said.
Mr. Stubblefield did not receive much in the way of royalties from the music — such compensation was not required until a 2005 Supreme Court ruling. Brown, who died in 2006, was listed as the sole songwriter on many of the songs, enabling his estate to claim any revenue.
"All my life I've been wondering about my money," Mr. Stubblefield told the New York Times in 2011. He was featured in a 2009 documentary, "Copyright Criminals," about music copyright law and the use of sampling.
When Prince got wind in 2000 that Mr. Stubblefield was deep in debt from a fight against bladder cancer, he personally paid $90,000 to cover the bills.
The hip-hop drummer Questlove once told the Times: "There have been faster, and there have been stronger, but Clyde Stubblefield has a marksman's left hand unlike any drummer in the 20th century. It is he who defined funk music."
Mr. Stubblefield was born April 18, 1943, and grew up in Chattanooga, Tenn., where he taught himself to play drums.
"What influenced me mainly was sounds. Train tracks. Washing machines," he once told Madison's weekly newspaper Isthmus. "I just put patterns against natural sounds, and that's what I do today."
He was playing in Macon, Ga., when Brown hired him in 1965. He had lived in Madison since the early 1970s and had been a fixture on the local music scene. He also performed on the public radio show "Michael Feldman's Whad'Ya Know?"
A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.
— From staff reports and news services
