Maceo Parker Interview

Metro Pulse: When did you first hear music that you could really call "funky"?


Maceo Parker: It's got a beat that goes ‘Boom-bop-boom-boom-ba-bop’—a lot of drummers set the tone for whether it’s gonna be funky or not. And there was a tune called (singing) “Get out of my life, woman, You don’t love me no more.” Boom-ba-boom-boom-sca-boom-boom-da. Don’t remember who did it. [Allen Toussaint] And we used to call that funky. But as far back as I can remember, somebody was doing something funky. And again, if it had that particular beat, it could be slowed down or be a little faster, but as long it had boom-sca-boom-da-boom, like James Brown used to do.

When somebody says jazz, I think of swing, either a standard ballad or Over the Rainbow or a medium-tempo jazzy swing tune like “Satin Doll”—that to me is jazz. It’s not bad. But boom-sca-boom-de-boom-boom—that’s funky! Whatever it is, whether someone is singing it, like Aretha doing “Rock Steady,” that’s funky, with Bernard Purdy. That’s funky, man. A lot of R&B had a groove, but I wouldn’t call it funky.
From an interview here from KNoxville Tennesse paper called the Metro Pulse