“Shake Everything You’ve Got” (PDF) from the Maceo Parker album, Life On Planet Groove.

By 1992, Fred Wesley had nearly done it all: on the road with James Brown during the Civil Rights struggle, creating future funk with Parliament / Funkadelic, swinging with Count Basie’s big band, recording and arranging music in Hollywood; it was almost too much for one man. Perhaps it was American excess that caused Fred to step away from the industry to focus more on improving himself, but with the European unification on the horizon many Black American musicians found deserved fame and appreciation across the pond.

Maceo Parker had re-formed The J.B.’s horn section to record in the studio and tour throughout Europe where the musicians, according to Fred Wesley’s autobiography, had made more money than they ever had in their careers. But to Fred’s dismay, the music wasn’t progressing in the direction that he had hoped; the audiences simply wanted that James Brown groove. It’s hard to criticize Fred Wesley for being unsatisfied with the music on this album, perhaps Maceo’s most significant recording, because the trombonist believed there was still much more to accomplish as a solo artist.

In my criticism of the House Party album, I joked that Fred Wesley was present for the creation of rap music as “invented” by James Brown, but having now examined the trombone solo for “Shake Everything You’ve Got” it’s clear that the influences that created hip hop are present within Fred’s evolved playing in the Nineties. Whereas the funk established by James Brown was built upon R&B, the use of drum machines in hip hop production influenced the funk by shifting the rhythmic emphasis from “the one” onto the omnipresent sixteenth-note rhythms, emulating the vocal “toasting” of Jamaican dancehall music. I don’t believe that Fred was trying to imitate those deejays, but his use of a steady rhythmic flow that emphasizes offbeat accents to distinguish itself apart from the driving pulse is a demonstration of how Fred Wesley invented rapping on the trombone.

Recommended Reading: Hit Me, Fred: Recollections of a Sideman by Fred Wesley Jr.  Published by Duke University Press.