"Shake Everything You've Got" - Fred Wesley

SONG: “Shake Everything You’ve Got” (PDF)
ALBUM: Life On Planet Groove
ARTIST: Maceo Parker
YEAR: 1992
LABEL: Verve Records

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.

The influences that created hip hop are present within Fred’s evolved playing in the Nineties; the use of drum machines shifted the rhythmic emphasis of funk from “the one” onto the omnipresent sixteenth-note rhythms, emulating the vocal “toasting” of Jamaican dancehall music. His use of a steady rhythmic flow that emphasizes offbeat accents, distinguishing 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.