Some bands have a song that made them famous. They have a song that changed everything. Wild Cherry was one of them. But their breakout hit, Play That Funky Music, wasn’t just a ticket to the big league, bigger venues, and the financial success that comes with it. This song changed their sound.
Bryan Bassett, the Foghat guitarist and member of Wild Cherry from 1975 to ’78, was there when it happened, and in a new interview with Guitar World, he explained how it all went down – and how it all started during one of their club shows.
“We were a rock band, and loved Zeppelin, Rainbow, and ZZ Top,” says Bassett. “But bands like The Bee Gees, Earth, Wind & Fire, and all that were turning up on the club scene.”
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They were playing rock covers at venues like Pittsburgh’s 2001 Club. If there was a sense that this was a band out of time, whose set was growing little stale, too stiff for the dance floor, it took some kindly stranger to alert them to it.
“There was this dance-and-R&B vibe, and someone came up to our drummer and said, ‘You better start playing some funky music, white boy,’” recalls Bassett. This was the Eureka! moment for frontman Rob Parissi, who started working on it right away.
“We laughed about it in the dressing room, but then Rob started writing lyrics right then and there,” says Bassett. “But we were still a rock band playing the clubs, though we definitely woodshedded and changed-out the whole sound to learn a lot of the hits, and keep our club scene alive.”
Wild Cherry knew what they wanted. And they knew that the song worked. In those days, the reaction was immediate, and it was sincere. If people liked your song they would dance to it. Their audience would go wild for Play That Funky Music. And if they liked it in the clubs, then it stands to reason that people would want to listen to it in bars up and down the country.
“Well, back then jukeboxes were still a big deal, and we wanted to produce a single of our own for those,” says Bassett. “We’d been playing it live, so we knew we had something because people would start hitting the dance floor when we’d do that song. That was before it was even recorded, so we knew people were responding to it in the clubs.”
They started tracking it but they needed someone to put it out. An A&R guy from a new Cleveland-based label, Sweet City, showed interest. Sweet City was a subsidiary of Epic Records.
The die was cast. Sweet City would put it out, Epic would distribute it, and Wild Cherry would explode. The year 1976 was good to Bassett and co.
“We went from clubs to arenas. It was crazy,” says Bassett. “Within a month or two, it went up the charts… It was a mind-blowing time.”
They didn’t have the budget for an extended studio session. There was no time to do take after take. Bassett says it was all one or two takes. “It was minimal, but it was pretty cool,” he says.
And he remembers what he played on it. You can hear him as the song opens.
“I borrowed my friend’s Fender Strat for that session,” he says. “It was a blonde maple Stratocaster with a black pickguard, and it was probably from the early ‘70s. I played that through a Music Man 410, which I loved.”
Guitar World‘s full interview with Bryan Bassett will be published in the coming weeks.
