History of The Amen Break: Immortality In 7 Seconds

Sometimes an artist knows when they strike gold, when what they’ve recorded is destined to be heard for generations. Usually, that’s not the case, though. Scores of artists tell stories of how they recorded a song as a throwaway, and it unexpectedly helped define their career.

Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, for example, was recorded as filler for the group’s sophomore album. It’s currently their most popular song on Spotify and most played in concert. Still, even if it was unexpected, the heavy metal icons at least got to bask in their success. The Winstons didn’t really have that privilege.

Led by Richard Lewis Spencer, a onetime saxophone player for both Otis Redding and The Impressions, The Winstons were an interracial soul group that emerged from Washington, D.C. in the late-1960s. They released one proper album, 1969’s Color Him Father. The title track from the record was a legitimate hit, peaking at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100, and winning Best R&B Song at the 1970 Grammy Awards. But the group wasn’t around much longer.

Spencer soon left the music business to pursue his higher education. According to a Washington Post story from 2006, he “worked for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority until 2000 and eventually returned to North Carolina to become a high school social studies teacher.” As he made a career in public transit, Spencer probably assumed his music was being forgotten. He was wrong.

When The Winstons were getting ready to release Color Him Father as a single, they quickly recorded an instrumental for the B-side. It was based on some gospel music Spencer had played during his days with Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions. Frankly, it was barely a song. It was the same feverish piece played two times separated by a 7-second drum break. “The band didn't really want to rehearse the song,” Spencer told the BBC in 2015, “so I was kind of rushing it.” And when that rush was done, they gave it a name that suggested its gospel origin: Amen, Brother.

As I was writing this, I played Amen, Brother for my girlfriend. She had never heard it before. Her reaction after hearing it was brief: “There are no words. I liked the trumpets. If I weren’t sitting, I would have danced.” Then she paused. “Oh, yeah, and there was a drum solo in the middle.” It is because of that drum solo — again, which only lasts 7 seconds — that Amen, Brother is immortal. Here is how The Economist described it in 2011:

One minute and 26 seconds in, the horns, organ and bass drop out, leaving the drummer, Gregory Coleman, to pound away alone for four bars. For two bars he maintains his previous beat; in the third he delays a snare hit, agitating the groove slightly; and in the fourth he leaves the first beat empty, following up with a brief syncopated pattern that culminates in an unexpectedly early cymbal crash, heralding the band's re-entry.

Upon release as the B-side to Color Him Father, Amen, Brother made no impact. And it would continue to have no impact for over a decade. Two related developments changed that: the rise of hip-hop and the establishment of Street Beat Records.

To make a very long story short, hip-hop emerged in the Bronx in the 1970s. Progenitors of the genre like DJ Kool Herc realized that when they were spinning records at parties that dancers had the most fervor during the rhythmic breaks of songs. With two turntables and two copies of the same record, these Bronx luminaries could extend those rhythmic breaks as long as they wanted. Emcees soon started shouting over these breaks, often in rhyme, to keep the party going. Thus, hip-hop was born.

Finding exciting rhythmic breaks was no easy task, though. Some artists turned to early drum machines to make their own. Others dug through crates of records to find breaks on older records. In the early 1980s, Lenny Roberts and Lou Flores teamed up to compile, edit, and sell the best older breakbeats on a series of albums put out by Street Beat Records called Ultimate Breaks and Beats. Along with cuts by The Monkees and Rufus Thomas, the first volume contained The Winstons forgotten instrumental. With its release, it was to be forgotten no more.

According to WhoSampled, “the world's most comprehensive, detailed and accurate database of samples, cover songs and remixes,” “Amen, Brother” is the most sampled piece of music of all-time. It’s provided the backbeat to songs by N.W.A, David Bowie, Lady Gaga, Salt-N-Peppa, 100 Gecs, and literally thousands of others.

The Amen Break — what the 7-second snippet in the middle of Amen, Brother has become known as — is also the foundation of entire genres. Both jungle and drum and bass, two electronic styles that emerged in the United Kingdom in the 1990s, are arguably built around the sample. To this day, if you search in various electronic music communities on Reddit — like r/DnB, r/breakcore, r/TechnoProduction, and r/Jungle — you will find producers asking about the break and where to download samples of it.

And there’s no signs of its popularity dissipating. The “Amen Break Generator (Revived)” app that I mentioned at the beginning of this piece is a simple tool to create, modify, and download the Amen Break. It’s currently one of the most popular paid apps on the App Store. Furthermore, Google search volume for “Amen Break” is at its highest volume in five years having grown 166% to around 10,000 searches per week.

The continued popularity of the Amen Break forces us to confront deeper questions, though. While Ultimate Breaks and Beats already made the break a staple in hip-hop and electronic music communities by the early 1990s, Richard Lewis Spencer — The Winstons’ frontman — had no idea. According to The Economist, Spencer “only became aware of its rebirth in 1996, when he was phoned by a British music executive seeking the master tape of 'Amen, Brother'.” Needless to say, Spencer never saw any royalties despite his influence.

But was the influence really his? The horn melody bears strong resemblance to “Amen” by The Impressions, the Curtis Mayfield-led group that Spencer had previously played with. Mayfield and his band did not write “Amen”, though. It was composed by Jester Hairston for the 1963 film Lilies of the Field starring Sidney Pointier. Should the song’s success have benefited Hairston? People were sampling a recording that contained a melody he had written.

Then again, artists were not sampling that melody. They were sampling the drum break played by Gregory Coleman. Coleman didn’t own any part of the copyright to Amen, Brother. In fact, when he died homeless and addled by drug addiction in 2006, he likely had no idea of his lasting impact.

Each time I hear the Amen Break appear in another popular song, I think of these complexities from both legal and ethical perspectives. Who owns the art that we make? What duty do we have towards those that make it? Does that duty change over time? And does it change if we deem a piece of art to be great? I don’t have any solid answers to these questions. But I do know that no matter how you answer them, the Amen Break will live on. And the reason for that is best summed up by a Redditor in the r/breakcore community:

Something about it just sounds good when sped up, slowed down, chopped, distorted, and still being recognizable after that. A lot of drum breaks just turn to mud instead. Basically a happy accident.

Sometimes accidents are a good thing. Sometimes they aren’t. In the case of the Amen Break, I think it’s both, entire musical traditions birthed from 7-seconds of musical magic by men who never got the credit that they were due.

Chris Dalla Riva is a musician who spends his days working at Audiomack, a popular music streaming service. He writes a weekly newsletter about popular music and data called Can't Get Much Higher. His writing and research has also been featured by The Economist, NPR, and Business Insider. Can’t Get Much Higher is also available as a podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Substack.