The 1957 song Brian Eno said “invented funk guitar”
The origins of funk music have a number of forefathers. While James Brown probably did more than anyone before him to distil the rhythms of R&B into a potent blast of grooves that created the genre, plenty of musicians had been making similar music for years.
Professor Longhair had been pairing the syncopated beats of New Orleans jazz with mambo rhythms in the 1950s, while Little Richard was starting to swing his traditional rock and roll around the same time. But if you ask Brian Eno, the roots go back even further.
Eno is less of a funk expert and more of an ethnomusicologist. While he was able to make acts like Talking Heads comfortable with funk grooves on albums like More Songs About Buildings and Food and Remain in Light, Eno seems more interested in finding out the history and roots of funk. Through his searching, he might have found the moment when funk rhythms first appeared on record all the way back in the 1930s.
What makes Eno’s observation so compelling is that it shifts the focus away from instruments and onto rhythm itself. Rather than relying on electric guitars or drum kits, the Golden Gate Quartet were creating groove purely through vocal interplay, using timing and phrasing to generate a pulse that feels strikingly modern. It suggests that the essence of funk is less about sound and more about feel.
Seen in that light, their recordings take on a different significance. They are not just historical curiosities, but early examples of musicians manipulating rhythm in ways that would later define entire genres. By tracing that lineage back to these vocal performances, Eno reframes the story of funk as something that evolved gradually, rooted in techniques that existed long before the genre had a name.
“This song that I’m going to play you is really interesting. To me, it’s the birth of funk guitar,” Eno told William Doyle in 2016. “This is a song called ‘Go Where I Send Thee’ and was recorded in 1937. The Golden Gate Quartet are an a capella group, so this is a capella, but listen to what happens with the rhythm. It’s an amazing thing that four guys, no overdubs or anything like that, could make this amount of rhythm.”
“For me, they were one of the most important musical forces of the 20th century. The style of singing, which is called jubilee singing, was all originated in this one town in Virginia and there were lots and lots of groups in that town that could do this way of singing,” Eno explained.
He continued, “Partly a way of harmonising, but it’s also a way of creating rhythm by making voices slightly hit off each other so they don’t all land together. It’s incredibly hard to do. You’re pushing the beat by a 16th or 32nd to get that flam.”
The Golden Gate Quartet, despite their California-styled name, was a gospel vocal group that originated in Norfolk, Virginia. As Eno explained, the “jubilee” style of gospel was essential to Norfolk’s musical identity, and the Golden Gate Quartet’s highly syncopated takes on both traditional Christian songs and then-modern popular compositions would be an essential building block in what would eventually become R&B, doo-wop, soul, and funk.
