What was the first song to feature a drum machine?
Though perhaps a little less sexy than the electric guitar, the humble drum machine is not to be underestimated. First developed by Léon Theremin in the 1930s, this piece of machinery is an essential part of music history, having yielded some of the most evocative pop music of the late 20th century. Jazz, hip-hop, funk, disco, krautrock: the drum machine has been there for it all. But what was the very first pop song to make use of one?
If you’re reading this, I assume you’re already pretty familiar with what a drum machine is. For those a little less familiar, it basically does what it says on the tin: the drum machine is a piece of electronic hardware that can be programmed to produce various beats in a variety of styles. The first drum machine was developed by Léon Theremin at the request of Henry Cowell and was known as the Rhythmicon. It was famously hard to use, and it wouldn’t be until the mid-1950s that rhythm machines began to make use of pre-programmed beats, frequently of the Bossa Nova variety.
Our focus here is the first popular recording to utilise a drum machine. This didn’t arrive until the late ’60s, but musician engineers had already been experimenting with their creations for many years by that time. In 1960, for example, Raymond Scott, inventor of the Rhythm Synthesiser, used his inventions to record a proto-ambient album called Soothing Sounds for Baby, released in 1964. If you’re looking for the roots of Kraktwerk, look no further than Soothing Sounds. Post-natal calm has never sounded so groovy.
By the mid-1960s, popular artists were starting to use the first fully transistorized programmable drum machines in their songs. The United States of America’s self-titled 1967 album features a few examples of early usage, but it wasn’t until Robin Gibb released ‘Saved By the Bell’ in 1969 that the drum machine really hit the mainstream. Released in the June of that year, the track soared to number two in the UK charts, opening the floodgates to a deluge of rhythmically enhanced pop music in the 1970s.
In 1971, for example, Sly and The Family Stone became the first group to have a number one with a single that used a drum machine. Their song ‘Family Affair’ features the Maestro Rhythm King drum machine, which was used extensively on the group’s 1971 album There’s a Riot Goin’. The MRK–2 has 18 preset rhythms, a single speed setting, a volume knob and a tone knob. That’s pretty much it. Though limited, in the hands of Sly and the Family Stone, the MRK-2 became the star of the show, holding the groove with robotic precision and foreshadowing the drum machine’s eventual use by electronic artists.
You can revisit Robin Gibb’s ‘Saved by the Bell’ below.
