story 007 · music · the winstons, 1969
these seven seconds of drums are in 7,000 songs.
the short, written out
the amen break: seven seconds of drums, sampled in more than seven thousand songs.
it’s from a 1969 b-side by the winstons, called amen, brother. halfway through, the band stops, and the drummer, gregory coleman, plays on alone.
in 1986, it turned up on an album made for djs. hip-hop looped it.
then, in nineties britain, producers sped it up and chopped it apart.
it became the sound of jungle. oasis used it. so did the futurama theme.
the band never earned a cent in royalties. gregory coleman died homeless in 2006.
in 2026, the library of congress added the song to the national recording registry.
he probably never knew what his seven seconds became.
the print that goes with it
navy dashes
hand ruled ledger lines, short painted dashes in an irregular rhythm
no. 466 · 8″×10″ or 16″×20″ · from $20.00 · see the print
sources
- wikipedia, amen break and whosampled
- library of congress, 2026 national recording registry
- yahoo entertainment, “how ‘amen, brother’ became the most sampled song in music history” (2026)
- the pattern: drum-patterns.com, musicradar, drumstheword
every sentence of the short was checked against its sources before it went out.
