The ‘Amen break‘ was a brief drum solo performed in 1969 by G. C. Coleman in the song ‘Amen, Brother’ performed by the 1960s funk and soul outfit The Winstons. It gained fame from the 1980s onwards when four bars (5.2 seconds) sampled from the drum-solo (or imitations thereof) became very widely used as sampled drum loops in hip hop and other music. The full song is an up-tempo instrumental rendition of Jester Hairston’s ‘Amen,’ which he wrote for the Sidney Poitier film Lilies of the Field (1963) and which was subsequently popularized by The Impressions in 1964.
The Winstons’ version was released as a B-side of the 45 RPM 7-inch vinyl single ‘Color Him Father’ in 1969 on Metromedia. The Amen Break was used extensively in early hiphop and sample-based music, and became the basis for drum-and-bass and jungle music—’a six-second clip that spawned several entire subcultures.’
The Daily Omnivore 
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