Funk #49
by James Gang
- 91
- BPM
- D major
- Key
- 10B
- Camelot
- 66
- Danceability
- 4
- Acousticness
Joe Walsh came up with the basic guitar lick for "Funk #49," and by his own account the words never really impressed him intellectually, though they seemed to fit somehow. He wrote it with drummer Jim Fox and bassist Dale Peters, and James Gang released it in 1970 as the first single from their second album, James Gang Rides Again. It peaked at No. 59 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The track runs 3:54 but has only two verses. Those are about a wild girlfriend the singer cannot tame. The rest is room for Walsh's guitar, Peters' bass and Fox's drums. Walsh said he did not think there was any overdubbing. They were a three-piece group. The one addition was the percussion in the middle section, which all three of them played, putting parts on top of the drums.
The title makes it a sequel to "Funk #48," from the band's debut, Yer' Album. Walsh recorded a "Funk #50" much later, for Analog Man in 2012, his eleventh solo studio album. He had left the band in late 1971 to go solo and later joined the Eagles, but on September 3, 2022, the three of them played together again at the Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium.
Funk #49 runs at 91 BPM, the tempo of hip-hop, R&B and reggaeton. In classical terms it sits in andante territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.64 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 659 ms. It is in D major, Camelot 10B, which shares its notes with B minor and mixes cleanly with G major and A major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.