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Galt MacDermot

Coffee Cold

Galt MacDermot's piano with guitar, bass and Bernard Purdie's drums on Shapes of Rhythm, 1966, a year before Hair: a short, sensual instrumental that hip-hop producers have sampled in at least 28 songs.

By korczis 3 min read
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Review

Genre and Mood

Galt MacDermot’s Coffee Cold is a jazz instrumental with funk in its bones, a groovy, alluring three and a half minutes from 1966. One blogger who found the record called its mood a piano-bar feel and the track itself “highly sensual”, and that is a fair place to start: it seduces rather than shouts.

Song Summary

Coffee Cold is the third track of Shapes of Rhythm, credited to Galt MacDermot and his Mid Manhattan Rhythm Section. There is no singer. MacDermot plays piano, Napoleon Allen guitar, Jimmy Lewis bass and Bernard “Pretty” Purdie drums; Rick Shorter produced it, and it was recorded at Mastertone Recording Studios. The version here comes from Shapes of Rhythm/Woman Is Sweeter, the Kilmarnock Records reissue that put the 1966 album beside his 1969 record Woman Is Sweeter.

Musical Breakdown

No source walks through Coffee Cold section by section, so this one describes what the sources hear in it rather than a bar-by-bar map.

The Piano

The piano is the voice of the track. The hip-hop writer David Ma, speaking to CBC Music, called its “cold yet emotive piano plaints” amazing and guessed that it is one of the most sampled piano passages ever.

The Rhythm Section

Behind it is Purdie, whom CBC Music describes as renowned for his backbeats and precision; the blogger heard him providing “his magic behind Galt’s display of sensitivity”.

Outro

How the track closes is not described in the sources; listen for how the piano and drums leave each other.

Concepts in Focus

Coffee Cold is famous because of sampling: taking a piece of an existing recording and building a new track on it. According to CBC Music it has been sampled in at least 28 songs, by artists including Gang Starr and Nipsey Hussle, and it was Handsome Boy Modeling School’s The Truth in 1999 that set it off; DJ Vadim, DJ Premier and Oh No have sampled the same segment.

Why this track? MacDermot’s son Vince told CBC that what the producers who came to the family home found was rhythm, “a feel, which his music is heavy on”. That feel is the groove: four players locked together so that the time itself feels good. Wikipedia credits MacDermot’s work with Purdie, Lewis and Idris Muhammad with pieces that prefigured James Brown’s funk.

Artistic Context

Galt MacDermot was born in Montreal in 1928, studied music in Cape Town, won a Grammy for “African Waltz” and moved to New York in 1964. Shapes of Rhythm came two years later and the musical Hair in 1967, whose songs “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” and “Good Morning Starshine” became number-one hits in 1969. He died on Staten Island in December 2018, a day before his 90th birthday.

Impact and Reception

Hip-hop made Coffee Cold famous long after 1966: Questlove called its composer “King Galt”, and MusicBrainz lists the track on the soundtrack of Better Call Saul’s first season. Listen past the famous few seconds to the whole band.

Learn from this track

Introductory

What you will learn

  • Explain what sampling is and why a short 1966 piano passage could be reused in dozens of later hip-hop tracks.
  • Describe how a small group of piano, guitar, bass and drums builds a groove without a singer.
  • Connect Galt MacDermot the Broadway composer of Hair with the jazz and funk records that hip-hop producers collect.

Listening guide

  1. the piano MacDermot's playing, which the writer David Ma calls cold yet emotive piano plaints, the part later lifted by Handsome Boy Modeling School and others.
  2. the drums Bernard Purdie, a drummer CBC Music describes as renowned for his backbeats and precision, behind MacDermot's piano.
  3. the whole band Piano, guitar from Napoleon Allen, bass from Jimmy Lewis and Purdie's drums, the small rhythm section the album is credited to.

Concepts in this track

sampling

63 tracks

Taking a fragment of an existing recording and reusing it in a new one, as a loop, a chop or a texture. Sampling is central to hip-hop and dance music and raises questions of credit and copyright.

groove

63 tracks

The felt quality of a rhythm that makes people move: how drums, bass and the other parts lock together and push against each other in time.

Listen next, and why

Questions for discussion

  1. A producer who samples Coffee Cold takes a few seconds of it. What do you think they hear in those seconds that makes them worth taking?
  2. MacDermot's son says what the hip-hop producers found in his father's music was rhythm, a feel. Where in this track do you feel it most?
  3. Does knowing a passage has been sampled many times change the way you hear the original?

References

  1. CBC Music. How Canadian composer Galt MacDermot unwittingly became rap royalty (2021). Article
  2. Wikipedia. Galt MacDermot. Encyclopedia
  3. Sessiondays. 1966 Galt MacDermot - Shapes Of Rhythm. Database
  4. Le soleil est rare. Lockdown vinyl find #16 (2020). Review
  5. MusicBrainz. Coffee Cold (recording). Database

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