WCSX Classic Cuts : Funk 49
WCSX Classic Cuts
James Gang: “Funk 49”
The Hook: They’d already done “Funk 48,” so why not?
Album: Rides Again
Year: 1970
Writers: Jim Fox, Dale Peters and Joe Walsh
Stats: Peaked at number-59 on the Billboard Hot 100
Background: That the first James Gang album contains a song titled “Funk 48” is indisputable. How it got that title, we may never know. But we do know how “Funk 49” got its title. Frontman Joe Walsh explains it — sort of.
Joe Walsh explains how The James Gang came up with the title “Funk 49.” OC:…like that. :27
“We’re dumb stupid guys from Cleveland and everybody thought we knew somethin’. And we called it ‘Funk 48’ on Yer Album, which was the first album, and the intellectual content of ‘Funk 49’ isn’t your basic PhD thesis. And I said, ‘What do we call this? I don’t know. I don’t even know it’s a song, but we’ve recorded it.’ They said, ‘Well, ‘Funk 49.’ And everybody wants to know the real deep meaning of stuff like that.”
