It might not be one of his most famous songs - in fact, he’s not even credited as the performer - but Prince’s 777-9311, the 1982 lead single from The Time’s second album, What Time Is It?, holds a special place in the hearts of funk aficionados.
Take Questlove, for example. The Roots man is steeped in funk history, but has a particular fondness for 777-931 which, aside from Morris Day’s lead vocal, was all Prince. And, in a recently unearthed outtake from Nelson George’s 2012 documentary, Finding the Funk, Questlove says that the song shines a light on Prince’s underrated skills as a bassist.
“People think of Prince and they think ‘vocalist, songwriter, guitarist,’” he says, but, “his bass playing: bar none.”
Turning to 777-9311 specifically, Questlove says: “It’s absolutely no secret that Prince was his own competition. We would like to imagine that The Time [Prince's rivals in Purple Rain] was indeed six brothers from Minneapolis funking away up in the studio, but the first three Time records were all Prince. So his bass playing on 777-9311… that to me is one of the most daring funk songs of all time.”
That daring, explains Questlove, is derived from Prince’s decision to break funk’s established ‘on the one’ rule.
“The only thing that is on the one in 777-9311 is the handclap,” he says. “Everything else is all over the one. It’s almost as if the silence of the one is the funk. And the fact that that song was a top 10 hit and easily digestible… it’s baffling to me.”
Despite its skittish nature, Questlove is adamant that 777-9311 is “a funk groove - that’s one of his most funkiest grooves. It’s experimental.” This is thanks in no small part to the drums and, when discussing these, Questlove tells an apocryphal tale.
“Not many people know that the [drum] programmer of that song is Tower of Power’s Dave Garibaldi, the drummer,” claims Questlove. “In the late ‘70s/early ‘80s when Roger Linn was developing this new idea of a drum machine that you can play with your hands, Dave was one of his prime programmers. And these pre-programmed beats - I believe it’s number 5 on my LinnDrum - that beat was [plays beat from 777-9311].
“When [The Time’s guitarist] Jesse Johnson told me that story, I was just ‘mind blown.’”
It’s certainly an entertaining anecdote - one that’s also been told by former Prince collaborators Jimmy Jam and engineer Susan Rogers - but, unfortunately, it seems that it’s not strictly true. Yes, the beat is a preset from the LM-1, but when, in 2023, Reverb asked Garibaldi if he played it, he says that he has no recollection of ever doing so.
"It's kind of confusing to me, even," he said. "I know Morris and all those Prince guys. I know Prince was a huge Tower Of Power fan. It was Jellybean [Jesse Johnson] who told me about this first. And they all have the same story: 'It's your beat.' And Prince maybe spruced it up."
While Garibaldi says that he’d love to know what Prince actually did to the beat, he takes no credit for playing it in the first place. Fortunately, though, Roger Linn himself is able to shed some light.
"I don't recall ever doing a session with Dave Garibaldi, something I would have remembered because I have great respect for him," he told Reverb, "[but] I did release a demo recording on an Eva-Tone Soundsheet flexible disc consisting of the LM-1 playing a drum solo based on a drum intro that Dave Garibaldi had recorded."
You can check out a recording of said flexi disc below - listen carefully for the snare fill at 22 seconds and the hi-hat roll at 30 seconds, which bear the hallmarks of the 777-9311 LM-1 beat. This was programmed by session drummer Art Wood, whose drum sounds are used on the drum machine.
As such, it’s probably Wood that should take at least some of the credit for 777-9311’s groove. He tells Reverb that he did indeed take inspiration from David Garibaldi - his drum intro on Tower of Power’s 1974 track Squib Cakes, to be precise.
"I thought that was the coolest little drum solo," Wood told Reverb. "Then Roger asked me to make some beats up for the machine. And I said, 'If you can get it to approximate the subtleties of a real drummer, let me program this part that David played.' So that four-bar intro led off the whole thing."
Of course, it’s worth saying that none of this should detract from the achievement of the real genius behind 777-9311: Prince. Alongside Let’s Work, he was believed to consider it one of his signature basslines, and one that no machine can take the credit for.
