Welcome back to Guitardoor.com, where we celebrate the true innovators who fundamentally changed the way their instrument is played. Today, we pay tribute to one of the most important, influential, and criminally underrated guitarists in history: the legendary Jimmy Nolen. As the trusted right-hand man and lead guitarist for “The Godfather of Soul,” James Brown, Nolen was the primary architect of funk guitar. He was the man who took the guitar out of the spotlight as a lead instrument and placed it deep in the rhythm section, transforming it into a sharp, percussive, and incredibly funky engine that would drive a musical revolution.
The Sound of “The One”
The sound that Jimmy Nolen created was a complete and total reinvention of the electric guitar’s role in a band. Before him, the guitar in R&B was largely defined by the bluesy licks of players like B.B. King or the jazzy chords of session aces. Nolen, at the direction of the visionary James Brown, stripped all of that away. He abandoned long, melodic lines, blues scales, and full chords in favour of short, sharp, and incredibly precise rhythmic stabs. His playing was the epitome of “less is more,” a minimalist masterpiece of syncopation and space. His job was not to be heard, but to be felt, to lock in with the bass and drums on “the one” (the first beat of the measure) and create an interlocking, hypnotic groove that was absolutely irresistible.
Anatomy of the Chicken Scratch
The genius of Jimmy Nolen’s playing is a masterclass in rhythm and tone, a style built on precision, feel, and a sound designed to cut through the densest of horn sections. His most famous and influential innovation was his signature “chicken scratch” technique. This involved pressing down on the strings just enough to get a clean, sharp chord stab, and then immediately releasing the pressure to create a percussive, muted “scratch” on the upstroke. This “chika-wacka” sound became the absolute signature of funk guitar. He played these sharp, two- and three-note chord fragments (often ninth chords) high up on the neck, where the strings were tightest, to enhance their percussive quality. His sound was inextricably linked to hollow-body and semi-hollow Gibson guitars, like the ES-175 and ES-335. He famously plugged them into a Fender Twin Reverb amplifier with the treble cranked all the way up and the bass turned almost all the way down, creating a bright, trebly, and incredibly clean tone that allowed his sharp, rhythmic parts to slice through the mix with the precision of a razor blade.
The Essential Grooves
To understand the revolutionary power of Jimmy Nolen’s guitar work, you must listen to the foundational texts of funk that he helped create with James Brown. His signature track, “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” is widely considered the birth of funk, and his guitar part is its calling card. To approach it, a player must focus entirely on rhythm, playing a single, sharp, ninth-chord stab that perfectly anticipates the horn riff. It is a lesson in the power of one perfectly placed, percussive hit.
The masterpiece “Cold Sweat” takes the concept even further into a deep, syncopated groove. The approach here is a lesson in space and syncopation. The guitar part weaves in and out of the bass line, and the silence between the stabs is just as crucial and funky as the notes themselves.
For his fully developed style, look no further than the epic “The Payback.” Here, the “chicken scratch” is the star. To play it, the key is to master that percussive, muted-string strum with your right hand, creating that signature texture, and then interspersing it with clean, sharp chord stabs on the upbeats. It is the definitive masterclass in using the guitar as a pure percussion instrument.
In the end, Jimmy Nolen’s legacy is that of a true giant and a quiet revolutionary. He is arguably the single most influential funk guitarist of all time, the man who wrote the very vocabulary of the genre. His innovations didn’t just define funk; they went on to become a fundamental part of the DNA of disco, R&B, hip-hop, and pop music. While he may not be a household name like the rock gods of his era, his deep, unshakable groove is a permanent and essential part of the very rhythm of modern music.
