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Incredible Bongo Band
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
The Incredible Bongo Band was an American studio project of the 1970s. It began in 1972 with Michael Viner, a manager and executive at MGM Records, together with Mike Curb and the arranger Perry Botkin Jr. Viner had to supply additional music for the B-movie The Thing With Two Heads. He used MGM's studio when it was free and gathered the musicians who happened to be there, among them Glen Campbell on guitar and Harry Nilsson on keyboards and for arrangements. Jim Gordon played drums, and Bobby Hall and King Erisson percussion.
Music and breakthrough
The group released two albums: Bongo Rock in 1973 and Return of the Incredible Bongo Band in 1974. The first album contains an adaptation of Bongo Rock, a song by Preston Epps from 1959, and of Apache, an instrumental piece by Jerry Lordan that was earlier known from The Shadows. The Arrows took their version as a model. The music is instrumental, funky and built on bongos and congas.
Influence
The record went unnoticed for a long time, until hip hop pioneers such as DJ Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash began to use the drums in the late 1970s. Last Bongo in Belgium was sampled by the Beastie Boys, Massive Attack and Leftfield, among others. In this way Apache became a building block of hip hop. Bongo Rock appears in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, and Bongolia was heard in 2017 in the film Baby Driver.