You've probably never heard of the song 'Amen, Brother' by The Winstons, but it's likely you've unwittingly listened to it - a lot. That is, a specific part of the track, the break. Now known as the 'Amen Break', the six seconds of drums at the 01:26 mark of the 1969 B-side is the most sampled piece of music of all time.
The song itself essentially came and went without any fuss, but the explosion of the sampler onto the music scene in the eighties would eventually make it one of the most influential tracks in modern music history. Having been featured on a 1986 edition of 'Ultimate Breaks and Beats' - a compilation made for DJs and producers - the break started to get used on an ever-increasing number of tracks.
The beat was sampled perhaps most famously throughout N.W.A's 1988 'Straight Outta Compton', as well as by a diverse range of other well-known artists such as Jay-Z, Oasis, The Prodigy, Primal Scream, Slipknot and even the theme tune of Futurama. As figures from the website WhoSampled show, to date 'Amen, Brother' has been sampled in 4,130 releases - a long way ahead of 'Think (About It)' by Lyn Collins, featured on a later edition of 'Ultimate Breaks and Beats', which can be found on 2,466 tracks.
