Bboys, Bgirls, and Hip-Hop heads of all backgrounds know The Beginning of the End, whether they realize it or not. Dj Chief caught up with band leader, vocalist, and keyboardist Raphael aka Ray Munnings around the 50th anniversary of “Funky Nassau” to hear the story behind the music.
Much of The Beginning of the End’s catalogue can be found in any cypher around the world. Hip-Hop and derivative genres are stocked with joints sampling the group’s recordings. For decades, DJs have been lighting up the dance floor with funked-out tracks like “Super Woman,” “That’s What I Get,” “Jump in the Water,” and one of the all-time Bboy classics, “Funky Nassau,” itself a goldmine of musicality (especially the break at 3:03):
Knowing 50 years later that their music still sets off the cypher and seeing Bboys and Bgirls rock to it, Ray Munnings tells us:
It’s amazing to me to see how they can adapt their dance moves to the songs that we just played naturally… because a lot of the songs that we did like that, we never played them again. It was a one take, one time.
Ray knows that people still dig the music, but that they probably don’t know much about the musicians behind it. Since this is also true in the Breakin’ world, where the classics are the cultural bedrock but people often don’t know the artists or the stories behind them, we wanted to help tell this story.
My own introduction to the band was in 2005, through the ridiculously funky “Come Down,” which came down to me on a four-track compilation 12” called “Space Dust Disco Classics” that I found in the crates at Rock-n-Roll Heaven in Orlando.
At the time, I was playing every Monday night at AKA Lounge’s “Diversity Beats” Mondays, a well-known Bboy night in downtown Orlando. Since it was also service industry night, my coworkers from P.F. Chang’s in Winter Park would help fill out the non-breaking drinking crowd, which eventually became the cheering audience for the cypher.
The introductory guitar strum of “Come Down” led into the wild drum line, settling in on that solid groove that always brought someone jumping into the circle. Ray explained:
The guitar riff on the beginning of “Come Down Baby”… if you listen to KC and the Sunshine Band’s “I’m Your Boogie Man,” we did it three years before him, at Henry Stone’s studio down in Miami… That is the exact riff that “I’m Your Boogie Man” plays.
Miami was the birthplace of some of the most influential early Disco music, including KC and the Sunshine Band’s big hits in 1975 and 76 such as “I’m Your Boogieman.” Alston Records, the label that published “Funky Nassau,” was founded by Henry Stone, who also owned TK Records, which would publish KC and the Sunshine Band’s albums.
I eventually remixed “Come Down” around 2012 or so, and it soon showed up at BC One in Granada, courtesy of Spain’s Dj Ladyfunk:
Stone’s labels would go on to publish massive hits from George McCrae, Anita Ward, Jimmy Bo Horne, and many more, but “Funky Nassau” was Henry Stone’s first hit record, and is among the earliest Disco hits.
I came to know “Funky Nassau” through the legend Dj Magic of Unique Styles Crew, who hipped me to his endless library of classics and the stories connecting them.
Also in Magic’s library: “That’s What I Get” from the band’s self-titled second album, released in 1976. This was the band’s extra funky take on the Teddy Randazzo classic.
Pouncing on any additional tracks from the band that I could find, I eventually folded in “Super Woman,” “Jump in the Water,” “In the Deep,” and “Monkey Tamarind.”
Ray had hoped “Monkey Tamarind” would spark a dance craze based on the itching and scratching one would experience if they touched the plant. While no such dance craze developed, the track has definitely inspired much movement.
The core of the band was lead singer and keyboardist Ray Munnings, Leroy Munnings on lead guitar, Frank aka Bud Munnings on drums, and Fred Henfield on bass (sadly, everyone but Ray from the original line-up has passed on in recent years). The horns were provided by cousin Ralph Munnings and Neville Sampson from Trinidad.
From Discogs
Simpson worked with Ray’s father, Freddie Munnings, Sr., who owned the famous Nassau nightclub The Cat and the Fiddle. That’s where Ray and the others got to see world-famous performers like Nat King Cole, Count Basie, Aretha Franklin, and Sam Cooke. From there, the stars traveled on to Jamaica or back to the United States.
Ray’s mother is presenting a gift after Nat performed two sold-out shows on the same night.
From Samana College
In this environment, Ray and his bothers grew up listening to Jerry Butler, Curtis Mayfield, Jimi Hendrix, The Impressions, The Beatles, and more contemporary sounds. This all brewed with the indigenous Junkanoo street parade music of their home, as well as Trinidad’s Calypso, creating the perfect conditions for “Funky Nassau” to emerge, along with its lesser-known B-side, “Gee Whiz, It’s Christmas,” born of the same energy.
Ray explains:
That original sound came from Trinidad, the Calypso music…. We fused that with the Bahamian Junkanoo and of course, some funk in there… My brother, who was the drummer, his name was Frank Bud Munnings, [Funky Nassau’s drum line] was his original beat that he concocted with all of the ingredients… In the Bahamas, we are very tourist-oriented… so most of the musicians of that era had to be able to play all the different genres of music… “Funky Nassau” came out as that melting pot of island, funk, jazz, and everything else that is incorporated…
In October of 1970, the band had borrowed a $2,000 advance from Uncle Percy Munnings and came to Miami to record “Funky Nassau” at the legendary Criteria Studios, where hundreds of the world’s biggest hits would be recorded. They had enough money for the three-hour recording session, but not to stay overnight, so they wrapped that single session and “Funky Nassau” was on the way to be pressed as they headed home to Bahamas.
The song sold thousands of copies at home, and eventually a copy made its way to Miami, where radio DJ Fred Hanna, of Bahamian descent himself, heard it by chance from a store’s juke box.
Hanna borrowed the record from the store’s owner and played it on the air, asking his listeners to help identify the band, reciting the names of the writers credited on the 45. Ray and his brother Leroy were driving around in Bahamas and they heard “Well ‘Munnings,’ if you’re listening, you better get over here quick because you have a hit record on your hands.”
In the years since, “Funky Nassau” has been sampled for tracks across genres, from jungle and breakbeats to Hip-Hop and House, including the classic Bboy joint “Funky Stickem” by the mighty Dj Fleg:
A few more selections from the dozens of joints sampling “Funky Nassau”:
I asked Ray what he thought about all the remixes, remakes, covers, and flips and he replied, “The greatest compliment you can pay to any artist is to redo their music…”
When Pete Rock sampled “When She Made Me Promise” for “T.R.O.Y. (They Reminisce Over You),” Ray was deeply honored. The original track was a single take, really a jam record focused on brother Leroy’s guitar solo, and they never performed it live. It was originally called “Wendy Made Me Promise,” named for Ray’s wife Wendy (they just celebrated 50 years of marriage), but Henry Stone convinced Ray to change it, suggesting it was a bad idea to include someone’s name in the song’s title.
My last question for Ray was about the origin of the band’s name. Why “The Beginning of the End?”
At the time, the guys were all in different bands, playing around town and getting bored with the routine. They decided to lock themselves in a club and to not come out until they had a hit record. They chose The Lion’s Den, which had been given to Ray by his father.
Formerly known as The Ghana Room, named in honor of Ghana’s independence in 1957, the club had a rich history in Nassau. Just before the band locked themselves in the Lion’s Den, The Animals had performed there as part of the “British Invasion.” The inside of the club was filled with blacklight-ready paintings of lions and hunters.
The band went to work seeking “something different,” and worked “20 hours a day” for six months. As Ray tells it, this was the “final time we’re gonna try to do something of this magnitude and it has to work because this is gonna be the beginning of the end.”
The first album’s cover art, seen below, has the band name embedded in the “Lazy Eight,” or infinity, symbol, with an intentionally ambiguous rising or setting sun, further blending “beginning” with “end.”
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Massive thanks to Ray Munnings for his contributions to the crates, and for his time on this interview.
