Hamilton Bohannon, a Newnan native with an outsize influence on pop music, died Friday, April 24, according to the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office.
He was 78. A one-name performer long before Madonna, Bohannon created what he called the “four-on-the-floor” beat that became a foundation for much disco, house and hip-hop music.
He recorded successful dance music in the 1970s, and then his career ascended again when musicians including Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake sampled his music for their recordings.
Of hip-hop, he said: “I did that before those kids were born. I came up with what became hip-hop. They weren’t even born when I started this type of style.”
Raised in the Rocky Hill community of Newnan, Bohannon began playing drums as a young boy, and he formed his own band in the seventh grade.
Credit: Bob Andres
Credit: Bob Andres
He studied music at Clark College and began anchoring the house band at the Royal Peacock on Auburn Avenue, playing behind such touring artists as Jackie Wilson, Sam Cooke, B.B. King, Dinah Washington, Little Richard and Gladys Knight.
Among the musician who were briefly part of that house band was a young guitarist named Jimi Hendrix.
Bohannon then toured with Wilson of “Lonely Teardrops” fame; also on the bill was the precocious Little Stevie Wonder.
The 13-year-old Wonder asked Bohannon to join his band in Detroit, and Bohannon relocated north.
He befriended Berry Gordy and eventually became the drummer for live Motown shows, backing Diana Ross, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson, among others.
Of Gordy, Bohannon told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “He was the guy you wanted to be like. He had a great ear. He could write. He was concerned about people. It was one family for real.”
Bohannon put out solo records in the 1970s that included the club hits “Let’s Start the Dance” and “Foot Stomping Music.”
His dance numbers and their “four-on-the-floor” rhythm featured a heavily accented bass drum on every beat, the forefather of that pounding disco pulse. It was meant to keep people moving on the dance floor, and it worked.
He explained the rhythm in terms of a car moving down the road. The bass drum, he said, is the median. “It keeps the rhythm section, the right lane, from running into the melody in the the left lane,” he said.
Bohannon said: “It’s happy music. When you’re dancing, you’re happy. When you’re putting your feet down, you’re happy.”
House music artists would later latch onto Bohannon’s music, making a Frankie Knuckles re-edit of “Let’s Start the Dance” a major hit at clubs in Chicago.
Bohannon returned to Georgia, settling in College Park with his wife, Andrea, and their children April and Hamilton “Bo” Bohannon II.
He dressed his idiosyncratic house in mirrors and sheets of colored Plexiglas that gave it a Studio 54 feel.
“That’s just his thing,” April Bohannon said of the interior design. “That’s from his era, when he was out in the clubs and performing and those things. It makes it nostalgic for him.”
Andrea died of cancer in 1996. April said her father never dated again after losing his wife. “He still blushes when he talks about her.,” April said. “That spark in his eyes, it’s never gone away.”
“My children haven’t really seen me play,” Bohannon said during a 2016 tour of his house. He was dressed sharp in a black jacket with gold studs and a snakeskin finish and Timberland-style boots. “I don’t like traveling anymore,” he said, showing off a room full of trophies. “I stayed in the house many years. I didn’t want to go anywhere.”
Bo Bohannon has recorded his own albums with his father and has also become an expert at searching out the samples that pop musicians have made from Bohannon’s recordings.
“If I hear one note, one chord, one drum, one vocal sound bite, eight times out of 10 I know if it’s him,” said the younger Bohannon. “I found the Digable Planets sample, I found the Snoop sample.”
Many white fans first learned about Bohannon when they heard his name being chanted in the Tom Tom Club’s sturdy 1981 hit “Genius of Love.”
His songs have been in several movies, including “Swordfish,” “Daddy’s Little Girls” (by Tyler Perry), “Studio 54” and “Encino Man.”
(The latter includes the Yothu Yindi tune “Treaty,” which samples “Let’s Start the Dance.”)
In 2015 the Georgia General Assembly celebrated Bohannon’s 50 years in music with a formal resolution.
In 2016 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in humane letters by his alma mater, now known as Clark Atlanta University.
One year later the city of Newnan honored its famous son by renaming a Rocky Hill road Hamilton Bohannon Boulevard.
“The street where I was born, that same dirt street where my parents worked so hard for us – it’s incredible,” he told The Newnan Times-Herald. “It’s a very sacred thing.”
Fans and friends can sign his guestbook here.
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