Music Education Monday: Feeling the funk with Paul Jackson and Mike Clark

Though bassist Paul Jackson and drummer Mike Clark both have extensive lists of credits, they still may be best known as the funky foundation of the Headhunters, the band that backed keyboardist Herbie Hancock in the 1970s and subsequently spun off into an independent act.

The slippery, off-beat syncopation of interlocking drum and bass tracks powering compositions like Hancock's "Palm Grease" and "Actual Proof" and the Headhunters' own "God Make Me Funky" was distinctive at the time and retains its appeal decades later, thanks in part to various hip-hop producers sampling the group in the intervening years.

Today for Music Education Monday, you can get a close-up look at Jackson and Clark (pictured) in action via an instructional video they did in the early 1990s for the Japanese market. Titled Rhythm Combination, it features the duo demonstrating and discussing some of their characteristic grooves, licks, and patterns.

You can see the video, which is in four parts that have been combined into a playlist, in the embed after the jump...