At one point, I noticed that there was a sample used over and over again in popular hip-hop songs. That piqued my interest. Where did this familiar breakdown come from, and how did it enter the mainstream of so many hit tracks. So, I went down that wormhole and found out that it came from a random late-’50s riff from across the pond.

Even if you don’t know the name of the song “Apache”, or even who originally wrote and recorded it, you’ve heard it.

This ubiquitous earworm boasting sweeping horns, action-movie organ, wave-riding guitar, and, most importantly, relentlessly dueling drums and bongos, has been sampled by countless hip-hop artists since the genre’s birth in the late 1970s.

And while the sample adopted by the likes of the Sugarhill Gang, LL Cool J, MC Hammer and Nas is most often lifted from the short-lived Incredible Bongo Band and their 1973 album, Bongo Rock, the roots of “Apache” go much deeper — more than a decade, in fact, to legendary British rockers the Shadows and the Stratocaster-wielding Hank Marvin. …

Read the full story here on Fender.com.