Play That Funky Music

1976 single by Wild Cherry

"Play That Funky Music" is a song written by Rob Parissi and recorded by the band Wild Cherry. The single was the first released by the Cleveland based Sweet City record label in April 1976 and distributed by Epic Records. The performers on the recording included lead singer Parissi, electric guitarist Bryan Bassett, bassist Allen Wentz, and drummer Ron Beitle, with session players Chuck Berginc, Jack Brndiar (trumpets), and Joe Eckert and Rick Singer (saxes) on the horn riff that runs throughout the song's verses. The single hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on September 18, 1976; it was also No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart. The song was listed at No. 93 on Billboard magazine's "All Time Top 100 Songs" in 2018. It was also the group's only US Top 40 song.

Wild Cherry was a hard rock cover band, but with the advent and popularity of the disco era, the group found it increasingly difficult to book gigs. Most promoters had little interest in rock bands when dance acts were far more lucrative. Parissi attempted to persuade his bandmates to incorporate dance tunes into their sets, but they resisted as they did not want to be tagged with the stigma of being "disco". While playing at the 2001 Club on the North Side of Pittsburgh to a predominantly black audience, a patron said to band member Beitle during a break, "Are you going to play some funky music, white boys?" Parissi grabbed a pen and order pad and wrote the song in about five minutes. The lyrics literally describe the predicament of a hard rock band adjusting to the disco era.

American rapper Vanilla Ice later released a song featuring an interpretation of "Play That Funky Music". Based on this single, the independent record label Ichiban Records signed Vanilla Ice to a record deal, releasing the album Hooked in January 1989, containing "Play That Funky Music" and its B side, "Ice Ice Baby". Songwriter Robert Parissi was not credited. Parissi was later awarded $500,000 in a copyright infringement lawsuit. Although it did not initially catch on, its B side, "Ice Ice Baby", gained more success when a disc jockey played that track instead of the single's A side. Following the success of "Ice Ice Baby", "Play That Funky Music" was reissued as its own single (with new lyrics and remixed drums), and peaked at No. 4 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and No. 10 in the UK.

In 1988, the band Roxanne reached No. 63 on the Billboard Hot 100 with a cover version. English rock band Thunder reached No. 39 in the UK singles chart in 1998 with a cover, taken from their album Giving the Game Away.

The song appears on the opening show Ces gars là, a French language Canadian show on V Télé featuring the stand up comic Sugar Sammy and Simon Olivier Fecteau. In the season 8 episode of The Big Bang Theory, "The Skywalker Intrusion", Sheldon Cooper says to Leonard Hofstadter "Play that funky music, white boy" when Leonard turns on the car radio, though Sheldon is unfamiliar with the cultural reference. When Leonard plays the song for him, Sheldon analyzes the song, concluding that the lyrics present a musical example of Russell's paradox.