(Credits: Far Out / Album Cover)
Sat 14 February 2026 0:00, UK
Choosing the right name for a song is perhaps one of the hardest things to have to do as an artist, and in the case of Joe Walsh’s early power trio, James Gang, they had no other choice but to go route one with one of their biggest hits.
Long before he joined the ranks of the Eagles, Walsh fronted and played guitar for James Gang alongside drummer Jim Fox and original bassist Tom Kriss. While Kriss was replaced early on by Dale Peters, the band would release nine albums in the span of just seven years before Walsh moved on to pastures new, where he would end up flourishing on acclaimed albums such as Hotel California and The Long Run.
A hard rock and blues outfit based in Cleveland, Ohio, it was an early example of Walsh’s brilliance as a lead guitarist, and with fewer additional musicians present in the band to provide support, his contributions were made to sit front and centre while the rhythm section did their utmost to steadfastly back him up.
While their prolific output is far from being the same level of quality as his contributions to the Eagles were, James Gang was a fine place for him to have his origins and build up a reputation. They may have leaned heavily on recording covers of other artists in their early years, but in amongst these were a handful of original compositions, some of which would become their most recognisable work.
Their first LP, Yer’ Album, didn’t receive a great amount of attention, although one of its singles, ‘Funk #48’ landed them their first chart entry in the US, admittedly outside of the top 100 at the lowly position of 126. However, they’d pick up traction with the first single from their next release, James Gang Rides Again, and you’ll never guess what they chose to call it…
Named ‘Funk #49’, as though it were a direct sequel to ‘Funk #48’, the band were seemingly racing their way through all of the differently-numbered funks of the world, and once again, it may not surprise you to learn how the song got its name.
During a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone, Walsh revealed the origins of these numbered jams and explained that they hadn’t actually been keeping an accurate record of the amount they’d produced.
“The ‘Funk #49’ jam was one we always happened to crush, so we recorded it for Rides Again,” the guitarist explained. “How’d we get the name? We said, ‘Hey, this is that funk jam we have!’ And it seemed like we were counting how many times we ever played it. We thought it was right around 50. But we were in the studio with Bill Szymczyk, who was our engineer at the time, and he said, ‘It couldn’t have been 50.’ So we said, ‘OK, well, 49 then!’
Imaginative as hell, right? Regardless of how many funks they had accrued in their short time together as a group, ‘Funk #49’ is one of the band’s most beloved tracks for a reason and is an early example of just how formidable Walsh had the potential to be.