Edwin L. Birdsong was born August 22, 1941, in Los Angeles. An experimental keyboardist, organist, and singer-songwriter active through the 1970s and '80s, he released five solo albums on labels including Polydor and Salsoul, working alongside Roy Ayers as co-producer on three albums and taking session work for Stevie Wonder. Roy Ayers's own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile. Though he never achieved commercial success under his own name, his music proved unusually durable as raw material for other artists.

Daft Punk built their 2001 hit "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" directly on Birdsong's 1979 track "Cola Bottle Baby," turning an obscure funk single into one of the most recognizable dance-music hooks of the 2000s. Other artists who sampled Birdsong include De La Soul, who used his 1980 track "Rapper Dapper Snapper" for "Me, Myself and I," and Gang Starr, who sampled the same track for "Skills"; Snoop Dogg's "Lodi Dodi" draws on the same source, and sections later resurfaced on Kanye West's "Stronger."

Birdsong died January 21, 2019, at age 77.

Birdsong's experimental, synth-forward jazz-funk, largely overlooked commercially in its own time, became one of the most heavily sampled catalogs in hip-hop and electronic dance music decades later, an unusually direct afterlife for a musician who never had a hit of his own.