Unless you pay close attention to the fine-print credits on album covers, you probably don't know Chip Shearin's name. But if you've been at a wedding reception, ballgame or hip-hop dance club over the past 30 years you've probably heard him playing an iconic bass line underneath a spiel that's just as iconic (if nonsensical):

I said a hip hop

The hippie the hippie

To the hip hip hop

You don't stop ...

That's the Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight," a rap landmark. Durham, N.C., native Shearin played the song's bass line on the recording. Originally composed by Chic bassist Bernard Edwards, it's one of the most recognizable bottom ends in all of popular music -- a groove that launched a new kind of music in 1979, and a million parties since.

Shearin was all of 17 and on his way to music school when "Rapper's Delight" came into being. He was in New Jersey visiting a friend who knew a studio owner named Sylvia Robinson, a singer who had some hits of her own (most notably 1973's "Pillow Talk"). Robinson did a lot of R&B recording sessions at her studio and needed players. Was Shearin interested in a little extra cash? Sure, he said, why not.

But the job that day puzzled Shearin: laying down the groove from the Chic song "Good Times" for an unheard-of 15 minutes.

Shearin's role was to thump away on that bass line for a quarter-hour straight, with no mistakes.

"The drummer and I were sweating bullets because that's a long time," Shearin says with a laugh, sitting in his home studio in Raleigh. "And this was in the days before samplers and drum machines, when real humans had to play things."

When they finished, Shearin asked Robinson what she was going to do with the recording.

"Sylvia said, 'I've got these kids who are going to talk real fast over it; that's the best way I can describe it,'" Shearin says.

"Nobody singing, just talking? Um, OK."

Shearin may have thought the recording was strange, but he was thrilled with the $70 he made for it.

"I thought I was rich," he says. "For a 17-year-old in 1979, that was a lot of money. I might've gotten a peanut butter sandwich out of it, too."

By the time Shearin got back to North Carolina he was already hearing "Rapper's Delight" on the radio. It was a surreal experience, and not just because he was hearing himself playing. He was also hearing a brand-new style of music.

"Rapper's Delight" caused a sensation when it hit the airwaves in 1979, because it sounded so different. The song had no verses or choruses, just 15 minutes of spiel over that relentless groove.

So, while history is unclear on what the first rap song was, "Rapper's Delight" was the first to make hip-hop mainstream, Wang said.

It was the first rap song to make the Billboard pop singles chart, although it didn't go that high. It peaked at No. 36 (and No. 4 on the R&B chart). But it has never gone away, either, appearing in scores of movies, TV shows and commercials over the years. It figured prominently in 1998's "The Wedding Singer" and turned up in a spot for Evian Water just last year.

It's also been widely covered in some unusual ways, including a live 2004 version by improvisational folkie Keller Williams. By now, so many rappers have name-checked "Rapper's Delight" as a formative influence that its place in history is assured. Pretty much every compilation chronicling the origins of hip-hop opens with it.

As for Shearin, he played a few live dates backing up Sugarhill Gang after "Rapper's Delight" came out. It was a colorful experience, a hip-hop convention on a Greyhound bus.

"All these guys like Grandmaster Flash and Spoonie Gee would be cutting up, practicing verses, writing ideas on napkins," he says. "Those probably ended up being hits. But I saw myself playing higher-brow music."

Shearin went on to a solid career as a journeyman bassist, playing and recording with everybody from pop star Janet Jackson to jazz saxophonist Stanley Baird. He also taught in the music department at North Carolina Central University. Nowadays Shearin splits his time between home and Los Angeles, doing mostly soundtrack and commercial-jingle work.