The Isleys’ success was to cross over from the R&B world to mainstream pop radio, which you can only do by broadening your fanbase. It really doesn’t get any whiter than that. Not to mention Seals & Crofts, authors and original performers of Summer Breeze. But 3+3’s funk was based on songs by Carole King, the Doobie Brothers, even James Taylor. Appropriately so, as they were the originators and popularisers of both Shout and Twist and Shout, so they already held a key position in the history of rock and roll music. For a few years prior, they had been working in rock and roll as much as soul music, reinterpreting white rock songs and hippie protest songs with a gospel fervour. The original trio of Ronald, O’Kelly and Rudy Isley had long been backed up by guitarist Ernie Isley, bassist Marvin Isley and their cousin Chris Jasper on keyboards but the younger kids were now asked to join the band for real and they put out an album called 3+3 to commemorate the formalising of this established collaboration. In the 1970s, they became one of the biggest groups in the world. In that time they’d been an R&B party band, a Motown production-line group, folky protesters, funky balladeers, psychedelic Hendrix disciples, New Jack Swingers, even hookmen for gangsta rappers. I’m going to begin this with a statistic that I find genuinely incredible: the Isley Brothers scored Billboard Top 40 singles with new material in the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s, and ’00s.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |