The Isley Brothers (1954-Present): Legendary, iconic, and innovative musicians, composers, singers, songwriters, ensemble leaders, producers, and teachers

SOUND PROJECTIONS

AN ONLINE QUARTERLY MUSIC MAGAZINE

 

 

EDITOR:  KOFI NATAMBU

 

 

FALL, 2018

 

 

VOLUME SIX       NUMBER TWO

 

 ARETHA FRANKLIN

Featuring the Musics and Aesthetic Visions of:

SMOKEY ROBINSON
(October 6-12)

THE TEMPTATIONS

(October 13-19)

JOHN CARTER

(October 20-26)

MARTHA AND THE VANDELLAS

(October 27-November 2)

RANDY WESTON

(November 3-9)

HOLLAND DOZIER AND HOLLAND

(November 10-16)

JELLY ROLL MORTON

(November 17-23)

BOBBY BRADFORD

(November 24-30)

THE SUPREMES

(December 1-7)

THE FOUR TOPS

(December 8-14)

THE SPINNERS

(December 15-21)

THE ISLEY BROTHERS

(December 22-28)

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-isley-brothers-mn0000766893

The Isley Brothers  

(1954-Present)

Artist Biography by Jason Ankeny

 

 

First formed in the early '50s, the Isley Brothers enjoyed one of the longest, most influential, and most diverse careers in the pantheon of popular music -- over the course of nearly a half-century of performing, the group's distinguished history spanned not only two generations of Isley siblings but also massive cultural shifts, which heralded their music's transformation from gritty R&B to Motown soul to blistering funk. The first generation of Isley siblings was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, where they were encouraged to begin a singing career by their father, himself a professional vocalist, and their mother, a church pianist who provided musical accompaniment at their early performances. Initially a gospel quartet, the group was comprised of Ronald, Rudolph, O'Kelly, and Vernon Isley; after Vernon's 1955 death in a bicycling accident, tenor Ronald was tapped as the remaining trio's lead vocalist. In 1957, the brothers went to New York City to record a string of failed doo wop singles; while performing a spirited reading of the song "Lonely Teardrops" in Washington, D.C., two years later, they interjected the line "You know you make me want to shout," which inspired frenzied audience feedback. An RCA executive in the audience saw the concert, and when he signed the Isleys soon after, he instructed that their first single be constructed around their crowd-pleasing catch phrase; while the call-and-response classic "Shout" failed to reach the pop Top 40 on its initial release, it eventually became a frequently covered classic.

Still, success eluded the Isleys, and only after they left RCA in 1962 did they again have another hit, this time with their seminal cover of the Top Notes' "Twist and Shout." Like so many of the brothers' early R&B records, "Twist and Shout" earned greater commercial success when later rendered by a white group -- in this case, the Beatles; other acts who notched hits by closely following the Isleys' blueprint were the Yardbirds ("Respectable," also covered by the Outsiders), the Human Beinz ("Nobody but Me"), and Lulu ("Shout"). During a 1964 tour, they recruited a young guitarist named Jimmy James to play in their backing band; James -- who later shot to fame under his given name, Jimi Hendrix -- made his first recordings with the Isleys, including the single "Testify," issued on the brothers' own T-Neck label. They signed to the Motown subsidiary Tamla in 1965, where they joined forces with the famed Holland-Dozier-Holland writing and production team. Their first single, the shimmering "This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)," was their finest moment yet, and barely missed the pop Top Ten. 

"This Old Heart of Mine" was their only hit on Motown, however, and when the song hit number three in Britain in 1967, the Isleys relocated to England in order to sustain their flagging career; after years of writing their own material, they felt straitjacketed by the Motown assembly-line production formula, and by the time they returned stateside in 1969, they had exited Tamla to resuscitate the T-Neck label. Their next release, the muscular and funky "It's Your Thing," hit number two on the U.S. charts in 1969, and became their most successful record. That year, the Isleys also welcomed a number of new members as younger brothers Ernie and Marvin, brother-in-law Chris Jasper, and family friend Everett Collins became the trio's new backing unit. Spearheaded by Ernie's hard-edged guitar leads, the group began incorporating more and more rock material into its repertoire as the 1970s dawned, and scored hits with covers of Stephen Stills' "Love the One You're With," Eric Burdon & War's "Spill the Wine," and Bob Dylan's "Lay Lady Lay."

In 1973, the Isleys scored a massive hit with their rock-funk fusion cover of their own earlier single "Who's That Lady," retitled "That Lady, Pt. 1"; the album 3 + 3 also proved highly successful, as did 1975's The Heat Is On, which spawned the smash "Fight the Power, Pt. 1." As the decade wore on, the group again altered its sound to fit into the booming disco market; while their success on pop radio ran dry, they frequently topped the R&B charts with singles like 1977's "The Pride," 1978's "Take Me to the Next Phase, Pt. 1," 1979's "I Wanna Be with You, Pt. 1," and 1980's "Don't Say Goodnight." While the Isleys' popularity continued into the 1980s, Ernie and Marvin, along with Chris Jasper, defected in 1984 to form their own group, Isley Jasper Isley; a year later, they topped the R&B charts with "Caravan of Love." On March 31, 1986, O'Kelly died of a heart attack; Rudolph soon left to join the ministry, but the group reunited in 1990. 

Although the individual members continued with solo work and side projects, and also experienced misfortune along the way, the Isley Brothers forged on in one form or another throughout the '90s and into the 21st century. In 1996, now consisting of Ronald, Marvin, and Ernie, they released the album Mission to Please; however, Marvin developed diabetes and left the band the following year -- the disease later necessitated the amputation of both his legs. Ronald and Ernie hooked up for the release of 2001's Eternal, a brand-new selection of R&B cuts featuring collaborative efforts with Jill Scott, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, and Raphael Saadiq. On that particular release, Ronald also introduced the alter ego Mr. Biggs. Body Kiss was released in 2003, followed by Baby Makin' Music in 2006, the year after Ronald was convicted of tax evasion charges. Experiencing his own set of serious health issues, Ronald was sentenced to prison and served the latter portion of his sentence at a halfway house in St. Louis, Missouri before being released in April 2010. On June 6 of that year, Marvin died of complications from diabetes at the age of 56. Other than reissues, the remaining Isleys didn't record together again until 2017 when they joined Carlos Santana and his wife, jazz drummer Cindy Blackman Santana in a Las Vegas studio.

Two years earlier, Santana was touring with Rod Stewart, whose band included Kimberly Johnson-Breaux, Ron's sister-in-law. When the singer popped into the band's show in St. Louis, he and Santana met for the first time. The guitarist invited Isley on-stage to sing "It's Your Thing" and "That Lady." In the aftermath, the pair began discussing a collaboration. First, Isley contributed vocals to Santana IV. Following it, the Isleys joined the Santanas in a Las Vegas studio without prep to record material for what would eventually become 2017's Power of Peace, a collection of classic soul, pop, and blues covers. The material included versions of songs by Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Willie Dixon, and Curtis Mayfield, among others. The 13-track album was released in July, a week after Santana's 70th birthday. 

https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2014/jan/07/10-of-the-best-isley-brothers

10 of the best: the Isley Brothers

We kick off our new series rounding up the best songs by key artists or in crucial genres by highlighting the pick of the soul/funk siblings 

by Stevie Chick

Tue 7 Jan 2014 

The Guardian  (UK) 

The Isley Brothers … the funk-soul brothers. 
Photograph: Alamy 
 

1. Shout (Parts 1 & 2)

 

The Brothers Isley (Kelly, Rudy and Ron) started out singing gospel music before embarking upon a pop career that would stretch over five decades. Their first smash – which began life as an improvised onstage vamp on their cover of Jackie Wilson's Lonely Teardrops – had its roots firmly in the call-and-response tradition of gospel, and even featured Professor Herman Stephens, the organist at their church, on keyboards. A signature hit for Lulu in the 1960s, the 1959 original remains a barnstormer 55 years on – it was often Bruce Springsteen's showcloser on his last tour.

2. Testify (Parts 1 & 2)

 

 

The Isleys struggled to follow Shout; even a top 40 hit with Twist & Shout in 1962 – a year before the Fabs got their hands on it – couldn't keep them in the charts for long. They remained an enduring concert attraction, however, thanks in part to their energetic new guitarist, a former paratrooper from Seattle named Jimi Hendrix. One of only a handful of tracks Hendrix cut with the Isleys, 1964's Testify is a furious, entertaining romp enlivened by Jimi's guitar breaks and Ron Isley's gift for mimicry, as he tries to convince us that Ray Charles, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, Jackie Wilson and even the Beatles joined the Brothers in the studio for this track

3. This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)

 

 

The Isleys signed to Motown in 1965, at a time when Berry Gordy's mellifluous pop factory was churning out new soul superstars every other week. But even with the cream of Motown behind them, chart success proved elusive for the Brothers; indeed, this Holland/Dozier/Holland gem was their only hit for Motown. But what a hit ­­– a magical synthesis of Motown's deft pop orchestrations and Ron's earthy, unvarnished vocal that reached No 12 on Billboard's pop charts and remains an unimpeachable joy today.

4. Get Into Something

 

Released from their Motown contract in 1968, the Isleys wasted little time moping. Instead, they formed their own record label, T-Neck, and welcomed aboard younger brothers Ernie and Marvin on guitar and bass, and brother-in-law Chris Jasper on keyboards. They also changed musical direction, coining a muscular funk – influenced by Sly Stone, James Brown, and the Temptations' work with Norman Whitfield – that proved as irresistible to record buyers as it did to dancefloors. 1969's It's Your Thing and the attendant It's Our Thing LP were their biggest smashes, but this seven-and-a-half minute epic from 1970 – with its chicken-scratch guitars, steroidal horns and instrumental breakdowns – is the one hip-hop's crate-diggers sought out.

5. Ohio/Machine Gun

 

At the height of their funk success, the Isleys changed direction again with 1971's Givin' It Back and 1972's Brother, Brother, Brother LPs, covering hits and deep cuts by rock artists, including long, languid takes on Dylan's Lay Lady Lay and Carole King's It's Too Late, and a rousing reading of James Taylor's Fire and Rain. Best of all was this molten medley of two contemporary protest songs, Neil Young's Ohio and Jimi Hendrix's Machine Gun, which married Ron's wracked, mournful gospel moan to Ernie's fiery guitar excursions, the younger Isley proving himself a worthy successor to the recently deceased Hendrix.

6. Love the One You're With

 Another rock hit turned to soulful gold in the Isleys' hands, the Brothers subtly undermine the message of Stephen Stills' hoary free-love anthem when introducing it on their marvellous, criminally overlooked 1973 LP The Isleys Live: "Look girls," says Ron, after noting his wife is in the audience, "when you can't be with the one you love … just wait?" The ecstatic riot that follows leaves the Stills original in firmly the dust. Sadly, it's not available on YouTube or Spotify – so you'll have to settle for the still pretty marvellous studio version on our playlist.

7. That Lady (Parts 1 & 2)

 

 

As the 1970s wore on, the Isleys scored an unbroken run of hit singles and albums, juggling heavy funk with angelic, sultry balladry. The lead track from 1973's 3+3 fused both sides of the Isley coin, Ron singing a paean to his dream woman, while Ernie fired off a mind-blowing heavy-fuzz solo that seemed to last the entire track, reimagining Hendrix's pyrotechnics for the smooth-funk age. The late Adam Yauch would later rhyme over a loop of Ernie's erotic soloing for his showcase on the Beastie Boys' Paul's Boutique, A Year and a Day.

8. Harvest for the World

 

 

Having emphatically conquered funk, soul and R&B, the Isleys then turned their hand to soft-pop, their 1974 cover of Seals & Croft's MOR classic Summer Breeze one of their most enduring hits. Even finer was this understated 1976 gem, a top 10 hit in the UK. A sad exhale over the post-hippy landscape, Harvest foregrounded one of Ron's deftest vocals, as he wondered whatever happened to all that peace and love, locating a heady note of hope, uplift and redemption within the downcast introspection.

9. Footsteps in the Dark (Parts 1 & 2)

 

 

As funk waned and disco rose to prominence, the Isleys departed the dancefloor for the bedroom with dulcet baby-making soundtracks like Inside You, Go All the Way and Between the Sheets. Their finest five minutes of this seamy era, however, came with Footsteps in the Dark, Kelly and Rudy arranging gossamer harmonies over a midnight funk, as Ron crooned an uneasy lyric on maintaining "a love that lasted for so long" amid the constant temptation of infidelity, the "footsteps in the dark". While their contemporaries were cooking up chocolate-box fantasies, the Isleys chose instead to chronicle paranoia, frustration and midlife crises, striking a powerfully truthful note over a groove Ice Cube would later immortalise for his It Was a Good Day.

10. Contagious

 

Though Between the Sheets went platinum in the US, it seemed as if the 1983 album marked a final triumph for the Isley Brothers. As the original trio struggled with tax problems, Ernie, Marvin and Chris exited to form Isley/Jasper/Isley, scoring a hit single with the gospelised pop of Caravan of Love in 1985. Kelly Isley died a year later, while – following several albums featuring Ron and Rudy as a duo – Rudy quit the group in 1989 to become a church minister. Marvin and Ernie rejoined their older brother Ron in 1991, but Marvin again exited five years later, having lost both legs to the diabetes that would claim his life in 2010. Amid all this tragedy, however, Ron enjoyed an unlikely career revival, guesting on late-90s hits for G-Funk stars Keith Sweat and Warren G after appearing as antagonist "Mr Biggs" on a number of R Kelly tracks. R Kelly went on to produce 2003's Body Kiss, the first Isley Brothers album since 1975's The Heat Is On to top the US charts, but his best work with the surviving Isley duo is this single from their 2001 comeback Eternal, again starring Ron as Mr Biggs in a tale of betrayal and infidelity of a piece with Footsteps.


https://www.cleveland.com/rockhall/index.ssf/2012/01/the_isley_brothers_rock_and_ro.html 

The Isley Brothers: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 1992

April 16, 2013

by Plain Dealer staff
Cleveland.com

1992 index • Yearbook index

Ernie Isley wasn’t being full of himself when he compared the Isley Brothers to Disney in a 2001 Plain Dealer interview. He was only being accurate.

The group's mainstay guitarist was promoting a 2001 concert at PlayhouseSquare. "We keep our ear to the street and we're willing to change and we can change,” he said. “We're not confined to any particular musical era and we're certainly not confined to any decade or style. We're the musical equivalent of Disney. We do not get old."

Ernie, his big brother, Ron, and a group bristling with keyboards and background vocalists performed in Cleveland that year to promote "Eternal," a strikingly contemporary Isley Brothers album. It had already spawned hits with the adult, velvety "Contagious" and "Secret Lover."

The Isley Brothers (Rudolph, Ronald and O'Kelly Isley) formed in suburban Cincinnati in 1957 as a doo-wop group and have been a pop music force since 1959, when they released "Shout," one of the earliest, and best, cuts of the secularized gospel that came to be known as rhythm 'n' blues. Like Ray Charles' "What'd I Say," it blends Baptist fervor with rock drive, and paved the way for Isley touchstones "Twist and Shout," "Take Me in Your Arms" and, on the slower side, "Groove With You" and "Mission To Please You." No matter the decade or trend, the Isley Brothers remain on the tip.

"We love the music," said Ernie Isley, who joined this long-standing, multigenerational musical venture in 1969. "We embrace the concept of music in its totality and appreciate the competition. We try to outrun whatever it is out there."

In the '70s, the Isleys battled with the Commodores and Earth Wind & Fire. These days, Isley said, they set themselves against the likes of Lil' Bow Wow, Alicia Keys, Jay-Z.

"I think that more than people realize, we are in the fine print, in the details, of rock 'n' roll," said Isley, who with cousin Chris Jasper and his brother, Marvin, formed the spinoff group, Isley/Jasper/Isley, in the '80s. "We're very much present. We're not like, 'Oh, yeah, It's Your Thing.' We're not there anymore. We're now."

Even though the Isley configuration changes - brother Marvin quit after the 1996 recording "Mission To Please" and died in 2010 of complications of diabetes - the group, which was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992, has never been an oldies act. 

What do you expect from a band that hired a young Jimi Hendrix in the early '60s, schooling him in R&B so he could explode as a rock force in the latter part of that decade?

Ernie and Ronald continue to perform as the Isley Brothers to this day. They both also work on solo projects. Ronald rleased his first solo album, “Mr. I,” in 2010. Ernie performed in the Experience Hendrix Music Festival in 2010 and joined the Experience Hendrix Tour later that year. 

SONGS: "Shout," "This Old Heart of Mine (is Weak for You)," "It's Your Thing."  


https://www.rockhall.com/inductees/isley-brothers

ROCK AND ROLL HALL OF FAME

The Isley Brothers

1992

Category:  Performers Members:

• Ronald Isley
• O'Kelly Isley
• Rudolph Isley
• Vernon Isley
• Ernie Isley
• Marvin Isley
• Chris Jasper

Fifty years, fifty singles and two generations of brothers.
The Isley Brothers navigated every cultural shift with skill, coming out the other end with an innovative new sound and yet another hit.

THE ISLEY BROTHERS

Biography

From the Fifties onward, the Isley Brothers have been a musical institution whose prolific career has explored the musical intersection of gospel, R&B, rock, soul, funk and disco.

A family-based group since their inception, the Isley Brothers originated with four gospel-singing brothers: Ronald, O’Kelly, Rudolph and Vernon (the last of whom was killed in a bike accident in 1955).

The three surviving brothers left their hometown of Cincinnati in 1957 for New York City, where they recorded several songs for small labels. Their breakthrough came with their fervent recording of “Shout,” an original inspired by a line from Jackie Wilson’s “Lonely Teardrops” and shot through with raucous, gospel-style testifying.

The period of 1959 to 1962 was a creatively fruitful one for the Isleys that yielded such staples of the rock and soul canon as “Respectable” (later a hit for the Outsiders), “Nobody But Me” (re-cut in a Top 10 version by the Human Beinz) and “Twist and Shout” (an enduring R&B classic recorded by the Beatles and played by countless cover bands). Throughout the Sixties, the Isleys recorded for a variety of labels, including RCA, Atlantic, Scepter/Wand, United Artists, their own T-Neck and Motown’s Tamla subsidiary. Their brief stay at the latter yielded the melodic soul classic “This Old Heart of Mine,” written and produced by the Motown production team of Holland-Dozier-Holland. As a historical footnote, a pre-psychedelic Jimi Hendrix played guitar for the Isley Brothers in 1964, and his style can be heard in the playing of younger brother Ernie Isley, who joined the group at the end of the decade.

The Isley Brothers took business matters into their own hands in 1969 by re-establishing their own label, T-Neck (named for their home base of Teaneck, New Jersey). The group also expanded its lineup with the addition of three younger family members: brothers Ernie and Marvin and cousin Chris Jasper. The new arrangement immediately yielded the biggest hit of their career, “It’s Your Thing,” which won a Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance. This marked the start of a period in which they dominated the black-music realm, placing a staggering fifty singles on the R&B chart between 1969 and 1988.

Throughout the Seventies, the Isley Brothers’ rock-disco fusion—driven by a propulsive beat, Ernie Isley’s snaky funk guitar lines and the smooth, sinuous vocal blend of the three elder Isleys—generated considerable crossover appeal. The Isleys took the novel approach of giving a hardcore R&B treatment to rock songs such as Seals and Crofts’ “Summer Breeze” and Stephen Stills’ “Love the One You’re With.” The group also connected with originals such as the unrelenting, funky “Fight the Power,” “The Pride,” “Take Me to the Next Phase” and “I Wanna Be With You"—all of them Number One R&B hits. On the quieter side, the Isleys recorded a number of sexy, seductive ballads such as “Don’t Say Goodnight (It’s Time for Love)” and “Between the Sheets.”

The mid-Eighties brought changes to the Isley Brothers’ platinum empire. The younger band members struck out on their own as Isley-Jasper-Isley in 1984. Two years later, O'Kelly suffered a fatal heart attack. Remaining members Ronald and Rudolph Isley continued as a duo. In 1990 Ronald Isley returned to the charts with a Top 10 remake of “This Old Heart of Mine,” sung as a duet with Rod Stewart.

In 1991 Ernie Isley and Marvin Isley reunited and recorded the album Tracks of Life, which was released in 1992. That same year, the Isley Brothers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Little Richard. In 1996 they recorded Mission to Please, which became the group’s first million-selling album in thirteen years. In 2001 Ronald and Ernie recorded Eternal, which sold 2 million copies.

On June 6, 2010, Marvin Isley died of complications from his diabetes. Ronald and Ernie have continued to perform together.

Inductees: Ernie Isley (born March 7, 1952), Marvin Isley (born August 18, 1953, died June 6, 2010), O'Kelly Isley (born December 25, 1937, died March 31, 1986), Ronald Isley (born May 21, 1941), Rudolph Isley (born April 1, 1939), Vernon Isley (born 1942, died 1955), Chris Jasper (born December 30, 1951)

https://www.noozhawk.com/article/jeff_moehlis_a_little_bit_louder_now_with_the_isley_brothers_20180209 

Arts & Entertainment

Jeff Moehlis: A Little Bit Louder Now with The Isley Brothers

The Isley Brothers — Ronald is on the left, and Ernie is on the right — will perform at the Chumash Casino Resort on Feb. 16. (Tracy Isley photo)

by Jeff Moehlis 

Noozhawk Contributing Writer | @noozhawknews 

February 9, 2018 

Noozhawk 

Of the many amazing things about The Isley Brothers, perhaps the most remarkable is that they have had hit songs in the 1950s, '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s and 2000s. And we're talking about songs that are in our collective DNA, including "Shout," "Twist and Shout," "It's Your Thing" and "That Lady."
You can hear all of these and more at the Chumash Casino Resort on Friday, Feb. 16. Tickets are available online by clicking here.

Lead singer Ronald Isley and guitarist Ernie Isley talked to Noozhawk about the band's illustrious history. A little bit louder now ... a little bit louder now.   
                                                            
Jeff Moehlis: What can people look forward to at the upcoming show?

Ernie Isley: They're going to hear everything from "Shout" to "It's Your Thing," "Fight the Power," "That Lady," "Between the Sheets," "Summer Breeze," "Voyage to Atlantis." They'll get a pretty full dose of the catalog.

JM: The song "Shout" is almost 59 years old, soon to be 60. Is it still as much fun to sing it as it was at the very beginning?

Ronald Isley: I think it's more fun now [laughs]. You know, it's a favorite song of all our fans. That's our first hit record. It's just something that we have to do at every show. It's one of the biggest songs in our show.

JM: The next big hit for The Isley Brothers was "Twist and Shout." How did you choose to record that particular song?

RI: We were in the studio, and were supposed to be recording a song from Burt Bacharach. We did one take on "Twist and Shout," and we never heard it back until it came out. The people said, "The session is over now." The band had packed up everything, and we said, "Well, we don't even know how it sounds." [laughs] Then we heard it on the radio. I think Jerry Blavat from Philadelphia played the song over and over, and eventually it became a complete smash, as they called it in those days. [laughs]

JM: A bit after "Twist and Shout" became a hit, you had a tour of England, in 1964. Could you share some memories of that particular tour?

RI: We toured with Dionne Warwick and a group over in England called The Zombies. They had a big record. I remember we auditioned Elton John for our keyboard player and hired him for that month. He tried to get us to take some of his songs, but we were too busy to listen to any of them. [laughs]

JM: How did "It's Your Thing" come together? Was it a long process to write it?

RI: You know, I dreamed the title and the whole nine. That was something where I woke up and was carrying my daughter to school, and I tried to remember it and was able to write it down and go down to my mother's house and rehearse it. My brother Ernie played bass on that record, and we put it together that same day.

JM: Ernie, you were a 16-year-old kid and ended up playing on "It's Your Thing," which became a No. 1 R&B single.

EI: Well, I was prepared in my mind to play drums. In rehearsal I had played drums, and then I switched off the drums and played the bass part. When we got to the session I was setting up the drum kit and the bass player came in, and I showed him what I had been playing. And when he started playing, he was more or less playing what he felt, but it wasn't what I showed him. So just before we started the actual recording, Ronald came over to me and said in my ear, "You're gonna play bass," and my heart was immediately thumping. I was scared.

They handed me the guy's bass and put the headphones on me. I heard a voice saying, "Rolling," and counted it off. I held onto the bass for dear life and played it. And it turned out that it worked. Everything about that song, everything about that record worked. Everything. The tempo, the lyrics, the musical track. Ronald sang it on one take, the very first take. Of course, we didn't know that it was going to be the Frankenstein monster hit 45 for the Isley Brothers' career.

JM: Ernie, the guitar part in "That Lady," is just phenomenal. Where was your mind at for that? Were you in the zone? How did you do it?

EI: The "That Lady" track was funky, danceable — it had a lot of rhythm to it. And then I plugged into the lead, and when I hit the very first note the song went from, like, black and white to 3-D technicolor. It turned into something that none of us, quite frankly, could've imagined or expected. And I played everywhere, and after I finished I was yelling and the engineers were going nuts. Everybody else was kind of mummified. My oldest brother, Kelly, looked at me through the studio glass, like he didn't blink for 45 minutes. Then [yells], and it was like, "Ernie, you're going to have to do another take because you've got to make room for the vocals." So I was kind of ticked off and did a second take. The second take is what's on the record. But the first take was better.

Click here for the full interview with Ronald Isley. Click here for the full interview with Ernie Isley.

— Jeff Moehlis is a Noozhawk contributing writer and a professor of mechanical engineering at UC Santa Barbara. Upcoming show recommendations, advice from musicians, interviews and more are available on his web site, music-illuminati.com. The opinions expressed are his own.


http://music-illuminati.com/interview-ronald-isley/

INTERVIEWS

Interview: Ronald Isley

by admin ⋅ 

February 9, 2018 

Of the many amazing things about The Isley Brothers, perhaps the most remarkable is that they have had hit songs in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and 2000’s. And we’re talking about songs that are in our collective DNA like “Shout”, “Twist and Shout”, “It’s Your Thing”, and “That Lady”. 

Only one person has been with The Isley Brothers throughtout the entire history of the band: singer Ronald Isley, who also wrote or co-wrote most of the band’s original music. With his brother Ernie, Ronald continues to carry the Isley Brothers torch, with their latest release being the 2017 collaboration with Santana called Power of Peace.

This interview was for a preview article for noozhawk.com for the Isley Brothers concert at the Chumash Casino on 2/16/18. It was done by phone on 2/6/18. (Tracy Isley photo)

---

Jeff Moehlis: The song “Shout” is almost 59 years old, soon to be 60. Is it still as much fun to sing it as it was at the very beginning?

Ronald Isley: I think it’s more fun now [laughs]. You know, it’s a favorite song of all our fans. That’s our first hit record. It’s just something that we have to do at every show. It’s one of the biggest songs in our show.

JM: When you originally recorded that, how did you capture so much energy? I know in the studio it’s not easy to capture the energy of a live performance.
RI: That was just a God-given song to us. We prayed about it. It’s unexplainable. Yeah, we had that same energy, and even more right now when we do it.

JM: The next big hit for The Isley Brothers was “Twist and Shout”. How did you choose to record that particular song?

RI: We were in the studio, and were supposed to be recording a song from Burt Bacharach. We did one take on “Twist and Shout”, and we never heard it back until it came out. The people said, “The session is over now.” The band had packed up everything, and we said, “Well, we don’t even know how it sounds.” [laughs] Then we heard it on the radio. I think Jerry Blavat from Philadelphia played the song over and over and eventually it became a complete smash, as they called it in those days. [laughs]

JM: That was produced by Bert Berns, who I’ve read was a bit of a character. What was it like working with him?

RI: It was just a whole lot of fun. We rehearsed with him for about a week, and he became a good friend of ours. He talked about what he was trying to do, and he knew what we were trying to do. He just became real, real friendly.

JM: A bit after “Twist and Shout” because a hit, you had a tour of England, in 1964. Could you share some memories of that particular tour?

RI: We toured with Dionne Warwick and a group over in England called The Zombies. They had a big record. I remember we auditioned Elton John for our keyboard player, and hired him for that month. He tried to get us to take some of his songs, but we were too busy to listen to any of them. [laughs]

JM: Part of the Isley Brothers story involves Jimi Hendrix, who was in the band and lived at your family’s house before he was famous. How would you describe the Jimi Hendrix that you knew?

RI: He was great, man. He was shy, but he played his guitar all the time. It was always with him, and he’d be sitting there talking to you and playing some notes at the same time. He was great, man. We knew he was one of the greatest guitar players. At the time no guitar players had a rock ‘n’ roll record out by themselves. So he went on to be famous.

JM: A little after Hendrix was in the band, the Isley Brothers had a short run on Motown. What did you learn from that experience?

RI: Well, we learned how they were producing records, with Holland and Dozier and some of the producers there. We already knew how we put records together, but we saw what techniques and everything they were trying to do. So we learned a lot during the couple of years that we were there. We learned a whole lot. Then we started our record company all over again, and we wrote and produced the song “It’s Your Thing” for our T-Neck records. It was like a five million seller.

JM: How did “It’s Your Thing” come together? Was it a long process to write it?

RI: You know, I dreamed the title and the whole nine. That was something where I woke up and was carrying my daughter to school, and I tried to remember it and was able to write it down and go down to my mother’s house and rehearse it. My brother Ernie played bass on that record, and we put it together that same day.

JM: I understand that was the first time that Ernie recorded with the band. What made it the right time?

RI: There was another band on session with us, and the song didn’t have the feel that it had when Ernie was on bass. I said, “Something is wrong”, and I went and spoke with the people in the band and said, “Hey, man. Would it be alright if my brother Ernie played bass on this song?” And they said, “Alright.” So Ernie played on that, and then it had that feeling that we wanted it to have. 

JM: The album 3+3 turns 45 this year. What are your reflections on that particular album?

RI: Wow, we had rehearsed for that at my mother’s house. “That Lady” – I rewrote that song. That was the first single. I think we had “Summer Breeze” on that album. That was to be the second single but it was cold in New York. [laughs] We said, “Let’s release another record.” We didn’t want to put that out in the wintertime. [laughs] There was just something about that record, and to this day it’s very special with us. 

JM: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

RI: If you love the music, and you pray about it and have a good sense of where you want to go, just love doing what you’re doing. That’s what kept us going this long. The Lord has been with us from the beginning, and once we learned that we put everything into the music. And I think that’s what you have to do. It’s got to be something that you love.

INTERVIEWS

Interview: Ernie Isley

by admin ⋅ 

February 9, 2018

Ernie Isley’s first recording experience with The Isley Brothers was playing bass on the hit song “It’s Your Thing” – at the tender age of 16! He never looked back, becoming the band’s lead guitarist and contributing blistering fretwork to songs like “That Lady” and “Summer Breeze”. He also co-wrote such Isley Brothers classics as “Fight the Power”, “Harvest for the World”, and “Take Me to the Next Phase”. Ernie also co-founded Isley-Jasper-Isley, which had a hit song “Caravan of Love”. 

With his brother Ronald, Ernie continues to carry the Isley Brothers torch, with their latest release being the 2017 collaboration with Santana called Power of Peace.
This interview was for a preview article for noozhawk.com for the Isley Brothers concert at the Chumash Casino on 2/16/18. It was done by phone on 2/6/18. (Tracy Isley photo)

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Jeff Moehlis: What can people look forward to at the upcoming show?

Ernie Isley: They’re going to hear everything from “Shout” to “It’s Your Thing”, “Fight the Power”, “That Lady”, “Between the Sheets”, “Summer Breeze”, “Voyage to Atlantis”. They’ll get a pretty full dose of the catalog. 

JM: It sounds like exactly what we want to hear. “It’s Your Thing” was your first official recording session with the Isley Brothers. How did it happen that a 16 year old kid ended up playing on what became a Number One R&B single?

EI: Well, I was prepared in my mind to play drums. In rehearsal I had played drums, and then I switched off the drums and played the bass part. When we got to the session I was setting up the drum kit and the bass player came in, and I showed him what I had been playing. And when he started playing, he was more or less playing what he felt, but it wasn’t what I showed him. So just before we started the actual recording, Ronald came over to me and said in my ear, “You’re gonna play bass”, and my heart was immediately thumping. I was scared. 

They handed me the guy’s bass and put the headphones on me. I heard a voice saying, “Rolling” and counted it off. I held onto the bass for dear life and played it. And it turned out that it worked. Everything about that song, everything about that record worked. Everything. The tempo, the lyrics, the musical track. Ronald sang it on one take, the very first take. Of course, we didn’t know that it was going to be the Frankenstein monster hit 45 for the Isley Brothers’ career.

JM: Are you kind of glad that you didn’t know that you were going to be playing bass on it? I imagine it would’ve been pretty nerve wracking.

EI: You know, we never really had a roadmap or a plan per se. We were just going after the music, and that was just a practical decision. I know when I played the bass part in the studio as a run-through with all the band there, it sounded like… Man! The musical track was loud, and it was funky, and each instrumental part was kind of signature, you know the trumpets, the saxes, the piano, what the drums were doing. It was amazing. Just before we did it, when they said, “Ernie go ahead and do this”, for me it was nerve wracking. But on the other had you have to have that kind of baptism if you’re going to be in this business. You have to have something that makes you feel like, “I don’t know whether I can do this, because the water’s awful deep.” It’s like, you can do it. Just jump in. And that is what happened. 

At that time I had only had a guitar for like 30 days, maybe 60 days. I got my first guitar in September of that year, and that song was recorded in November. But I’d been noodling around on bass for a while, particularly listening to James Jamerson and the Motown stuff, “This Old Heart of Mine”, etc. So I had some idea when it came to the bass part what I should do. It just so happened that it worked. Like I say, everything on that track worked.

JM: Before “It’s Your Thing” your older brothers already had a lot of success. What was it like for you watching and hearing about their success. Did it make you want to do it yourself?

EI: As a kid, you’re growing up and it’s my family. It was very exciting to sit in the audience and see them perform. No one could follow them. Jackie Wilson, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. Nobody could follow them, nobody wanted to follow them because of “Shout”, and “Twist and Shout”. It was a very hard act to follow. So they were always closing the show. It was a real rush, a real spectacular thing to see. Like, “Man, that’s my family! That’s my brothers! Wow!” It was incredible. So you see that, but you’re a kid and you’re growing up. I started trying to play drums when I was 12. So that was quite some time to be going to a show and watching them perform.
A lot of people don’t know that Jimi Hendrix was a house guest and an employee from March of ’63 until November of ’65. They got him his first Fender guitar, his very first one. I was 11 years old at the time. I never heard anybody play a guitar like that. So on top of whatever they were doing, they had him, too. The Isley Brothers just left him alone. In a live setting, just forget about it. They were cooking on all cylinders.

JM: What was Jimi Hendrix like as a person?

EI: That’s a very good question, because that’s how I relate to him, as a person. He was somewhat shy, polite, respectful, a great sense of humor, good appetite [laughs]. And he played guitar all the time. He played it before rehearsal, during rehearsal, after rehearsal. On off days he was playing it. So anytime he was in the house he was playing his guitar. 

From my point of view, I was like, “What’s he practicing for? He’s already that good, he doesn’t need to. He should do something else.” But he would have the instrument with him. During Saturday morning cartoons… the Super Chicken, Bugs Bunny. He played very well, very well. I never heard anybody else play guitar like that. 

The first time The Beatles were on Ed Sullivan, on the couch I’m sitting on the lefthand side, my younger brother Marvin is sitting on the righthand side, and Jimi Hendrix is sitting in the middle. Ed Sullivan said, “Ladies and gentlemen, The Beatles.” We saw a spectacular British group, but there was no clap of thunder or anything over our house, because you can’t see the future. But a few days after that there was a meeting with the whole band, and the producer – my oldest brother Kelly – said, “You know, this English group has changed everything for everybody. I don’t even know what may happen with Elvis Presley himself. But, I think we’re going to be alright because they do both ‘Shout’ and ‘Twist and Shout’ in their repertoire. Now, they have two guitar players, but we’ve got Jimi.” And when he said, “we’ve got Jimi”, I looked over at Jimi, and Jimi was grinning from ear to ear at that remark. Because it was true. It was true. So they really didn’t feel threatened. They just kept plugging away at what they were doing. Marvin and I were not musicians initially. We did become that, but we were not musicians while Jimi was there in the house. We eventually grew into that. 

Around November of ’65, all of the sudden I stopped seeing him. I asked Kelly, “What’s up with Jimi? Where’s he at?” He goes, “Oh Jimi. We had a conversation, and Jimi said how much he appreciated the hospitality and being in the band, but he wants to do some other things now. So we parted on good terms. He only asked one favor before he left.” I said, “What was that?” He said, “He wanted to take the white Strat with him.” So we gave it to him. We gave it to him as a parting gift. At some point after that, the rest goes into history.

Had he been around when “That Lady” came out, he probably would’ve given me something between a bear hug and a tackle. “How in the hell did you ever learn how to do that?” And I’d say, “Hey, man, I was listening to you when you were in the dining room or the kitchen or wherever you were playing. That’s how I got able to do it.” He would be laughing. Kelly would’ve had him up near the front door, poking his ribs, yelling at him. Jimi, he just would’ve been laughing. He would’ve had tears in his eyes laughing so hard, something like that would’ve happened.

JM: The guitar part in “That Lady” is just phenomenal. Where was your mind at for that? Were you in the zone? How did you do it?

EI: We were getting ready to go out to California to record. Ronald said, “We’re going to California to record to get something that we haven’t gotten before,” in terms of the sound of our records. And I was like, “What are you talking about?” He said, “You know, Sly Stone’s out there, Stevie Wonder’s out there, James Taylor’s out there. Everybody is starting to do records in California. When we got out there, we’re going to do ‘That Lady’.” I said, “That was like a cha cha bossa nova.” He said, “Yeah, but we’re going to change it. We’re going to change the tempo, we’re going to change the lyric, we’re going to change the melody, and you are going to play lead guitar.” I sort of shrugged and said, “OK”. 

I went to a guitar shop on Sunset Boulevard, and I came into the store looking for a sound. I had some idea what sound I wanted, and when I found it I was playing it live in the store, but nobody came over to me and asked anything. It didn’t stop store traffic, whatever was going on. But I knew I had the sound. That night I went to the studio saying, “I’ve gotta get this pedal.” The engineer said, “Whatever you need, we can get that from Studio Instrumental Rentals – SIR.” And the next day it was there.

The “That Lady” track was funky, danceable – it had a lot of rhythm to it. And then I plugged into the lead, and when I hit the very first note the song went from, like, black and white to 3-D technicolor. It turned into something that none of us, quite frankly, could’ve imagined or expected. And I played everywhere, and after I finished I was yelling and the engineers were going nuts. Everybody else was kind of mummified. My oldest brother Kelly looked at me through the studio glass, like he didn’t blink for 45 minutes. Then [yells], and it was like, “Ernie, you’re going to have do another take, because you’ve got to make room for the vocals.” So I was kind of ticked off and did a second take.
The second take is what’s on the record. But the first take was better. Because the first take was like, “Just play.” So it was like a guitar instrumental. I was like, “You could release it like that”, and nobody disagreed. Because it was out of here. Unfortunately we had to erase it at that time. Now, if you did something like that you’d save it on a track and do a second one. That was the only downside of it.

But, of course, when it was finished and we played it for CBS the very first time, they said, “Well it doesn’t sound like ‘It’s Your Thing’. I mean, it doesn’t have saxophones and trumpets on it. But we like it. Now, you’ve got dance elements, R&B, but you’ve also got this lead guitar sound. How should we market this thing?” We said, “Just put it out, let it go everywhere.” It turns out when they put it out, that’s what it did. It wasn’t confined by a particular format. And that was my senior year in college, so I could be in the dorms in my room, and I had an AM/FM stereo. You could hear “That Lady” on the AM side, then go to FM and do the same thing. So that song was everywhere.

JM: Do you remember what guitar pedal you used for that?

EI: It was a Big Muff Phase Shifter Maestro. The sound of it obviously, at the time, came out of nowhere. It was like, “Who is that? The Isley Brothers? Wow! That doesn’t sound anything like ‘It’s Your Thing’. That doesn’t sound anything like ‘Work to Do’. That doesn’t sound anything like ‘This Old Heart of Mine’.” You know, there were rumors for a while that it was actually Jimi playing. I heard that and I thought, “Well, I must be pretty good then [laughs] if they’re going to say that about me.” But it turns out that it was me. It wasn’t Jimi, it wasn’t Eric Clapton, it wasn’t Carlos Santana. It was me. So that was cool.

And we had “Summer Breeze”, also, on that record, where I also played lead guitar. It was like the beginning of a whole new musical chapter and adventure for the Isley Brothers, because, as I said, we didn’t have any roadmap or anything. We were just pursuing the music wherever it took us.

JM: It might be hard to believe that album 3+3 turns 45 this year. And it still stands up.

EI: Yeah, I listened to part of it the other day. It stands up very well. That’s a great thing about good music, that it stands up like that. Yeah, that’s a great record.

JM: How did the song “Fight the Power” come together?

EI: We had just finished the Live It Up album, and we were in California. I was told that we were going to fly my mother and my nieces and nephews and the brothers’ wives out to LA, and that we were all going to go to Disneyland. So I was going to Disneyland for the very first time. I got up and I was in a good mood, and I got in the shower and for some reason I started either singing or half-reciting “Time is truly wasting, there’s no guarantee. A smile is in the making, fight the powers that be”. I was like, “Oh my God.”

So I jumped out of the shower, the soap went this way, the shower curtain went that way, the water went this way, and I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen or a pencil and wrote that down while I was dripping on the paper. I took it with me in my hip pocket to Disneyland that day. I didn’t tell anybody for about two or three months after that, that I had the idea for the song. With everything else that we had done, when that song came out I felt there was definitely a significant change. That was our first Number One album on Pop Billboard, and “Fight the Power” of course was, in addition to being a hit, a game-changer for us. It changed everything.

JM: I have kind of a technical question. Looking at the Isley Brothers catalog, I’m struck how many songs have a Part 1 and a Part 2. That includes “Fight the Power”, that includes “Shout”, that includes a lot of things. What’s the story behind that? I know that sometimes the A-side of a single was Part 1, and the B-side was Part 2. But for The Heat is On album every song has a Part 1 and a Part 2.

EI: That was because of the length of the songs, and if they had been singles that’s what it would’ve been. Back in the day, “Shout – Part 1” and “Part 2”, it was the same song, but it was like a different version of the song. It was typically for that reason why that was done.

JM: What advice would you give to an aspiring musician?

EI: For musicians now, they’re going to have to be dedicated to the craft, they’re going to have to be focused, especially now in this climate because a lot that’s going on does not involve actual singing, it does not involve being able to play an instrument, it does not involve perhaps even the artist writing the song. So they’ll have to be dedicated and focused, and really wanting this thing with a passion. A passion for it. If they have that and the stick-to-it-ness, then that’s going to give them the best chance to succeed.

JM: What’s next for the Isley Brothers? Is there anything in the works? Any recordings or re-releases?

EI: Well, next year, 2019, is 60 years since the original release of the recording “Shout”. There are different plans afoot to acknowledge that happening. I imagine between now and then we’ll probably have some sort of new music out, if the Lord is willing. You know, just as a reminder.
I mean, “Shout” is everywhere. I guess we could do that in North Korea and they would know. They’d probably arrest us for singing. “No, we don’t allow no singing and dancing over here.” But they would know the song. “Shout” is everywhere. “Shout” could be the centerpiece of a performance at the Super Bowl, and have people come out there dressed in togas, just like Whoopi Goldberg, waving American flags. Everybody knows the song. It’s an all-American party celebration rock and roll song. Everybody’s done it. There’s not an artist I can name off the top of my head who doesn’t know it or hasn’t done it.

We just did a new CD with Carlos Santana, Power of Peace. Wow, that was a wonderful experience. A really excellent record with me, his wife Cindy, the Santana Band. I had to pinch myself. He’d be ten feet away from me playing, then he’d stop playing and point at me and I’d start playing, and I’d look up and he’d have this silly grin on his face, the same way I had when I was watching him. [laughs] It was a real musical embrace of the two careers.

JM: If you don’t mind returning to Jimi Hendrix, do you remember how Jimi reacted immediately after The Beatles played on Ed Sullivan?

EI: You know, in real time, in the real world, none of us has a crystal ball, and nobody can say what the future holds. So he was just as interested and curious as all of us were, because there was a buzz on The Beatles before they played Ed Sullivan. And if you were in the business at the time, you heard about this English band, but you hadn’t seen them yet, and that was their very first time. So he was curious and interested and paying attention.
And the fact that my oldest brother Kelly acknowledged him – “They’ve got two guitar players, but we’ve got Jimi” – that means no fear. We’re not worried about the English group and their guitar players. And those guys eventually turned into icons. All of them did. But in that moment it was like, “We’ve got ‘Shout’ and ‘Twist and Shout’. And yes, they perform ‘Shout’ and ‘Twist and Shout’. They’ve got two guitar players, but we’ve got Jimi.” It’s like, there was no fear. And that’s why he was grinning from ear to ear when he was acknowledged like that.

You know, I was a kid. I hadn’t yet turned 12, so I was more of an observer of these folks than I was actually trying to ask them. They were men and I was a kid. All of them were men. That chord – that E chord that’s in “Purple Haze” – was used for the first time on an Isley Brothers song called “Testify”. Jimi had a solo on that record, his first professional recording. With him, from the jump he was given preferential treatment. In terms of his personality he was somewhere between gentle and harmless, and he played very well. There were no restraints on him.
The fact that he was a house guest, that just ticked the rest of the bandmembers off. It was karma or something, for a reason. He was a total stranger. There’s musicians out here now waiting to be discovered, that if you actually knew them and knew what was in their future, you would go right up to them and have them stay in your house and drive them around, get them a new amplifier, all that kind of stuff. That was done for Jimi, partially out of being practical, and partially because he’s got something. He’s definitely got something.

And you don’t know where the business is going to go. Everybody thought at the time that The Beatles came on the scene, “Yeah, they’ll be here for about 6 months, then they’ll be out of here.” Not knowing that between George Harrison’s songs and the catalog of John Lennon and Paul McCartney, it’s like, “My God!” They literally changed the music industry. And of course, too, they had to happen first. Jimi didn’t happen first. They had to happen first.

They happened, then everybody started looking around for guitar players. “With all due respect, you like Eric Clapton? Check out this left-handed guy. You don’t know who he is, but he wants to sit in with you.” “Oh yeah, well nobody sits in with Eric.” “Well, you mind if this left-handed guy comes up here.” “No, go ahead.” It’s like, “Why did I do that?” [laughs] “Why did I do that? I just let Frankenstein onstage with me.” Nobody plays like that, you know? So we were very happy for him when Are You Experienced came out. I used to tell my friends at school, “We used to drink orange juice in the kitchen together” and “I ate dinner with this guy.” And his guitar might be leaning on his chair.

If you go back in a time machine to that time, and if your family came up to this guy and said “We want to put you in this house and we want to give you three guitars”, maybe your neighbors would be like, “Why are you doing all that for this guy? What makes you do that?” Well, you have to see the future. Nobody saw it, but I’m glad that we made a contribution to his life, and his name is on the Isley resume, and the Isley name is on the Hendrix resume. It couldn’t have worked out better for all concerned.

JM: I know you were very young, but did Jimi ever teach you anything on the guitar?

EI: Whenever I heard him play I would take a book, a notebook, a social studies book, and go in the same room. But I wasn’t doing social studies. I was watching and observing him. You know, a few years ago we were in the Hamptons, and Ronald and I had just finished coming offstage, and I went to sit down and my wife said, “Paul McCartney’s over there.” I said, “Where?” She pointed – he was about three tables away from me. I got up and I went over to him, and I tapped him on his elbow. He stood up at his full height and gave me a bear hug – I couldn’t breathe. Both of us were talking into each other’s ear at the same time, and I said something like, “Paul, you, Ringo, George, and John were just wonderful.” He said, “Ernie, if it was not for the Isley Brothers, the Beatles would still be in Liverpool.” Then he went onstage and said the same thing. Then we performed “Twist and Shout” together. Ronald was up there singing, Jennifer Hudson, Usher, Richie Sambora, Jon Bon Jovi, and I did “Twist and Shout”. When we got to the end “Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah”, everybody in the building was standing up applauding, and looking around like, “Now what are we going to do?” You can’t go any further than that.

“Twist and Shout” was the first song The Beatles did at the Shea Stadium concert. The very first song of the show. Had they said at the time, “We’re going to do this with the Isley Brothers”, and “The guitar player is going to come out here”, little Ernie would’ve had a tambourine, and the guitar player would’ve been Jimi Hendrix. In 1965. “Oh my God, who is this?” He was playing like that in 1965. He was that formidable. He knew how to play. Nobody else played like that.

Tracks

1. 1 That Lady, Parts 1 & 2
2. 2 Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight
3. 3 If You Were There
4. 4 You Walk Your Way
5. 5 Listen to the Music
6. 6 What It Comes Down To
7. 7 Sunshine (Go Away Today)
8. 8 Summer Breeze
9. 9 The Highways of My Life

BBC Review

3 + 3 is brilliance writ large

Daryl Easlea 

2009

 

3+3 is the gateway to the Isley Brothers' golden, shimmering 70s period. This was the point where, after radicalising since forming their T-Neck label, the original trio of Rudolph, Ronald and O'Kelly Isley augmented their sound with their younger brothers Ernie Isley, Marvin and Rudolph's brother-in-law, Chris Jasper. They then enjoyed their third life (after their early doo-wop and subsequent Motown career) becoming an all-conquering rock-soul ensemble that produced a remarkable run of hits.

Distributed by industry major, Epic, it was full of commercial clout and possibly their most judicious selection of cover versions and originals. 3+3 was practically prescribed to every soul boy in the UK (witness the cover of If You Were There on the first album by Wham!); its sinewy supple blend of wailing guitar, water-tight harmony and propulsive beats still make it a work of remarkable singularity.

For them to take their old R&B hit, Who's That Lady and turn it into a hard-rocking psychedelic soul was a clear statement of their intent, complete with scorching Ernie Isley guitar. Here was a band that could appeal in equal measure to rock fans and soul aficionados. The record mixed originals and covers, light and shade. Particularly resonant was their reading of Seals and Croft's Summer Breeze, making a piece of down-home hippie philosophy into a manifesto of joy for the light nights.

If you have no Isleys and wonder where to start, then the compilation Forever Gold is still your best entry point, but if you wish to hear the album which showcases them at the peak of their powers, 3 + 3 is brilliance writ large. 

http://www.phillytrib.com/entertainment/the-isley-brothers-evolution-and-enduring-genius-captured-in-new/article_d0ac4cc6-da54-5432-8a18-dd86a845eb13.html

The Isley Brothers evolution and enduring genius captured in new collection

• Bobbi Booker Tribune Staff Writer
• August 15, 2015


Born and raised in the suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio, The Isley Brothers — O’Kelly Isley Jr., Rudolph Isley, Ronald Isley and a fourth brother, Vernon Isley (who died a couple of years after their first incarnation) – began performing as a gospel-based vocal group in 1954. “The Isley Brothers: The RCA Victor and T-Neck Album Masters (1959-1983)” follows The Isley Brothers through their transformation from a 1950’s doo-wop/gospel vocal group into the world’s preeminent R&B rock ‘n’ soul powerhouse party band. The inclusion of younger brothers Ernie Isley (lead guitar, drums) and Marvin Isley (bass guitar) and Rudolph’s brother-in-law Chris Jasper (keyboards, synthesizers) in 1973 turned the original vocal trio into a self-contained musical band that dominated the music scene for the next decade.

“I can hardly believe it myself,” marveled youngest brother, Ernie Isley, of the monumental 23-CD collection. “We’d talked about it, but the manifestation of it is about as close to encyclopedic, musically speaking on our stuff, as you can get. It’s akin to a yearbook or something. And because it’s so vast in its chronological passage of time and through the different phases of music, yet it is still Isley all the way through from the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and into the millennium.

“And, we are the only group of artists – male, female, Black or white — that has charted in every decade since the 1950s. So, for somebody to have this particular compilation you are pretty much listening to the history of contemporary music in the United States — and the world — by way of the Isleys. We were able to keep our identity through all that time.”

Moving to the New York City area in the late 1950s, The Isley Brothers scored some modest regional chart successes before their fourth single (and first for RCA Victor), “Shout” — written by O’Kelly, Rudolph and Ronald — catapulted them into the pantheon of pop immortality in 1959. One of the most immediately identifiable and infectious party anthems ever written or recorded, The Isley Brothers’ “Shout” — with its irresistible call-and-response structure — combined gospel heat and doo-wop soul with a high-powered rock ‘n’ roll energy. The much-covered “Shout” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999 and placed No. 118 on Rolling Stone’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The Isley Brothers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. They got their star on the Hollywood Rockwalk in 1997 and were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 2003. In the world of R&B, only Parliament-Funkadelic and Earth, Wind & Fire have achieved success rivaling the Isley Brothers.

Still active as a duo of Ronald and Ernie Isley, The Isley Brothers earned a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014. “I think sometimes about the relationships of brothers,” mused Ernie. “In marriage, it has ‘til death do us part.’ That does not happen with brothers. Always, once you are there, that does not move, that does not change. Although I have brothers that are no longer alive, they are my brothers. I have brothers who are no longer here, yet they are still my brothers, too — and I am aware of their presence and their absence simultaneously. So, yeah, it’s a very deep spiritual unbreakable bond. Certainly growing up, I was very proud and happy to see Kelly, Rudolph and Ronald.”

To demonstrate, Ernie breaks off to sing the unmistakable opening of “Shout”: “We-eee-eeel... / You know you make me wanna / Kick my heels up! / Throw my hands up!”

He continues: “That song, from the get-go, has been a crowd pleaser. That’s the one song we could do at halftime at the Super Bowl, and wave the flag and everybody would understand it.”

The Isleys followed up “Shout” with a variety of tracks (including their Top 20 single, “Twist & Shout,” a song later famously covered by The Beatles). “That’s a marvelous connection to have among ourselves, and virtually everybody in the business,” Ernie continued. “I mean, I’ve seen Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Beatles — everybody knows that song — everybody! And for it to be that kind of touchstone and for it to be an Isley’s song is just amazing.”

Perhaps the most musically adventurous vocal ensemble in American pop history, The Isley Brothers were adding rock, funk, R&B, soul and ballad elements into the gospel and doo-wop music at the foundation of their sound. In the 1960s, while The Isley Brothers bounced between various labels (including Atlantic, United Artists and Motown), they briefly employed a then-unknown Jimi Hendrix (aka Jimmy James) as their lead guitarist, buying him a white Fender Stratocaster guitar and moving him into the Isley home for two years.

“Jimi Hendrix was a house guest in March of 1963,” recalled Ernie Isley, 63, who was then an impressionable 11-year-old and still three years shy of joining his brother’s music collective. Though Jimi’s stint with the Isley Brothers was brief, his musical sensibilities remained in the group, with the younger Isley carrying the fiery experimental rock ‘n’ soul guitar sound they shared into the Isley Brothers’ future. “There was a lot of music in the house, and you never knew who you were rubbing elbows with. If he had been around to hear [the 1973 R&B and Soul hit] ‘That Lady,’ he probably would have given me something between a bear hug and a tackle [while asking], ‘How the hell did you learn how to play like that?’ And I would have said, ‘Listening to you in the living room.’ You just never know how things go.”

With Ernie, Chris and Marvin leading the way creatively, the group pushed the barriers of soul music, bringing funk and laid-back quiet storm into the mainstream and earning the band three gold and seven platinum or multi-platinum albums — including “3+3” (1973), the #1 chart-topping “The Heat Is On” (1975) and 1983’s “Between The Sheets” — and 14 Top 10 R&B albums (seven of which hit No. 1).

By the 1990s, The Isley Brothers’ dominant influence over hip-hop music and culture could be felt at every turn. “Footsteps In The Dark” from 1977’s “Go For Your Guns” was sampled in Ice Cube’s “It Was A Good Day,” while The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Big Poppa” interpolated the title track of 1983’s “Between The Sheets.” The Isleys’ flashy fashion sense directly inspired the “bling” aesthetic embraced by rappers everywhere. R. Kelly proclaimed the group his biggest influence, collaborating with them on his Top 5 hit “Down Low (Nobody Has To Know)” in 1995 (featuring Ronald Isley in a career-redefining role as Mr. Biggs in the accompanying video). Kelly’s writing and production for the group continued through the 1990s and 2000s, peaking with “Body Kiss” which hit No. 1 the Billboard 200 in 2003, a full 44 years since their first hit with “Shout.”

The Isley Brothers’ classic works continue to reach new fans through consistent radio airplay, film and television licenses and samples: in 2015, Kendrick Lamar won two Grammy Awards for the track “I,” built upon the groove of “That Lady” (from 1973’s “3+3”), while singer/rapper Frank Ocean covered “At Your Best (You Are Love)” from “Harvest For The World” (previously covered by Aaliyah in 1994, who made it a Top 10 hit).

Chris Jasper, 63, a former member of both the Isley Brothers and Isley-Jasper-Isley, is responsible for writing and producing the majority of the Isley Brothers music (1973–83) and Isley-Jasper-Isley music (1984–87). Today, he is also a successful solo musician and record producer who stays in touch with fans via social media.

“It is something I hear constantly on Facebook when people contact me,” said Jasper. “They’ll tell me how timeless the music is. Most of my Facebook friends are much younger people, because, let’s face it: a lot of people our age aren’t on the computer or don’t go on the Internet. Most of the people are a generation or two younger, and they love the music.”

The Isley Brothers, through an unprecedented seven decades, have remained one of the most consistently successful groups of all time. The Isleys were present at the birth of rock and roll, their biggest hits have influenced R&B, rock and roll and funk music from the 1950s onward while their deep grooves helped form the rhythmic backbone of hip-hop, a sound the Isleys would embrace in the 1990s and 2000s.

“The Isley Brothers: The RCA Victor and T-Neck Album Masters (1959-1983)” box set brings all of their works (including 84 rare and unreleased bonus tracks plus first-ever complete issue of the live-in-the-studio album recorded in 1980) into one impressive package while chronicling the sonic evolution and abiding achievements of the unprecedented R&B ensemble.

For more information, visit:

http://smarturl.it/Isley_TNeckBox_Amzn
bbooker@phillytrib.com

The Isley Brothers - Fight The Power (Part 1 & 2) (1975):

Time is truly wastin' 
There's no guarantee 
Smile's in the makin' 
You gotta fight the powers that be 
Got so many forces 
Stayin' on the scene 
Givin' up all around me 
Faces full a' pain 
I can't play my music 
They say my music's too loud 
I kept talkin about it 
I got the big run around 
When I rolled with the punches 
I got knocked to the ground 
With all this bullshit going down 

Time is truly wastin' 
There's no guarantee 
Smile's in the makin' 
You gotta fight the powers that be 
I don't understand it 
People wanna see, ya 
Those that got the answers 
Red tape in the way 
I could take you in easy 
That's just half the fun, oh boy 
Seeking satisfaction 
Keeps me on the run 
I can't play my music 
They say my music's too loud 
I kept talkin about it 
I got the big run around 
When I rolled with the punches 
I got knocked on the ground 
With all this bullshit going down 
Time is truly wastin' 
There's no guarantee 
Smile's in the makin' 
You gotta fight the powers that be 

If you I can, we got the power 
Fight it, got the power fight it baby, baby 
Fight it, fight the power

Songwriters: Ernie Isley / Marvin Isley / O'kelly Isley / Ronald Isley / Rudolph Isley / Christopher Jasper

Fight The Power lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Compulsive Reader

Reviews of books by some of the hottest writers working today, exclusive author interviews, literary news and criticism.

Music reviews

The Music of the Isley Brothers

March 16, 2006

Compulsive Reader

 



















Review by Daniel Garrett

The Isleys Live, Rhino, 1996 Brother, Brother, Brother, Sony, 1997 The Brothers: Isley, Sony, 1997
 
“For the Love of You” is a song by The Isley Brothers that never seems old.  The Isley Brothers, who wrote and produced most of their own music, is one of those groups one likes without giving that affection much thought.  On The Isleys Live, originally released in 1973 on their own label, T-Neck, and buttressed with bonus tracks from another 1969 T-Neck live recording, this 1996 Rhino release contains versions of “Love the One You’re With,” “Lay Lady Lay,” and “Ohio” and has album notes by David Nathan, who says that passion marked the live recording, noting Ronald Isley’s “emotive vocal stylings.”  The song “It’s Your Thing,” with its echoes of James Brown and Wilson Pickett and even Stevie Wonder, and its affirmation of sexual independence, are also featured.  The group performs Neil Young’s “Ohio,” about the murder of student anti-war protestors, in a medley with Jimi Hendrix’s very descriptive “Machine Gun,” resulting in a very dramatic reading.

The Isley Brothers, featuring Ronnie, Rudy, and Marvin Isley, with support from Ernie Isley and Chris Jasper, recorded Brother, Brother, Brother, an album in which three of the eight songs were written by Carole King, whose record-breaking Tapestry album had man an impression on many performers of the time.   Brother was released in 1972 by T-Neck, and re-released in 1997 by Sony.  The collection, with notes by poet Nikki Giovanni about Cincinnati and Lincoln Heights (which she shared with the Isleys), contains “Work to Do,” a song written by the Isleys about the sacrifices (and understanding) required to accomplish a task, a song radio still plays.  The Isleys give Carole King’s “It’s Too Late” a ten-minute workout: slowed-down, anguished, with mournful piano and screaming guitar.  On the cover packaging for the recording The Brothers: Isley, released in 1969 on T-Neck (re-released in 1997 by Sony), Ronnie, Rudy, and Marvin wear reddish monks’ robes but many of the songs are about sex and love (perhaps they anticipate Marvin Gaye’s idea of sexual healing).  There are nine songs on the album.  David Ritz, who wrote the album notes for the re-release, says that he was a graduate student looking for truth in the English romantic poets but found it in this recording.  The song “I Got to Get Myself Together” contains an unusually direct acknowledgement of the need for self-criticism and improvement.  “Was It Good to You?” is an interrogation of a straying lover, and “The Blacker the Berrie (Black Berries)” is a remembrance of childhood—of berry-picking, favorite foods, and childhood habits—and it’s also a metaphor for temptation, and “Get Down Off the Train” is the beseeching of a lover—please, don’t go.  “Feels Like the World” is a song of despair and isolation from the view of an abandoned lover.  The album could be said to chart the excitement and deterioration of a relationship.  Much of the work of the Isley Brothers offers a complete vision; and it’s strange to think that there can be artists such as these whose work can go unexplored, unrepresented, in the most publicized formal histories of their art forms.  How different culture would like if the Isleys were considered central artists?  Or if Earth, Wind and Fire, a band producing jazzily uptempo orchestral dance music and ballads with visionary lyrics and whose discography includes Open Your Eyes, That’s the Way of the World, Gratitude, All ‘n’ All, and I Am, were widely considered essential?  The Isley Brothers’ Super Hits (Sony, 1999) includes “It’s Your Thing,” “Fight the Power,” “Summer Breeze,” and “Caravan of Love,” and Best of Isley Brothers (Curb Records, 1999) includes “This Old Heart of Mine,” “Twist and Shout,” “Who’s That Lady,” “Stagger Lee,” and “Long Tall Sally.”


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Daniel Garrett, a graduate of the New School for Social Research, was an intern at Africa Report, poetry editor for the male feminist magazine Changing Men, founded and acted as principal organizer of the Cultural Politics Discussion Group at ABC No Rio and Poets House, wrote about painter Henry Tanner for Art & Antiques, organized the first interdepartmental environmental justice meeting at Audubon, wrote about fiction and poetry for World Literature Today and international film for Offscreen, and has done music reviews that constitute a history of popular music for The Compulsive Reader.  Daniel Garrett’s work has appeared in The African, All About Jazz, American Book Review, Black Film Review, Cinetext, Contact II, Film International, The Humanist, Hyphen, Illuminations, Muse Apprentice Guild, Option, Pop Matters, Quarterly Black Review of Books, Rain Taxi, Red River Review, Review of Contemporary Fiction, and Wax Poetics. 

THE MUSIC OF THE ISLEY BROTHERS: AN EXTENSIVE VIDEO OVERVIEW, A CROSS SECTION OF RECORDINGS, MUSICAL ANALYSIS AND COMMENTARY, PLUS VARIOUS INTERVIEWS WITH THE ISLEY BROTHERS:

The Isley Brothers - Shout

Isley Brothers - Twist and Shout 

 

Isley Brothers- Living for the Love of you

The Isley Brothers Greatest Hits Full Album 2018 

The Isley Brothers This Old Heart Of Mine

The Isley Brothers-Who's That lady ?

FOOTSTEPS IN THE DARK - Isley Brothers 

 

The Isley Brothers Livin In The Life 

 

The Isley Brothers - Live It Up

Livin' In The Life/Go For Your Guns - The Isley Brothers - HQ 

BETWEEN THE SHEETS - Isley Brothers

ISLEY BROTHERS GREATEST HITS

 

 

 

The Isley Brothers - Twist and Shout ((MONO)) 1962

The Isley Brothers - Make Me Say it Again girl

The Isley Brothers - Fight The Power (Part 1 & 2) (1975)

The Isley Brothers - Harvest For The World

WORK TO DO - Isley Brothers

Isley Brothers ** It's Your Thing (LIVE) 

 

 

The Isley Brothers - Fight The Power/ It's Your Thing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Isley_Brothers

The Isley Brothers

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From left to right: Ernie Isley, O’Kelly Isley Jr, Ronald Isley, Chris Jasper, Rudolph Isley and Marvin Isley

The Isley Brothers (/ˈaɪzliː/) are an American musical group originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, that started as a vocal trio consisting of brothers O'Kelly Isley Jr., Rudolph Isley and Ronald Isley.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} The group has been cited as having enjoyed one of the "longest, most influential, and most diverse careers in the pantheon of popular music".^[7]

Alongside a fourth brother, Vernon, the group performed gospel music until Vernon's death a few years after its formation. After moving to the New York City area in the late 1950s, the group had modest chart successes during their early years, first coming to prominence in 1959 with their fourth single, "Shout", written by the three brothers. Initially a modest charted single, the song eventually sold over a million copies. Afterwards the group recorded for a variety of labels, including the top 20 single, "Twist and Shout" and the Motown single, "This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)" before recording and issuing the Grammy Award-winning hit, "It's Your Thing" on their own label, T-Neck Records.

Influenced by gospel and doo-wop music, the group began experimenting with different musical styles incorporating elements of rock and funk music as well as pop balladry. The inclusion of younger brothers Ernie Isley (lead guitar, drums) and Marvin Isley (bass guitar), and Rudolph's brother-in-law Chris Jasper (keyboards, synthesizers) in 1973 turned the original vocal trio into a self-contained musical band. For the next full decade, they recorded top-selling albums including The Heat Is On and Between the Sheets. 

The six-member lineup of the band splintered in 1983, with Ernie, Marvin, and Chris Jasper forming the short-lived spinoff group Isley-Jasper-Isley. Eldest member O'Kelly died in 1986 and Rudolph and Ronald released a pair of albums as a duo before Rudolph retired for life in the Christian ministry in 1989. Ronald re-formed the group two years later in 1991 with Ernie and Marvin; five years later in 1996, Marvin Isley left the group due to complications of diabetes. The remaining duo of Ronald and Ernie accomplished mainstream success with the albums Mission to Please (1996) Eternal (2001) and Body Kiss (2003), with Eternal spawning the top twenty hit, "Contagious". As of 2016, the Isley Brothers continue to perform under the lineup of Ronald and Ernie. 

The Isley Brothers have had four Top 10 singles on the United States Billboard chart. Sixteen of their albums charted in the Top 40. Thirteen of those albums have been either certified gold, platinum or multi-platinum by the RIAA. The brothers have been honored by several musical institutions including being inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.^[8] Five years later, they were inducted to Hollywood's Rockwalk and in 2003, were inducted to the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. 

History

Origins and initial recordings

 

The Isley Brothers originally came from Cincinnati, Ohio, and were raised at the city's Lincoln Heights suburb, eventually settling at the satellite town of Blue Ash when they were teenagers. Their father, O'Kelly Isley, Sr., a former United States Navy sailor and vaudeville performer from Durham, North Carolina, and Georgia-reared mother Sallye, guided the elder four Isley boys in their singing while at church. Patterning themselves after groups such as Billy Ward and his Dominoes and the Dixie Hummingbirds, the brothers began performing together in 1954.^[9] Eventually they landed a spot on Ted Mack's Amateur Hour where they won the competition, winning a watch.^[9] With Vernon on lead vocals, the quartet soon began touring all over the eastern US regions performing in a variety of churches. When Vernon was thirteen, he was killed after a car struck him as he was riding his bike in his neighborhood. Devastated, the remaining trio disbanded.^[9]

Eventually convinced to regroup, the brothers decided to record popular music and left Cincinnati for New York in 1957 with their parents' blessings.^[10] With Ronnie assuming the lead vocal position in the group, the group got into contact with Richard Barrett, who soon had the group in contact with a variety of New York record producers. They eventually had their first records produced by George Goldner, who recorded the group's first songs, including "Angels Cried" and "The Cow Jumped Over the Moon" for the Teenage, Cindy and Mark X imprints.^[11] The songs were only regional hits, however. By 1959, the group landed a recording deal with RCA Records. Later that year, mixing their brand of gospel vocalizing and doo-wop harmonies, the group recorded their first composition together, "Shout", a song devised from a Washington, D.C. club performance in which the brothers had covered Jackie Wilson's "Lonely Teardrops".^[11] The original version of the song peaked at 47 on the Billboard Hot 100 and never reached the R&B chart. Nevertheless, it sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA.^[12] Follow-up recordings on RCA failed to chart and the brothers eventually left the label in 1961, later signing with Scepter Records. In 1962, the brothers scored their first top 40 hit with the Bert Berns song "Twist and Shout", which reached number 17 on the Hot 100 and number 2 R&B, staying on the charts for 19 weeks.^[13] The song had been produced by Berns for the brothers to teach then-struggling producer Phil Spector how to produce a hit.^[14][15]

Moving their entire operations to New Jersey,^[16] the brothers continued to struggle with recordings eventually forming T-Neck Records in 1964.^[17] During that same time period, Jimi Hendrix began playing lead guitar for the brothers' band. Bringing Hendrix with them in the studio, they recorded the song "Testify". Later on, Hendrix contributed guitar to another Isleys single, "Move On Over and Let Me Dance", which was recorded for T-Neck through distribution with Atlantic Records. After neither song charted and Hendrix left them for good in 1965, the brothers signed with Motown Records. Earlier the following year, the group had their second top 40 hit single with "This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)". While the brothers' recordings with Motown were more successful than the brothers' early works, they struggled to have a follow-up top 40 hit with the label. They left Motown in 1968. 

Major success

 

Resurrecting their T-Neck label that year, the brothers signed a distribution deal with Buddah Records and issued "It's Your Thing" in February 1969. The song, which featured the first appearance of Ernie Isley on bass, became their biggest success to date reaching #2 on the Hot 100 and #1 on the R&B chart. The song's parent album, It's Our Thing, reached #22 on the Pop LP chart and "It's Your Thing" became their second million-seller and won them a Grammy Award. The release of "It's Your Thing" brought record label issues between the Isleys and Motown as Motown argued that the group recorded the song while still under their Motown contract. A 1975 court decision eventually ended in the Isleys' favor.^[18]

By 1971, the Isleys' younger brothers Ernie Isley and Marvin Isley and brother-in-law Chris Jasper started to add musical input to the band's music, first performing on the Isleys' Givin' It Back, which had the brothers reinterpreting rock songs mixing them with funk and gospel-oriented elements. They played an even bigger role in the music on the 1972 album, Brother, Brother, Brother. Both albums yielded top 40 hits including "Love the One You're With" and "Pop That Thang". By the end of their Buddah tenure in 1973, the brothers signed a distribution deal with Epic Records and made Ernie, Marvin, and Chris official members. In 1973, the Isleys released 3 + 3, which included the top 10 hit single, "That Lady" and a UK Top 10 cover of "Summer Breeze". Incorporating hard rock and folk rock as well as funk and soulful balladry, the album became their breakthrough hit, eventually selling over two million copies.

The following year's Live It Up reached gold. In 1975, the brothers recorded one of their most successful recordings with The Heat Is On, which featured the hits "Fight the Power" and "For the Love of You", and became their first to reach #1 on the Pop LP chart, also selling over two million copies, going double-platinum. The brothers would have more hit albums including Harvest for the World, Go for Your Guns, and Showdown, which either went gold or platinum and released several top 40 pop and R&B recordings and several popular album and radio cuts. By the release of 1979's Winner Takes All, the brothers had incorporated disco and quiet storm music into their work. The brothers' final album under their six-member lineup, 1983's Between the Sheets, sold over two million copies. By then, financial struggles, creative difficulties, and other issues affected the group. Shortly after the success of Between the Sheets, Ernie, Marvin, and Chris left the Isley Brothers and formed Isley-Jasper-Isley, later recording the hit, "Caravan of Love". 

Later career

 

In 1985, the original Isleys trio of O'Kelly, Rudy, and Ronnie signed with Warner Bros. Records and recorded and released the album Masterpiece. Shortly a year after its release, Kelly Isley died of a heart attack while battling cancer, in March 1986.^[19][20] The remaining duo of Ron and Rudy released the Angela Winbush-produced albums, Smooth Sailin' in 1987 and Spend the Night in 1989. Shortly after the latter release, Rudy retired from the music industry and followed life in the ministry. Ron put the group on a brief hiatus in 1990 while he recorded solo material. In 1991, Ron revived the group; Ernie Isley and brother Marvin returned to the fold. that year they released the album, Tracks of Life. Five years later, Ron Isley gained popularity as video villain Frank Biggs (or Mr. Biggs) in the music video for R. Kelly's hit "Down Low (Nobody Has to Know)", which included the Isley Brothers as featured artists. The success of the song and its video helped the brothers' 1996 album Mission to Please reach platinum status. 

That same year, Marvin Isley's career ended after a bout with diabetes forced him to have both of his legs amputated. Ron and Ernie have carried on as a duo from then on. In 2001, the duo released their best-selling album in years with the Eternal album, which sold over two million copies and featured the top 20 hit single "Contagious", making the Isley Brothers the only act to reach the Hot 100 (in fact, that chart's top 50) during the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. Two years later, the brothers' Body Kiss album peaked at number-one on the Billboard 200 album chart, becoming their second to reach the position and the first to do so since The Heat Is On. Their next two released albums included 2006's Baby Makin' Music and the 2007 holiday album I'll Be Home for Christmas. In 2007, the Isleys' career was interrupted by Ron Isley's three-year prison sentence for tax evasion.^[21] He was released in 2010. In June of that year, youngest brother Marvin Isley died in Chicago after his longtime bout with diabetes.^[22][23] During the group's hiatus, Ernie toured as part of the Experience Hendrix concert festival, while Ron Isley released his first solo album, Mr. I, in 2010. A year later, Ron and Ernie reunited and have since performed on the road. 

In 1993, The Isley Brothers song "Footsteps in the Dark" was sampled by hip-hop artist Ice Cube for the hit single "It Was a Good Day".^[24]

In 1994, The Isley Brothers song "Between the Sheets" was sampled by The Notorious B.I.G. for his hit single "Big Poppa". That same year, R&B singer Aaliyah did a cover version of "(At Your Best) You Are Love" for her debut album. 

After the break-up of Isley-Jasper-Isley in 1987, Chris Jasper continued as a solo artist, multi-instrumentalist, and producer, forming his own independent record label, Gold City Records. He has since released 14 solo albums, including 4 gospel albums. He released the #1 R&B hit "Superbad" in 1988, a song which emphasized the importance of education, a theme Jasper continues to emphasize in many of the songs he has written since his days with the Isleys. In January 2013, Jasper released Inspired: By Love, By Life, By the Spirit, a compilation of love songs as well as socially conscious and spiritual tracks. In May 2014, Jasper released The One, reminiscent of the soulful R&B and funk music he wrote for the Isleys. In 2016, Jasper released Share With Me, which included a cover of the Billy Preston hit, "You Are So Beautiful" and a track called "America", a tribute to the nation and a call to come together. In April 2018, Jasper pre-released a double-A single "The Love That You Give/It's a Miracle" from his 15th solo album Dance With You, scheduled for a July 2018 release. Jasper, who earned a law degree in 2004, has continued to write, record, and perform all the music on his solo albums and produce artists for his Gold City label, including Liz Hogue, Out Front, and Brothaz By Choice. The most recent addition to the Gold City label is Jasper's son, Michael Jasper, a songwriter, recording artist and screenplay writer, who earned his law degree in 2018. In 1989, Jasper wrote, produced and performed on "Make It Last" for Chaka Khan's CK album. In 2015, in conjunction with Sony Music, Jasper released the Essential Chris Jasper which encompasses all of the tracks that Jasper sang lead on during his Isley-Jasper-Isley years and solo career at CBS/Sony Music. In 2015, he received the German Record Critics Lifetime Achievement Award ("Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik"). In 2016, Jasper was awarded the National R&B Society Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 2017, Ernie and Ronnie Isley collaborated with guitarist Carlos Santana and released Power of Peace, released on July 28 by Sony Music's Legacy Recordings. 

Members

Current members

 

• Ronald Isley – lead vocals (1955–present), backing vocals (1954–1955)
• Ernie Isley – electric and acoustic guitars, bass, drums, percussion (1973–1984, 1991–present)

 

Former members

 

• Rudolph Isley – backing vocals (1954–1989, 2004)
• O'Kelly Isley, Jr. – backing vocals (1954–1986; died 1986)
• Marvin Isley – bass guitar (1973–1984, 1991–1997; died 2010)
• Christopher Jasper – keyboards, backing vocals, guitar, bass, percussion, wrote and directed string arrangements, songwriter, arranger, producer (1973–1984)
• Vernon Isley – lead vocals (1954–1955; his death)

Discography

Main article: The Isley Brothers discography

• 1959: Shout!
• 1962: Twist & Shout
• 1963: Twisting and Shouting
• 1966: This Old Heart of Mine
• 1967: Soul on the Rocks
• 1969: It's Our Thing
• 1969: The Brothers: Isley
• 1970: Get into Something
• 1971: Givin' It Back
• 1972: Brother, Brother, Brother
• 1973: 3 + 3
• 1974: Live It Up
• 1975: The Heat Is On
• 1976: Harvest for the World
• 1977: Go for Your Guns
• 1978: Showdown
• 1979: Winner Takes All
• 1980: Go All the Way
• 1981: Grand Slam
• 1981: Inside You
• 1982: The Real Deal
• 1983: Between the Sheets
• 1985: Masterpiece
• 1987: Smooth Sailin'
• 1989: Spend the Night
• 1992: Tracks of Life
• 1996: Mission to Please
• 2001: Eternal
• 2003: Body Kiss
• 2006: Baby Makin' Music
• 2017: Power of Peace

 

References

 

"The Isley Brothers Biography". Rockhall.com.

Gulla, Bob (2008). Icons of R&B and Soul: An Encyclopedia of the Artists Who Revolutionized Rhythm. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-0-313-34044-4.

Pareles, Jon. "POP REVIEW; Two Brothers Who Are Carrying On the Family Act". Nytimes.com. Retrieved 17 July 2018.

"Footsteps in the Dark". google.com.

Moses Sumney. "Alex Isley Has Her Own Thing". L.A. Weekly.

"A Playful Encounter With the Isley Brothers". latimes.

Ankeny, Jason. "The Isley Brothers - Music Biography on Allmusic.com". Allmusic. Retrieved March 27, 2013.

"The Isley Brothers". Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 1992. Retrieved March 27, 2013.

Gulla 2008, p. 193.

Gulla 2008, p. 193–194.

Gulla 2008, p. 194.

Murrells, Joseph (1978). The Book of Golden Discs (2nd ed.). London: Barrie and Jenkins Ltd. p. 115. ISBN 0-214-20512-6.

Gulla 2008, p. 195.

David Edwards and Mike Callahan, The Atlantic Records Story, February 1990, Bsnpubs.com

"Bert Berns: Songwriter, Producer and Label Chief". Bertberns.com.

Wilner, Paul. "Isley Brothers: A Family Affair", The New York Times, March 13, 1977. Accessed September 18, 2011. "WHEN Sallye Isley moved her brood of children from Cincinnati to Englewood in the summer of 1959, she was participating in a show-business phenomenon.... While their older brothers toured America, the younger Isley boys enrolled successively in Englewood Junior High and Dwight Morrow High School.... Right now, the brothers reside near enough to each other to keep in close touch. Ronald lives in Teaneck, Kelly Jr. in Alpine, Rudolph in Haworth and Ernie in Englewood."

Gulla 2008, p. 196.

Gulla 2008, p. 199.

Company, Johnson Publishing (1986-04-21). O'Kelly Isley, 48, Of The Isley Bros. Dies In N.J. Retrieved 2010-02-11.

Associated Press. "O'KELLY ISLEY", The New York Times, April 3, 1986. Accessed October 8, 2007. "He was 48 years old and lived in Alpine. Born Dec. 25, 1937, Mr. Isley grew up in Cincinnati and began his musical career singing gospel with his brothers, who performed with their mother accompanying them on piano."

"Singer Ronald Isley gets 3 years in prison". Today.com. September 12, 2006. Retrieved March 28, 2013.

"Marvin Isley of Isley Bros. dies at 56". CNN. June 7, 2010. Retrieved 2010-06-07.

"Isley Brothers bassist dies at 56". BBC News. June 8, 2010.

24. Hyden, Steven (October 25, 2011). "Ice Cube, "It Was A Good Day"". The A.V. Club.

 

External links

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to The Isley Brothers.

• The Isley Brothers at AllMusic
• The Isley Brothers' channel on YouTube / VEVO
• "The Isley Brothers". Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
• The Isley Brothers at the Vocal Group Hall of Fame
• The Isley Brothers discography at Discogs
• Official Website of Chris Jasper
• Gold City Records