Cozy Thoughts: Week 5
The Song Writers Hall of Fame released their list of nominees eligible for the 2020 induction.
You can see the full list here.
Of the list, a particular band sticks out like a cold sore and not because they don’t belong there. But because how in the fuck are The Isley Brothers not in the Song Writers Hall of Fame already?
The Isley Brothers have covered damn near seven decades of music, and are the only group to have six consecutive decades of Top-40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart from the ’50s-2000s. The brothers from Cincinnati have recorded in just about every American genre of music you can think of from Doo-wop, rock ’n’ roll, gospel, rhythm and blues and hip-hop (more on that later).
Originally a gospel group, The Isleys (Ronald, Marvin, O’Kelly, Rudolph, Ernie, Vernon and brother-in-law Chris Jasper) moved to New York in 1956 to sign with some small-time labels. They signed with RCA in 1958 and recorded their first hit, “Shout,” which was later covered by The Beatles.
The group recorded over 20-plus albums before splitting. Ron, O’Kelly and Rudolph were still The Isleys while Ernie, Chris and Marvin formed their own group. O’Kelly died in 1986 and Marvin passed in 2010 (Vernon was the lead vocalist before he died in 1955). Ron continued making music and recorded with younger contemporary R&B acts.
Your parents, grand parents or great grand parents have probably partied to and owned an Isley Brothers record in their lifetime. They’re arguably the most influential group of all-time. Throughout the rest of this column, I’ll highlight some the Isley Brothers’ songs that have influenced artists.
“Thank God for hip-hop,” Ronald Isley said to LA Times writer Cheo Hodari Coker. Indeed.
Arguably it’s what kept Ron and the group relevant with the hip-hop boom in the 90s. Oh and those royalty checks were nice, I’m sure.
“Footsteps in the dark” gave us Ice Cube’s classic “Today was a good day” from his third album The Predator. Everyone knows it. It gave us classic lines like “Last week, fucked around and got a triple double.”
My favorite sample of this is J Dilla’s “Won’t Do” from The Shinning album (not to be confused with the Stephen King book and movie). Dilla takes the percussion from the top of FTITD and matches them with haunting synths.
“Twist and Shout” was the follow up to “Shout.” The title track peaked at №2 on Billboard in 1962 and a year later, the hit single would be covered by The Beatles. It’s been used in several commercials, most notably for the cleaning product, Shout. It was rock and roll bliss for The Isleys. In a Los Angeles Times article, Ron mentions that “Twist and Shout” made the band headliners.
“It was like the sky opened up,” Isley remembers, still conveying the excitement he must have felt at the time. “We moved from the front of the shows to the end. Nobody could come on after we played that record — the crowd would leave.
I’ll stand outside of wedding receptions and when everybody starts dancing to ‘Shout,’ I want to run inside and say, ‘Hey, I wrote that.’ Or I’ll watch the Super Bowl and people in the stands will be singing ‘Twist and Shout’ like it just came out last month. That’s just the way our music is. It’s a gift from God.”
“Between the Sheets” wasn’t all just bedroom jams and funk. The brothers gave us a political message with “Ballad of a Fallen Soldier.”
This song was the sample for one of my favorite Jay-Z deep cuts from In My Life Time Vol. 2, “A Week Ago.”
Hov and Too Short take this salute to dead soldiers and turn it into a tale about their drug dealing associates ratting them out.
Fun Fact: The song was suppose to feature Pimp C and Too Short but because tensions were high,(this is a year after Biggie was murdered) neither artist wanted to leave their respective cities to record the track. Of course a year later, Hov and UGK would get together to record “Big Pimpin’.”
Jimi Hendrix was sleeping in the back of a house the Isley Brothers rented in New Jersey. After being discovered in a Harlem nightclub by Tony Rice, he brought all of his belongings in his guitar case and wanted to audition.
Ron Isley was skeptical.
“I said to Tony, ‘Aw, come on, man, he can’t be that good. Is he better than …’ and then I started naming all the guitar players we knew we’d like to have in our band. And Tony said, ‘He’s better than any of them,” he said in Becoming Jimi Hendrix.
He covered “Twist and Shout” and was accepted as the newest member of the group. Hendrix toured and lived with the Isleys from 1963–1965 before taking his act solo. Hendrix would earn $30 a night on the road but would often get fined for wearing the weird-ass scarves and not wear a suit like the Isleys (how ironic because what the fuck were they wearing here?).
During his time with the super group, Hendrix cut a few songs with them, “Testify” being their most coveted. It’s high-powered gospel with Hendrix’s riffs.
On the verge on Kendrick Lamar dropping his sophomore album, “To Pimp A Butterfly,” I remember feeling at odds about what I was about to hear. Not that I thought the second effort (or third if you count Section .80) was about to be some butt cheeks.
It’s just that the singles that Top Dawg dropped in the fall of 2014 left me looking like that Larry David gif.
Perhaps we should have been more appreciative for “i” as it’s probably the happiest sounding song on such a bleek album for such a dark year. And even then it’s not exactly a happy song (Think of it like “Hey Ya”). It’s Lamar fighting his way to some sort of happiness when depression and life won’t let you be great or feeling defeated.
It samples The Isley’s “That Lady” and Ronald is featured in the “i” video. Also for what it’s worth, Ronald gives what might be the greatest 30 seconds in a song on “How Much a Dollar Cost.”
Tell me you don’t get goosebumps after listening to that!
*Honorable mention*
Only because I don’t have enough information to properly write about how Pimp C got the sampled cleared but this is a UGK classic nonetheless. Pimp C was a dope producer and an underrated one. “One Day” samples the Isley’s 1974 record “Ain’t I been good to you.” If you’ve never had the pleasure of listening to UGK or aren’t familiar with their work, I’d suggest you’d start with Ridin’ Dirty.
