“Do something,” producer Gene Redd instructed drummer George Brown and bassist Robert “Kool” Bell during an early recording session in New York. “Say something! Sing something.”
That prompt in the late ’60s was what it took Kool & the Gang—a jazz group with a crack horn section that evolved into funk and then disco—to get moving. “From the top of heads,” Brown, 73, said of the group’s early years, when it made instrumental tracks influenced by both James Moody and James Brown. “We’d just start, and bingo, there it is: ‘Raw Hamburger’ and ‘Chocolate Buttermilk,'” he added, referring to two memorable songs. “It just flowed. And we’re just grooving.”
In nearly six decades, Kool & the Gang have released 25 albums and toured worldwide, with Live Aid in 1985 and Glastonbury in 2011. Their 12 Top 10 singles are funk, disco and pop classics, underlying films like “Pulp Fiction and “Legally Blonde”: “Jungle Boogie,” “Ladies Night,” “Hollywood Swinging,” the unmistakable 1980s anthem “Celebration.” They are foundational to hip-hop and have been sampled more than 1,800 times, including memorable ones, according to the website WhoSampled. twists on Eric B. & Rakim’s “Don’t Sweat the Technique” and Nas’ “NY State of Mind” (Questlove played a set of over three hours of songs featuring the group’s samples during a 2020 livestream)
Still, Kool & the Gang have not garnered the same accolades as many of their contemporaries. They haven’t even made it to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame vote. Why?
“We’re asking the same question,” Bell, 71, said in a separate interview. The bassist and vocalist left the Imperial Lords street gang and joined the group’s first version in Jersey City, NJ, in 1964.
A new box set released this week, “The Albums Vol. 1: 1970-1978”, advocates the band’s influence – 199 songs on 13 CDs, celebrating a transition period, one that took the group to the edge of the megastardom would push . (Part 2, about the ’80s, is coming in the fall.)
Bell was video chatting from Orlando, Florida, dressed in a leopard print shirt, with a bass, Kool & the Gang guitar, and framed gold and platinum records behind him. An animated storyteller, he fondly recalls the band’s early days in Youngstown, Ohio, when he and his brother Ronald Khalis Bell, often credited by his Muslim name, Khalis Bayyan, pounded on empty paint cans to create rhythms.
Their father, Bobby, was a boxer who associated with jazzmen Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk; Monk later became Robert’s godfather. Robert tried boxing, but only lasted a year. When the family moved to Jersey City, he became involved with local gangs.
Music eventually pulled him out: The group sparked when Ronald visited the home of a high school classmate, Robert “Spike” Mickens, who could flawlessly play the jazz classic “Detuned.” Soon the Bell brothers were hanging out at Mickens’ house, and Kool picked up a guitar and learned the monotonous bass part in Herbie Mann’s “Comin’ Home Baby.” His instinctive style, with the help of his more experienced brother, became the rhythmic foundation of the group.
‘I haven’t taken any classes. None of that,” Bell said. “Just listen.”
They formed the Jazz Birds, then the Jazziacs, then Kool and the Flames, after Bell’s street name, changed from a friend named Cool. In 1969, to avoid trouble from James Brown and His Famous Flames, they called themselves Kool & the Gang.
The group found a manager and began performing, learning about Brown and Motown hits, and supporting little R&B stars on their swings around town. “So now jazz and funk are coming together,” Bell said. The 1970 live, largely instrumental debut ‘Kool and the Gang’ reflected this combination.
Kool & the Gang were prolific and their sound evolved over a long period of time. Michael Neidus – global commercial manager for British record label Demon Music Group, which licensed the Kool & the Gang catalog from their old label Universal Music for the box sets – decided to separate the group’s more groovy 70s phase, then the band often collaborated with producer Redd, from the era of success beginning with “Ladies Night” in 1979 and “Celebration” in 1980.
“It’s too much at once,” he said. “There are two distinct periods of the band’s success.”
Even in the band’s first decade, it was clear that other musicians were paying close attention to their sound. In Indianapolis in the early 1970s, Funk Inc. early Kool & the Gang albums. Funk Inc. interpolated “Kools Back Again” into his own “Kool Is Back”, which was memorably sampled many times.
“They threw a good sack,” Steve Weakley, the guitarist for Funk Inc., said in an interview. “They had a single note in the melodies.”
For most of the band’s early days, Kool & the Gang didn’t have a bona fide vocalist, and for a while it didn’t matter. At the request of a record executive to make their own version of Manu Dibango’s hit “Soul Makossa”, Kool & the Gang conceived “Jungle Boogie”, “Funky Stuff” and “Hollywood Swinging” during a one-day marathon rehearsal session in New York. York for their album “Wild and Peaceful”.
“These guys could make hit records without singers,” says Pete Rock, the DJ and producer whose Jamaican family in the Bronx owned all of Kool & the Gang’s singles and albums. “Funky as hell – that’s the only way to describe that rhythm section.”
Rock said that once the Bronx’s pioneering hip-hop DJ Kool Herc popularized the isolation of breakbeats from other artists’ records, Kool & the Gang became essential: “Everyone was on a James Brown kick in hip-hop, but certain producers listened.” to other music from other groups.”
By the late ’70s, Kool & the Gang had survived long enough to realize they could be even bigger if they found their elusive frontman. Dick Griffey, a concert promoter, was the first to suggest the idea, and the group hired James “JT” Taylor.
One small detail at the end of “Ladies Night” proved crucial — Meekaaeel Muhammad, a member of the group’s songwriting team, fleshed out the chorus with a counter-melodic “Come on, let’s celebrate.” It pointed to the band’s next hit: ‘Celebration’, based on an idea by Ronald Khalis Bell. “The track had such a down-home feel, almost like being somewhere in Alabama, with Grandma on the porch with some lemonade. A rocking chair feel,” Bell said. “One of the guys came up with that ‘yahoo!'”
“Celebration” is one of the most recognizable songs in pop music, on best-of playlists for weddings and sporting events – it was even played on the International Space Station. The song started a commercially rich period in the ’80s (“Get Down On It”, “Cherish”, “Fresh”), but after so many years of funky polyrhythms, disco and pop became “a bit boring, if you know what I mean.” I mean,” Brown said. “You’ll get in eventually, but it wasn’t like playing jazz or funk. You can stretch those two genres.”
The hits largely dried up in 1989, and the group continued to record albums and tour internationally in the 1990s and 2000s, replacing the original members with younger performers. In 2011, David Lee Roth saw Kool & the Gang perform at Glastonbury and invited the band to open for Van Halen on his tour the following year. The group’s tracks have been streamed 2.8 billion times worldwide to date, according to the tracking service Luminate.
But the last few years have been difficult. Ronald Khalis Bell and saxophonist Dennis “Dee Tee” Thomas, deceased; Robert Bell lost his wife and another brother. When the pandemic hit, the remaining members of the group had to cut their tour schedule. As he discussed this period, Bell’s smile weakened and he became contemplative. “A lot of memories,” he says. “But we’ll keep going.”
Brown said a new album is planned for October, and the band is back on the road.
Perhaps it will eventually make it to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as well. Bell smiled wryly. “Yeah, well,” he said. “Maybe next year.”