REAL GONE
Amen, Brother
Cane-carrying family band singer Rudolph Isley left us on October 11.
Celebrate your lives: Rudolph ‘Rudy’ Isley
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THE LEGACY
The Album: 3 + 3 (Epic, 1973) The Sound: T-Neck albums Brother, Brother, Brother and Givin’ It Back were excellent shots at marrying R&B and rock, but they hit the bullseye on their all-killer debut as a funk-rock family band, reviving early highlight That Lady, conjuring definitive covers of Seals & Croft’s Summer Breeze and Stephen Stills’s Listen To The Music, and selfpenned evergreens The Highways Of My Life and Don’t Let Me Be Lonely Tonight.
POP MUSIC would sound very different if The Isley Brothers hadn’t happened, if only because of their significant impact upon The Beatles, Hendrix, Sly Stone and others, never mind their run of highcalibre hits for Motown in the ’60s and their own T-Neck imprint in the ’70s and ’80s.
When the fiercely exciting vocal trio of Ronald (Ronnie), Rudolph (Rudy) and O’Kelly (Kelly) Isley were joined by a rhythm section comprising younger brothers Ernie and Marvin and Rudy’s brother-in-law Chris Jasper – initially in the background, then officially part of the act from the superb 3 + 3 onwards – they became a formidable, boundarybreaking family unit, fusing R&B grooves with rock’s expansiveness, taking songs by Neil Young, Carole King, Seals & Croft and Todd Rundgren to new places while also crafting their own classics, including Work To Do, That Lady, Fight The Power and
“Rudolph was, said yQoungest brother Marvin, the strict disciplinarian.”
THE LEGACY
The Album:
3 + 3 (Epic, 1973) The Sound: T-Neck albums Brother, Brother, Brother and Givin’ It Back were excellent shots at
Harvest For The World, laying a track that has run right through pop’s history. No other act spanned doo wop, gospel, rock’n’roll, Motown, R&B, electro and hip-hop and had hits in each style.
Second-born brother Rudolph came into the world on April 1, 1939, in Cincinnati. Parents O’Kelly Snr and Sallye were college graduates who gave a complete musical education to their children. “They exposed us to everything, classical music, country, standards, show tunes,” recalled Ronnie to MOJO in 2001. Unfortunately, O’Kelly Snr passed away before his singing sons found fame, as he had curiously predicted he would. The older Isley boys became the providers and de facto daddies, and in 1959 the churchy blast of their fourth single Shout was successful enough to buy a new family home in Teaneck, New Jersey. Rudolph was, said youngest brother Marvin, the strict disciplinarian. Aged 19, Rudy