{"id":867,"date":"2018-04-29T21:31:03","date_gmt":"2018-04-30T01:31:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/?p=867"},"modified":"2018-04-29T21:31:03","modified_gmt":"2018-04-30T01:31:03","slug":"a-collectively-creative-effort-kool-the-gang-still-celebrating-good-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/a-collectively-creative-effort-kool-the-gang-still-celebrating-good-times\/","title":{"rendered":"A collectively creative effort: Kool & the Gang still celebrating good times"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Kool<\/a>

Kool & the Gang<\/p><\/div>\n

Ronald Bell was sitting at the piano one day when his brother Robert \u201cKool\u201d Bell walked in.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou got anything for me?\u201d said Ronald Bell.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I got two things for you,\u201d said Robert Bell. \u201cHanging out. And ladies night.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of people hang out,\u201d said Robert. \u201cBut Ladies Night, man there\u2019s one of those everywhere in the world. That\u2019s gotta be a hit.\u201d<\/p>\n

The brothers and other founding members of Kool & the Gang had experienced some success with the group\u2019s fourth studio album, \u201cWild and Peaceful,\u201d in 1973. The album produced the band\u2019s first three Top 10 singles – \u201cJungle Boogie,\u201d which got to No. 2 on the Billboard R&B chart and No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles charts; \u201cFunky Stuff,\u201d which made it to No. 5 on the R&B chart and No. 29 on the singles chart; and \u201cHollywood Swinging,\u201d which topped the Billboard Soul Singles chart and reached No. 6 on the pop chart. The album itself would go to No. 6 on the R&B chart and No. 33 on the Billboard 200 albums chart.<\/p>\n

But from 1974 through 1978, Kool & the Gang hadn\u2019t been able to really capitalize on that success, and the band\u2019s label, De-Lite Records, was looking for more hits from the group.<\/p>\n

\u201cInitially there was pressure to make a hit. But what is a hit? We had no clue. Not really. We understood we had to make a commercial record. We were familiar with the whole commercial part of it. But we were in it now, so let\u2019s make something happen,\u201d said Ronald Bell.<\/p>\n

It would take a reality check, though, to help the band back on the road to the top of the charts. That happened at an in-store promotion in Jersey City in the late 1970s. Only one person showed up to the store to see Kool & the Gang and she was less than impressed. She referred to the band as \u201cold hat.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOld hat? Oh, no, no,\u201d said Bell. \u201cI took that so personally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some changes needed to be made. Kool & the Gang had started as an instrumental-driven jazz and funk band that featured a lot of street hollering and chants, but hadn\u2019t to that point in the late 1970s featured a dominant lead singer.<\/p>\n

The band needed a lead singer along the lines of Lionel Richie of the Commodores or Maurice White of Earth, Wind and Fire. So they hired James \u201cJ.T.\u201d Taylor to handle the lead vocals and went to work on trying to write hit singles.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were in pursuance of doing something really great. We didn\u2019t have a lead singer, we were doing some experimentation at the time and disco was alive,\u201d said Bell. \u201cWe had to come up with something that worked.\u201d<\/p>\n

So when Robert \u201cKool\u201d Bell mentioned the phrase \u201cLadies Night\u201d to Ronald Bell that day, something clicked for the songwriters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all made the connection, and we went in hard and came up with the song \u2018Ladies Night.\u2019 That was a peak moment, that album with a new lead singer,\u201d said Robert Bell.<\/p>\n

The \u201cLadies Night\u201d album was released in September 1979 and featured two Billboard Top 10 hits: the title track made it to No. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart and No. 8 on the Hot 100 singles chart; and \u201cToo Hot,\u201d written by George Brown and Kool & the Gang, made it to No. 3 on the R&B chart and No. 5 on the singles chart. The album itself was No. 1 on R&B chart and No. 13 on the Billboard 200 albums chart.<\/p>\n

And the single \u201cLadies Night\u201d would lead to the band\u2019s next hit, which would become its signature song.<\/p>\n

In \u201cLadies Night,\u201d the female background vocalists can be heard singing, \u201cCome on, let\u2019s all celebrate.\u201d And the pressure was even more intense from the record company for the group to follow up \u201cLadies Night\u201d with another hit single.<\/p>\n

Ronald Bell had been reading scripture about humans being created and the angels celebrating the creator for doing so. And he still had the line \u201cCome on, let\u2019s all celebrate\u201d from \u201cLadies Night\u201d fresh in his head.<\/p>\n

Those two ideas combined to create \u201cCelebration,\u201d which would be the lead single from the band\u2019s next album, \u201cCelebrate!\u201d released in September 1980. It ran up the charts to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart, the Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart, U.S. Cash Box chart and the U.S. Record World chart.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t care where we are in the world, people respond to that song,\u201d said Bell. \u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful thing to see that, where everybody is just dancing and celebrating to that song. We can\u2019t play a song after that one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bell said that with both \u201cLadies Night\u201d and \u201cCelebration,\u201d he had a sense that both songs would be good for Kool & the Gang.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was one of those (a ladies night) everywhere, so why wouldn\u2019t that be a hit?\u201d he said. \u201cPlus, ladies buy records like that. Guys don\u2019t go in hard on those kind of records. This was a tribute to ladies and I thought, this is definitely gonna work.And then \u2018Celebration\u2019 came from the thought of \u2018Ladies Night.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

For many of the Kool & the Gang songs, the Bell brothers and the other members of the band shared writing credits, something that Ronald Bell said the band had collectively decided from its inception.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe decided to share our writing with each other. I was the primary writer. I was focused primarily on making hit records,\u201d said Bell. \u201cWe did that and still do that. You might see my name on a lot of the hits, but you see Kool & the Gang also. We shared that with each so that when we got this old, that we would be all taken care of in some kind of way. And we continue that kind of mindset to this very day. There are no regrets with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bell added that sharing spirit has been the critical element of the group\u2019s success.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a collective creative effort – collective with a K – that was the genius of the band the Kool & the Gang,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ronald Bell was sitting at the piano one day when his brother Robert \u201cKool\u201d Bell walked in. \u201cYou got anything for me?\u201d said Ronald Bell. \u201cYeah, I got two things for you,\u201d said Robert Bell. \u201cHanging out. And ladies night.\u201d \u201cA lot of people hang out,\u201d said Robert. \u201cBut Ladies Night, man there\u2019s one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,145,220,225],"class_list":["post-867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tvdbook","tag-celebration","tag-ladies-night","tag-kool-the-gang","tag-robert-kool-bell","tag-ronald-bell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=867"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1382,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/867\/revisions\/1382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinyldialogues.com\/VinylDialoguesBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}