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Rudolph Isley, who started the band the Isley Brothers with his siblings in the 1950s, died at age 84 on Oct. 11, 2023. The son of a Cincinnati church organist and a vaudeville-performer dad who wanted his boys to sing as soft and smooth as the Mills Brothers, Isley instead joined his brothers to make grittier landmark R&B, soul and funk hits including “Shout,” “Twist and Shout,” and “It’s Your Thing.”
Famed for natty fur suits and jeweled canes, he and his sometimes quarrelsome band of brothers had 16 Top 40 hits, 13 gold records selling over 500,000 copies, and nine records that sold over a million.
“There are no words to express my feelings and the love I have for my brother. Our family will miss him. But I know he’s in a better place,” his brother and bandmate Ronald Isley said.
Rudolph Isley was still a teenager when their 1959 song “Shout,” which secularized the gospel style, propelled them to fame. At the dawn of rock’n’roll, it became an iconic tune, and was repopularized when it was featured in the famous toga-party scene in the 1978 film Animal House. It was also used in a 2023 Super Bowl ad.
Their 1962 hit “Twist and Shout” was even more influential. The Beatles chose it as the last song on their debut album and the first song in their epochal 1965 Shea Stadium concert. John Lennon felt that the Black artists sang it better. The tune hit the charts again in 1986, when Rodney Dangerfield sang it in the film Back to School, and Matthew Broderick more famously lip-synced the Beatles’ version in front of a crowd of 10,000 in the ecstatic, climactic parade scene of the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.
In the 1970s, after younger brothers Ernest and Marvin joined the group, they had even greater success with such singles as “That Lady” and “Fight the Power (Part 1)” and such albums as The Heat Is On and Go for Your Guns.
The Isleys’ impact on other musicians was immense. They gave Jimi Hendrix his start, and after he quit the Isleys he lived in their mom’s house for years. “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)” was covered by Rod Stewart, and their 1975 “Fight the Power” was sampled by Public Enemy in 1989. Their influence on hip-hop was arguably surpassed only by James Brown and George Clinton.
Like Little Richard, who hired Hendrix after the Isleys did, Rudolph Isley quit the music scene to become a Christian minister, in 1989. Yet he still performed secular music sometimes, and religious music, like his 1996 album Shouting for Jesus: A Loud Joyful Noise. He was there when Little Richard inducted the Isley Brothers into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. Rudolph Isley died with Elaine, his wife of 68 years, by his side.
Contributing: Associated Press
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