Introduction

The Isley Brothers Are America’s Most Tenured Rock and Roll Group: Deal with it.

All you are ever told in this country about being Black is that it is a terrible, terrible thing to be. Now, in order to survive this, you have to really dig down into yourself and recreate yourself, really, according to no image which yet exists in America. You have to decide who you are, and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you. —Interview with Studs Terkel from “Conversations with James Baldwin” (1989)¹

I try to play my music, they say “The music’s too loud”/ I try talking about it, I got the big runaround/ And when I rolled with the punches, I got knocked to the ground/ By all this BULLSHIT goin’ down … —from “Fight the Power,” The Isley Brothers (1975)²

The following statement is made with full expectation of derision and backlash in pop culture’s Kangaroo Court of Entrenched Sociological Retrograde. Any offense taken does nothing whatsoever to mitigate from amply evident truth: to wit, The Isley Brothers are, indisputably, America’s longest-tenured, most venerable, active rock and roll group. Not R&B, nor funk, nor soul group. Rock and roll group.

This is not hyperbole. This is not opinion. This is an uncontestable fact. Let it be said again. Loudly. For the haters, the cynics, the hard-headed, the tone deaf, and so all the folks in the back and up in the cheap seats can hear: The Isley Brothers are, indisputably, America’s longest-tenured, most venerable, active ROCK AND ROLL GROUP. Not R&B, nor funk, nor soul group. Again: ROCK AND ROLL GROUP.

Deal with it.

Music and culture do not manifest in a societal vacuum, no matter how angrily we demand it to be so. That fiction leads down a road of misguided denial of the creators’ experiences, the audiences they touch, and the gravitas of their work. This book, about music, is equally about culture, society, politics, and race, and how these factors shape the music and how it is received (or not). All things being subjective, one person’s Nat King Cole is another’s William Hung, but the context in which such ideas are formulated and how they are framed weigh just as heavily as their gist.

One crucial root cause of disconnect stems from hardwired biases ingrained in the national psyche, most acutely evinced when navigating the fault lines of race and culture. These schisms are intensified when businesses and media inform themselves, disseminate, and exploit these biases without scrutiny, even in the face of empirical evidence. Innumerable truths are strangled from decades of indoctrination, unilateral propagandizing, reductive classifications, and calculated obliviousness, making any coherent discourse among disparate groups impossible.

This book attempts to open such a discourse about the Isleys’ venerable work, their history, and contributions to the culture, underscoring how the industry and social bias effectively minimize Black groups like The Isley Brothers. There’s a historic vacuum in open dialogue, analysis, and evaluation of these acts in the pop canon, made keenly plain given the Isleys’ transgenerational influence and evergreen success. As one of the most successful artists (Black or otherwise) in history, they are a case study on how race and culture inform how music is absorbed into the American consciousness.

The Isleys by the Numbers

For all the folks who demand receipts, these are a few of the benchmarks from the Isleys’ portfolio: their first official recording, “Angels Cried” on Teenage Records, was released in 1957—a year after rock and roll’s 1956 explosion, where Elvis Presley exposed this underground world of Black music, once classified “rhythm and blues,” to the masses. The Isleys shuffled around a deluge of indie labels (Teenage, Gone, End, Wand, etc.) before scoring the million-selling “Shout” on RCA in 1959, making them legitimate stars alongside legions of pioneers like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, LaVern Baker, and Fats Domino.

The Isleys had million-sellers in 1961 with “Twist and Shout,” and in 1966 with “This Old Heart of Mine.” They launched Jimi Hendrix to stardom. Their songs have been covered by icons like The Beatles, The Doobie Brothers, The Yardbirds, Whitney Houston, and Robert Palmer. Their anthem, “It’s Your Thing,” won a Grammy in 1970. Alongside original hits like “Freedom,” “Lay Away,” and “Work to Do,” they boast rich reinterpretations of rock standards, like “It’s Too Late,” “Lay, Lady, Lay,” “Fire and Rain,” even scoring a Top Ten hit with Steven Stills’ “Love the One You’re With.”

In the 1970s, the Isleys had ten successive gold, platinum, or double platinum albums: Givin’ It Back; Brother, Brother, Brother; 3+3; Live It Up; The Heat Is On; Harvest for the World; Go for Your Guns; Showdown; Go All the Way; and Grand Slam. They were inducted by Little Richard into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992. The Isleys have releases on all three major labels (Warner, Sony, and Universal), have charted hits in eight decades and Top 40 million-sellers in at least six. No other artist in history, Black, White, Purple, Plaid, or Polka Dot, can make that claim. In 2014, they won a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Neil Strauss of the New York Times observed, “In the mercurial world of pop music, surviving while remaining relevant can be a form of genius. This makes The Isley Brothers … as close to genius as any other pop act.”³

The group sold over 18,000,000 albums in the United States alone, with ten original albums shipping over one million units each. Their prime platinum run came at the Isleys’ apex of rock-driven albums, starting with 1971’s Givin’ It Back and peaking with 1978’s Showdown, with over 7,060,000 units sold, all aligned with the rise of the AOR format. During this period (not counting live or greatest hits albums), the Isleys kept pace with or outsold The Beach Boys (6,701,260), Heart (6,624,440), John Lennon (6,427,000), Yes (6,175,107), George Harrison (5,960,000), Steely Dan (5,930,000), Deep Purple (5,908,000), Creedence Clearwater Revival (5,740,000), Eric Clapton (5,520,614), Van Morrison (5,401,000), Bachman Turner Overdrive (5,400,000), Emerson Lake & Palmer (5,263,480), Grateful Dead (5,100,000), Supertramp (4,657,000), Three Dog Night (4,604,980), The Moody Blues (4,200,000), Paul Simon (3,609,090), REO Speedwagon (3,500,000), Allman Brothers (3,047,680), Cheap Trick (2,249,840), Thin Lizzy (2,100,000), David Bowie (2,072,384), and many others.⁴

All this without the benefit of regular rotation at dedicated album-oriented rock radio, nor exposure in rock media outlets of the day, nor promoters who would present the band to so-called “core” rock audiences. Also, without urban/Black radio and media embracing the Isleys’ rock pedigree, cherry-picking tracks suited for mainstream Black audiences and reflexively classifying their work as “funk” or “soul.”

Ernie Isley, the band’s guitarist, said, “They may not put us on some magazine cover, but people know our significance. The Beatles know. Jimi Hendrix knows. Berry Gordy knows. Todd Rundgren knows. Bob Dylan knows. The Doobie Brothers know. Biggie Smalls knows. Anybody who takes the time to examine our career will say, ‘Obviously, these guys are the genuine article.’”

Tenth Circle of Hell: “Black Famous”

There’s a buzzword which doggedly surfaces in many “general market” (i.e., White) circles regarding the Isleys: “underrated.” Howard Kramer, former curatorial director for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum: “The Isley Brothers are shockingly underappreciated … their records are every bit as good [as the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin]. ”⁶ NPR TV critic Eric Deggans: “Ernie Isley should be right up there with Jimi Hendrix. But because [his] guitar solos were powering songs that were popular with Black people, White people never got hip to him.”⁷ James Porter, Chicago Reader: “One side of the Isley Brothers’ career … consistently gets swept under the rug: their status as a hard-rock band. In the 1970s, the Isley Brothers made heavy metal you could dance to.”⁸ Jeff Terich, Treble Media: “There’s a lot to hear in the Isleys’ catalog, much of it familiar, some of it vastly underrated, but all of it worthy of resdiscovery.”⁹

It seems inconceivable to have such a distinguished 67-year career and yet still be considered “underrated.” In reality, most of rock’s White stewards denied the Isleys a fair and equal hearing compared to their White peers. The penchant to dismiss Black performers from rock dissuaded incalculable fans from engaging the group at their peak. Overwhelmingly, Black pop fans kept the Isleys in the public discourse, but without the major payoff of “rock crossover” status. It’s only now, via the internet, that listeners of all races and ages are catching up with the Isleys’ music decades later. “Their story is much more the story of the segregation of music,” Deggans said. “There’s this long legacy of really amazing Black rock [musicians] that are sort of unknown because White audiences don’t know them.”¹⁰

The Isleys’ one consolation is they have outlasted (if not outsold), virtually every White rock icon ever, and are still making relevant music. But this came at a cost of ostracization from lucrative scenes they helped foster, as well as forced reinvention to maximize their viability within so-called “traditional” Black genres with less economic and political bandwidth. The group (and many of their Black peers) need to be in the same conversations as The Beatles, The Stones, Led Zeppelin, and every significant White band of the classic rock era. But they are not, which begs the question: How does a Black rock artist who sells a million records have inherently less market value than a White rock artist who sells a million records? Who devises this nebulous standard of “White versus Black” aesthetics to which these systems and practices are forced to abide? And on what basis, given that self-admitted segregation allows neither side insight into genres/cultures outside of their chosen spheres?

The Isley Brothers epitomize dozens of Black rock artists—The Chambers Brothers, WAR, Shuggie Otis, Joan Armatrading, Labelle, Funkadelic, Billy Preston, Betty Davis, Mother’s Finest, Mandrill, and others—forced to navigate the hazardous straits of capitalism and the myth of American homogeneity that pulls over and pats down Black innovation so White appropriation can proceed unencumbered. There are thousands of White acts who didn’t sell half the records, have half the longevity, nor have half the influence as any of these Black artists, yet are more exalted within rock music.

3+3, The Album That Threatened to Change the Game

These biases posed near-insurmountable challenges for the Isleys. Summarily, one of most essential rock catalogs never got the spotlight it deserved—including the masterpiece that made the group an institution. The run-up to 1973 had afforded the Isleys a respectable, if not always consistent, fifteen-year career: a Grammy, four Top 40 hits, and twenty-one songs in the Billboard Top 100. But they lacked the watershed moment that would firmly ensconce them in the rock firmament. Then in July, the floodgates finally burst open: heralded by the classic “That Lady,” The Isley Brothers 3+3 firmly established the group among elite circles. It was the first of eight successive platinum albums; their career and legend thereafter solidified (Billboard Black albums #2; Billboard pop albums #8, two million copies sold, and twenty weeks on the charts).11 It was a rare record by a Black act that hit urban, rock, and pop crowds equally, despite the chasm between Black and White formats and audiences. Even some AOR stations put it in rotation.

But the rock establishment threw every disqualifier at the Isleys, barely couched as “race-neutral” critique, oblivious to the paradox of White artists with sonically comparable work (Elton John, Leon Russell, Bachman-Turner-Overdrive, Hall & Oates, Credence Clearwater Revival, Bob Seger, Chicago, et al.). Eric Weisbard, critic, educator, and organizer of EMP Pop Conference, notes in his book Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams of American Music:

The Isleys are still here, albeit through several incarnations and a fan base light-years removed from their rock heyday. Nearly all the White icons they influenced, and then were eclipsed by, are not. Even rock as a genre doesn’t have the same social currency it had when “the powers that be” fought so ferociously to exclude them. “The way the business is,” Ernie Isley said, “there’s one microphone and everybody wants to get to the controls. Whoever gets there has the right to say whatever they wanna say. The Isley Brothers—our music and our career—are in the fine print, the details of whatever it is rock ‘n roll is about. It’s up to others to bring all of it to light.”¹³

That is what this book is about, bringing all of those details to light. The Isley Brothers are, indisputably, America’s longest-tenured, most venerable, active rock and roll group. Not R&B group. Not funk group. Not soul group. Rock and roll group. And we really need to deal with this … Some way more than others …

Notes

1. Terkel, Studs. “An Interview with James Baldwin.” Conversations with James Baldwin, edited by Fred L. Standley and Louis H. Platt (University Press of Mississippi, 1989), pp. 5–6.
2. Isley, Rudolph, Isley, O’Kelly, Isley, Ronald, Isley, Ernie, Isley, Marvin, and Jasper, Chris. “Fight the Power” (Bovina Music Publishing, 1975).
3. Strauss, Neil. MUSIC REVIEW: “Pop Veterans: Still Giving, Still Taking,” New York Times, July 26, 1996, Section C, p. 16 (nytimes.com).
4. Isley Brothers, bestsellingalbums.org.
5. McNeill, Darrell. Ernie Isley Interview Notes for BRE Magazine, 1999.
6. Hevesi, Dennis. “Marvin Isley, 56, Bassist in Isley Brothers,” New York Times, June 8, 2010, Section B, p. 15 (nytimes.com).
7. Darling, Cary. “Why Aren’t The Isley Brothers Worshipped as the Rock Gods They Are?” The Houston Chronicle, January 11, 2022 (houstonchronicle.com).
8. Porter, James. “Why Haven’t The Isley Brothers Conquered the Rock Market?” Chicago Reader, July 16, 2019 (chicagoreader.com).
9. Terich, Jeff. “A Beginner’s Guide to the Funk-Soul of The Isley Brothers,” Treble Media, February 11, 2022.
10. Darling. The Houston Chronicle, January 11, 2022.
11. Billboard Top 100 (billboard.com).
12. Weisbard, Eric. Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams of American Music (The University of Chicago Press, 2014), pp. 219–20.
13. McNeill, Darrell. Ernie Isley Interview Notes for BRE Magazine, 1999.