Darrell M. McNeil interrogates the factors that led an influential musical group to be excluded from a category they very much belonged in, for seven decades and counting.
Great article. I was lucky enough to see the Isleys when they played Portland's Crystal Ballroom in the early 2000s. Ronnie mentioned the last time they'd played there, he'd had a showboating young guitarist named Jimi Hendrix playing with him. "We fired his ass for stealing the show," Ronnie added.
The Crystal was one of the few Portland venues open to Black performances. Most of Portland's current residents have no idea that it was the most segregated city west of the Mississippi until the late 1960s. During the 1962 Columbus Day storm, the Albina neighborhood was devastated by ferocious winds, but unlike the rest of the city it was weeks before the power company got around to restoring service. I thought about that during the show, when my wife and I were among the few white people there. That was a rarity in downtown Portland for sure. Thanks for the great article.
Oregon had onerous laws from the start. Their loss. The families came up to Washington territory. George Washington Bush brought a group up in 1844 and settled where a century earlier seafaring Hawaiians had married into the Nisqually nation. It’s the state capitol region now. Here’s his story:
There were few Blacks in Portland until 1942, when the Kaiser Shipyards needed workers. They created a whole town in between Portland and Vancouver called Vanport. It had movie theaters, barbershops, and schools. When the war was over, many Blacks wanted to stay but wanted to move out of what was basically a shantytown. In 1948, the successive failures of the levies that walled Vanport off from the rivers failed, flooding the town and de-housing the remaining residents.
Many of Black Portlanders used their savings and bought houses in NE and N Portland, an area ironically named after one of the streets (Albina). Probably better than Killingsworth, which was another street name under consideration.
I lived in that neighborhood in the early 90s, when it was affordable because most of the residents were poor and Black. In those days, you seldom saw a person of color in downtown or NW unless they were behind a bus steering wheel, a counter, or a broom. When Portland began its ruthless gentrification, Albina was gentrified and most of the poor residents were forced out (along with their businesses and neighborhood associations).
Oregon had racist laws enshrined into its constitution, most of which were truncated in the late 60s. There was a public vote to remove them entirely in the early 2000s, which passed. I think it was an effort to sanitize the Jim Crow past.
Thanks for your important book. While the Isleys have more than earned their place of “royalty,“ I fear their story—like so many race related stories of inequality—often gets relegated to the “tiresome’ category. Your book invigorates the rich and relevant Isley story and challenges us to keep looking at the facts.
Thank you for this! I'm in my late 40s and would listen to my parents' LPs as a child. I was fascinated by their sound as well as their look on the covers.
As a white kid from New York uprooted to the South in 1965 at the age of 14, I immediately became enamored with Motown/ Funk/ Soul music. I was fortunate enough to see James Brown and the Famous Flames at Chattanooga’s Memorial Auditorium in 1967! This article is spot on. One only need listen to Wilson Picket’s cover of the Beatles Hey Jude, with Duane Allman delivering one of the greatest guitar licks of all time, to agree with the Author’s premise. Number one guitar lick of all time : That Lady! In my opinion anyway. Thanks for posting !!
It's your thing, do what you wanna do. The sound and the words were foreign to me as a young white boy about to become a man. However, the music was so inviting that it still is relevant today. I loved their music then and love it more now. I often find relevance in the words of songs that most likely were not the same message they were writing about. I grew up in a middle class family in the suburbs but their music touched me and allowed me to experience something new by listening to the music. I may not have understood but I became a more well rounded person because of their music.
Thank you for sharing important eye-opening music/history and illuminating the Isleys -- great job! I look forward to reading your book, and I will ask our public library to be sure to order copy/ies. Thank you!
This is an important contribution to your community.
I tend to forget that my library has a set up to request/recommend books. It’s another way we can support writers even if we can’t buy everything that we want for ourselves. Thanks for the reminder and setting a great example.
As a 70+, WASP, male living in Southern Ontario (Canada) they were part of our daily music diet in the 60’s from Detroit radio stations. Listening to Stevie, The Supremes, Marvin, et.al on my transistor radio under the covers at night was a musical education.
That translated in the 70’s to Mandrill, Tower of Power, War, Miles, Alice Coltrane and a host of others. Make no mistake there was still a ton of white artists (really … can you have too much Joni or Elton 😎?) and I still have all those albums today.
So a great article, thank you!
PS - There is a great documentary on CBC titled “Paid In Full:The Battle For Black Music that is a great watch.
I grew up in the south and through college, working at various nightspots in Mobile, Montgomery, Birmingham, Atlanta, and after college in Tampa/St. Pete and Savannah.
For all of that time, the rigid categories of radio genres were regularly ignored in the club. In fact, it was a requirement. With only one exception at a club in Mobile, where a racist manager absolutely forbade me from playing "that black music", I focused on building energy on the dance floor with all kinds of music and sufficient churn/turnover to ensure that the bartenders were kept busy.
We never really cared as long as the Peavey amps were pushing the beat through the biggest JBLs we had. To this day, any time I put on the Isley Brothers, I think of those club days with fondness. Oh, and extra kudos for including Mother's Finest - absolutely one of the most kick-ass acts of my so-called wasted youth!
I started high school in 1964, but listened to the Top 30 much earlier. In my small, white midwestern community our local AM station played pretty much white rock and pop. But there were exceptions. In those high school years my favorites included the Big Bopper (I had much older sisters), Fats Domino, Chubby Checker, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Little Peggy March, Martha and the Vandellas, even Johnny Mathis and Nat King Cole. I went to live concerts featuring James Brown and Jimi Hendrix (not together) and the Dick Clark Cavalcade of Stars shows that featured Black girl groups. Later there were the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, the Jackson Five, Ray Charles, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Aretha Franklin, and on and on up through disco queens such as Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor.
It made me sad to hear that these fabulous musicians had to struggle so much more for their art but my adolescence would not have been the same without it.
Wonderful article! So many untold stories about great musicians and their struggles. One of the most recent documentaries I have discovered, is Rick James and his early career detour in Canada!
Support for this article crowds the mind. We have twin grandkids whose dad is African-American and who look more like him than their mother, who had a social studies unit on rock n roll that never
Mentioned a black artist. That was more ignorance on their young teacher’s part than bigotry, I believe, but her ignorance derived from the bigotry toward black muslins that you document. Thanks!
It’s a side note, but I sure loved taking in the fashion details of the photo you used. Those pirate boots are hot! And all the different hats, fits and fabrics of the pants, etc. It was a great era for men to express themselves in new ways.
I can’t wait until the Met Gala next year.
It’s my opinion that Black musicians had a lot to do with the survival of bespoke tailoring (NOT talking about boxy Wall Street uniforms or gross Trumpster dumpsters) during the scruffier hippy years. Some of the suited groups really were fantastically elegant. It’s all about the fit.
And now ‘That Lady’ is today’s earworm…
Thanks Mr McNeill! That was a refreshing stroll down history lane.
I’d be interested in your thoughts about East coast vs West coast inclusion. With Jimi Hendrix, and other giants as hometown guys, the on-air music in Seattle seemed to be more integrated than some other older more fossilized scenes back East. I was just a kid absorbing public media, but I knew all those bands. The big FM station was so hip.
Great article. I was lucky enough to see the Isleys when they played Portland's Crystal Ballroom in the early 2000s. Ronnie mentioned the last time they'd played there, he'd had a showboating young guitarist named Jimi Hendrix playing with him. "We fired his ass for stealing the show," Ronnie added.
The Crystal was one of the few Portland venues open to Black performances. Most of Portland's current residents have no idea that it was the most segregated city west of the Mississippi until the late 1960s. During the 1962 Columbus Day storm, the Albina neighborhood was devastated by ferocious winds, but unlike the rest of the city it was weeks before the power company got around to restoring service. I thought about that during the show, when my wife and I were among the few white people there. That was a rarity in downtown Portland for sure. Thanks for the great article.
Oh, wow. I just watched the documentary about Hendrix's Electric Lady Studios. (My husband was the chief audio tech there in the 90s.)
Would he ever consider doing a piece for Oldster??? I’d sure love that!
Oregon had onerous laws from the start. Their loss. The families came up to Washington territory. George Washington Bush brought a group up in 1844 and settled where a century earlier seafaring Hawaiians had married into the Nisqually nation. It’s the state capitol region now. Here’s his story:
https://allthatsinteresting.com/george-washington-bush
There were few Blacks in Portland until 1942, when the Kaiser Shipyards needed workers. They created a whole town in between Portland and Vancouver called Vanport. It had movie theaters, barbershops, and schools. When the war was over, many Blacks wanted to stay but wanted to move out of what was basically a shantytown. In 1948, the successive failures of the levies that walled Vanport off from the rivers failed, flooding the town and de-housing the remaining residents.
https://www.oregonhistoryproject.org/articles/essays/the-vanport-flood/
https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1178&context=oscdl_cityclub
Many of Black Portlanders used their savings and bought houses in NE and N Portland, an area ironically named after one of the streets (Albina). Probably better than Killingsworth, which was another street name under consideration.
I lived in that neighborhood in the early 90s, when it was affordable because most of the residents were poor and Black. In those days, you seldom saw a person of color in downtown or NW unless they were behind a bus steering wheel, a counter, or a broom. When Portland began its ruthless gentrification, Albina was gentrified and most of the poor residents were forced out (along with their businesses and neighborhood associations).
Oregon had racist laws enshrined into its constitution, most of which were truncated in the late 60s. There was a public vote to remove them entirely in the early 2000s, which passed. I think it was an effort to sanitize the Jim Crow past.
Thanks for your important book. While the Isleys have more than earned their place of “royalty,“ I fear their story—like so many race related stories of inequality—often gets relegated to the “tiresome’ category. Your book invigorates the rich and relevant Isley story and challenges us to keep looking at the facts.
“ruthless gentrification” has ruined my life here in Seattle too.
Oh how I love Portland though. It’s truly a sister city my entire life. Went to the Waterfront Blues Fest every year in the 00s.
3+3 is such a remarkable record. Ernie is still one of the the most overlooked and underrated guitarists out there.
The Isley Brothers are one of those groups who you can instantly hear just reading their name in print. Ron Isley is an icon! Thanks for this.
Excellent and important article!
Well researched and written. Thanks for sharing.
I love that you published this outside of black history month. Stories like this are important daily conversations.
I always loved the Isley Brothers' music but never knew much about them. Thank you for this piece!!
Thank you for this! I'm in my late 40s and would listen to my parents' LPs as a child. I was fascinated by their sound as well as their look on the covers.
Nice to see you here, Maurice. Thanks for sharing.
You're welcome, šari. I'm always here. I should comment more lol
Good to know! <3
As a white kid from New York uprooted to the South in 1965 at the age of 14, I immediately became enamored with Motown/ Funk/ Soul music. I was fortunate enough to see James Brown and the Famous Flames at Chattanooga’s Memorial Auditorium in 1967! This article is spot on. One only need listen to Wilson Picket’s cover of the Beatles Hey Jude, with Duane Allman delivering one of the greatest guitar licks of all time, to agree with the Author’s premise. Number one guitar lick of all time : That Lady! In my opinion anyway. Thanks for posting !!
It's your thing, do what you wanna do. The sound and the words were foreign to me as a young white boy about to become a man. However, the music was so inviting that it still is relevant today. I loved their music then and love it more now. I often find relevance in the words of songs that most likely were not the same message they were writing about. I grew up in a middle class family in the suburbs but their music touched me and allowed me to experience something new by listening to the music. I may not have understood but I became a more well rounded person because of their music.
Thank you for sharing important eye-opening music/history and illuminating the Isleys -- great job! I look forward to reading your book, and I will ask our public library to be sure to order copy/ies. Thank you!
This is an important contribution to your community.
I tend to forget that my library has a set up to request/recommend books. It’s another way we can support writers even if we can’t buy everything that we want for ourselves. Thanks for the reminder and setting a great example.
Loved the Isley Brothers.
As a 70+, WASP, male living in Southern Ontario (Canada) they were part of our daily music diet in the 60’s from Detroit radio stations. Listening to Stevie, The Supremes, Marvin, et.al on my transistor radio under the covers at night was a musical education.
That translated in the 70’s to Mandrill, Tower of Power, War, Miles, Alice Coltrane and a host of others. Make no mistake there was still a ton of white artists (really … can you have too much Joni or Elton 😎?) and I still have all those albums today.
So a great article, thank you!
PS - There is a great documentary on CBC titled “Paid In Full:The Battle For Black Music that is a great watch.
What a great article! So perfectly articulated.
I grew up in the south and through college, working at various nightspots in Mobile, Montgomery, Birmingham, Atlanta, and after college in Tampa/St. Pete and Savannah.
For all of that time, the rigid categories of radio genres were regularly ignored in the club. In fact, it was a requirement. With only one exception at a club in Mobile, where a racist manager absolutely forbade me from playing "that black music", I focused on building energy on the dance floor with all kinds of music and sufficient churn/turnover to ensure that the bartenders were kept busy.
We never really cared as long as the Peavey amps were pushing the beat through the biggest JBLs we had. To this day, any time I put on the Isley Brothers, I think of those club days with fondness. Oh, and extra kudos for including Mother's Finest - absolutely one of the most kick-ass acts of my so-called wasted youth!
I started high school in 1964, but listened to the Top 30 much earlier. In my small, white midwestern community our local AM station played pretty much white rock and pop. But there were exceptions. In those high school years my favorites included the Big Bopper (I had much older sisters), Fats Domino, Chubby Checker, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Little Peggy March, Martha and the Vandellas, even Johnny Mathis and Nat King Cole. I went to live concerts featuring James Brown and Jimi Hendrix (not together) and the Dick Clark Cavalcade of Stars shows that featured Black girl groups. Later there were the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, the Jackson Five, Ray Charles, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Aretha Franklin, and on and on up through disco queens such as Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor.
It made me sad to hear that these fabulous musicians had to struggle so much more for their art but my adolescence would not have been the same without it.
Wonderful article! So many untold stories about great musicians and their struggles. One of the most recent documentaries I have discovered, is Rick James and his early career detour in Canada!
Thank you for this! Super interesting!
Support for this article crowds the mind. We have twin grandkids whose dad is African-American and who look more like him than their mother, who had a social studies unit on rock n roll that never
Mentioned a black artist. That was more ignorance on their young teacher’s part than bigotry, I believe, but her ignorance derived from the bigotry toward black muslins that you document. Thanks!
Toward black MUSICIANS! (I hate autocorrect!)
It’s a side note, but I sure loved taking in the fashion details of the photo you used. Those pirate boots are hot! And all the different hats, fits and fabrics of the pants, etc. It was a great era for men to express themselves in new ways.
I can’t wait until the Met Gala next year.
It’s my opinion that Black musicians had a lot to do with the survival of bespoke tailoring (NOT talking about boxy Wall Street uniforms or gross Trumpster dumpsters) during the scruffier hippy years. Some of the suited groups really were fantastically elegant. It’s all about the fit.
And now ‘That Lady’ is today’s earworm…
Thanks Mr McNeill! That was a refreshing stroll down history lane.
I’d be interested in your thoughts about East coast vs West coast inclusion. With Jimi Hendrix, and other giants as hometown guys, the on-air music in Seattle seemed to be more integrated than some other older more fossilized scenes back East. I was just a kid absorbing public media, but I knew all those bands. The big FM station was so hip.
Thanks again!