Kool and The Gang “Still Kool”
Though I never had an imaginary friend as a child, I’m half-haunted, half-comforted by certain memories of my youth that straddle the line between reality and fiction. In the late 1970s, did I really have that crazy Spiderman web shooting toy that I wore like a watch and that stuck to the ceiling with suction cups? In the early 80s, did Gary Coleman really star in a movie called “Jimmy the Kid” about being kidnapped at the very same time he shot a “very special episode” of “Diff'rent Strokes” about being kidnapped? And were both supposed to be comedies? And, when I was ten, did my college-aged cousin really take me and my younger brother to a movie called “Joysticks” that involved strip Pac Man? I mean -- I think all of these things happened. In the same way that I think Kool & the Gang really happened. But, also, I’m not totally sure.
Was Kool & the Gang real? Were they a dream? Did they really make “Celebration” or was that just a “traditional” party song that had existed for centuries? Maybe “Jungle Boogie” was actually by KC and The Sunshine Band? Was there an actual guy named “Kool”? Did his band really sell tens of millions of albums? Did the group have a lead singer? Were Kool & the Gang a band of real life musicians or were they a Saturday Morning cartoon produced for PBS by George Clinton and Bootsy Collins?
On the one hand, I of course knew the answers to those questions. But, on the other hand, I still wondered about Kool & the Gang. Where did they go? How could something so enduringly popular have just disappeared? I knew they supported Van Halen on a tour a decade ago. I knew -- though only from research -- that Ronald Bell (Khalis Bayyan) and Dennis “D.T.” Thomas died recently. I suspected that they still played nostalgia gigs every year. But I’ve not heard a new song from the band in nearly forty years. In fact, I can’t recall hearing them mentioned in any conversation between my thirteenth birthday (in 1987) and Barrack Obama’s inauguration. And — as Prince says — that’s a mighty long time.
Kool & the Gang weren’t one hit wonders. They weren’t flashes in the pan. They sold as many albums as Aretha. And KISS. Right after James Brown, they have been sampled more than any other artist. But they are not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And today they are mentioned like souvenir from the 1970s -- like bell bottoms and shag carpeting -- if they are even mentioned at all. How could something that massive and that musical stay so quiet for so long? Can something that big just disappear? And, if so, why?
There are many artists and bands who straightened out and lightened up as they got older. Phil Collins comes to mind. Early Genesis fans could not have imagined “Against All Odds” in the same way that fans of “Sussudio” could not have fathomed “You’ll Be in My Heart.” There’s a chasm between Cream’s “Tales of Brave Ulysses” and Clapton’s “Change the World.” I bet Marty Balin and Grace Slick never thought that the band they formed would one day change its name and record “We Built This City.” And yet, compared with Kool & the Gang, those paths seem almost linear.
Robert “Kool” Bell, his brother Ronald and their buddies from Jersey City formed Kool & The Gang in the mid-60s as an oversized Jazz combo. The Bell’s father was a professional boxer who eventually moved his family to the same building that Thelonious Monk lived in, which, in turn, crossed their paths with an undersized pugilist named Miles Davis. That early version of Kool & the Gang opened for McCoy Tyner, Pharaoh Sanders. By the time they released their debut album in 1969, however, they’d been almost fully taken by James Brown and Sly Stone. And while they never lost their jazzy instincts, they increasingly leaned into R&B and then, ultimately, fell deep into The Funk.
By the early 1970s, Kool & the Gang were bonafide hitmakers. Their Pop breakthroughs, first “Jungle Boogie” and then “Hollywood Swinging,” were just a little too funky and a little to early to be called Disco. But they were perched right on the cusp of that major, new crossover form. In spite of their origin as a Jazz band and the fact that they had no lead singer and that very few people could name a single member of the band, Kool & the Gang seemed on the verge of superstardom.
Amazingly, it didn’t happen. At least not then. Between 1976 and 1978, in the high days of mainstream Disco, Kool & the Gang were off the charts. Their Funk was too heavy. Their beats too jazzy. While The Bee Gees became the white faces of Disco, Kool & the Gang remained almost exclusively on the R&B charts. During this relatively brief regression, however, the band evidently took notes. Beginning in 1979, a revamped version of the band took hold of the Pop charts and would not let go for another half decade.
As the new decade approached, Kool & the Gang got lighter, higher and tighter. James “J.T.” Taylor was added as a full time lead singer, a first for the band. Additionally, they were teamed with Brazilian writer and producer Eumir Deodato, who nudged the bass back slightly and brought the hooks forward. Seemingly inspired by Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day” and “Just the Two of Us,” Kool & the Gang began crafting simpler, catchier, undeniable Pop songs. “Ladies Night” and “Too Hot” from 1979 paved the way for “Celebration,” their highest charting, most ubiquitous hit, from 1980. From there, the smash hits kept coming. There was “Joanna” in 1983 and “Fresh” in 1984. As the years passed, Taylor’s warm, sensitive vocals were increasingly showcased while the horns and edges were smoothed out. As you got deeper into their albums, the music was still varied -- Kool & the Gang was too eclectic to simply stand in place. But the one feature, above all others, that their hits had in common was their complete uncomplication. They were right down the middle. There was no subtext. No deeper meaning. “Celebration” was about celebrating. Period. “Ladies Night” was about how fun ladies night at the c\lub is. “Fresh” was about how fresh the singer’s girl is. These were Pop treats, meant to be consumed quickly and to make you smile, not think.
Their string of confections ended in 1985, however, with “Cherish.” It’s not that “Cherish” failed to chart. To the contrary. It reached number two on the Pop charts and topped the R&B charts. It was, in fact, their biggest single since 1981. But whereas their previous hits worked tirelessly to keep you on the hook and far away from thinking, this song dared to get deep. While it could have succeeded simply as a sentimental, if lightweight, piece of Pop, it detours into something far more grotesque. At the end of the first and second verse, before he implores us to cherish the love we have, J.T. wonders, for no apparent reason, what will happen if the love of his life dies in the middle of the night. He croons:
I often pray before I lay down by your side
If you receive your calling before I awake
Could I make it through the night
As an adolescent hearing the song in 1985, I was instantly struck by how morbid and existential those lines were. It wasn’t dangerous romance like “Leader of the Pack” or something gothic from Bauhaus or Joy Division. No, this was an irrational, deeply seeded fear cropping up on the radio and MTV. And it frightened me. And it was a long way from “Celebration.” And though Kool & the Gang would hang on and have a few more minor hits in 1986, “Cherish” was functionally the end of their road as Pop stars.
They tried to come back from their transgression. They released singles like “Victory,” and “Holiday.” But, as the 1980s became the 1990s, Kool & the Gang’s return to bubble-funk pushed them far outside of the zeitgeist that was getting into younger boy bands, New Jack Swing and, of course, Hip Hop. Between 1989 and 2006, they released just four albums of new material and one additional album wherein they re-recorded older songs with guest stars joining on lead vocals. In 1996 J.T. left the band. By 2007, in spite of their songs being sampled by everyone from Beastie Boys to Tribe Called Quest to N.W.A. to Wu Tang Clan, Kool & the Gang had seemingly disappeared.
It goes without saying that the band had not willfully vanished. Kool & the Gang remained relatively active in middle age, touring the world regularly and settling into elder statesmen status. They were in some respects, however, marginalized. After nearly two decades on De-Lite and then two albums on major label Mercury, the band found themselves label hopping. In the process, they became pigeonholed as a heritage age and, specifically, an R&B heritage act. Marketing, sales and promotion in the music industry were historically plagued by (not so) latent racism and ageism. There were (and still are to some extent) radio stations, stores and departments devoted to Black music, separate and apart from everything else. And while the resources devoted to Black music are considerable, they are somewhat separate nonetheless. The resources devoted to aging Black artists, however, are scant. “Adult R&B” is a radio format, but it is a lesser one in terms of audience. And so, to the extent that Kool & the Gang had become a venerable, Adult R&B artist in the 2000s, they were both separate, and lesser, in the industry pecking order. Add in the fact that music sales were plummeting in the new millennium and you can begin to imagine what the group’s commercial prospects were in 2007, the year they returned with “Still Kool.”
“Still Kool” was released on New Door Records, a subsidiary of Universal dedicated to aging artists who had either cultivated a reliable niche or who’d once been popular but had since lost their viability. The roster was filled mostly with Rock and Americana artists, from Styx, Peter Frampton and Paul Stanley solo to slightly younger, Roots artists like Nancy Griffith and Raul Malo. It’s an esteemed roster, to be sure. But it’s no place to launch a record. It’s a place to manage a catalog and protect the downside. It was also the home for Kool & the Gang’s twenty-third studio album.
It is not easy to listen to “Still Kool” today. It’s not available on streaming services and only partially available on Youtube. As a result, I had to track it down the old fashioned way -- used, on compact disc, on eBay. When the CD arrived days later, I unwrapped it from its flimsy, if tasteful, package. Given that I’d only heard a sliver of the band’s later music, I really had no idea what to expect. The album exuded “World Music” vibes, but I was expecting a fusion of Hip Hop, Contemporary R&B and who knows what. Online reviews of the album were practically non-existent and any interviews I could find seemed focused on the band’s tour dates with Steely Dan. Having done my time with legendary, but past prime, funksters like Rick James and Funkadelic, I knew that things could go very wrong very quickly. Plus, at sixteen songs and nearly an hour in length, I was slightly concerned that “Stay Kool” could be a heavy lift. I mostly trusted Kool & the Gang to keep it simple. But, then again, “simple” could also be “simply awful.”
Graciously, “Stay Kool” is almost the opposite of awful -- which is not to say that it is transcendent or some lost, late career masterpiece. It’s not. But it is frequently delightful and steadfastly avoids embarrassment. It doesn’t chase Kanye or Beyonce or Rihanna. There’s no autotune. And while the beats are dressed up, there’s no Pharrell or Timbaland. It is just barely a Contemporary R&B album. Mostly, it sounds like a throwback to 1981, when Bill Withers and Al Jarreau were still on the radio and when The Funk was softened and lightened. Meanwhile, the other foot hops around from Babyface-ish R&B to more “global” eclecticism. And then, every few songs, an electric guitar solo, cut straight from Van Halen or Guns N’ Roses will appear, seemingly from nowhere. While the ingredients are occasionally surprising, the hooks on “Stay Kool” are so basic and so constant that the songs cannot stray too far.
“Dave,” the single that opens the album, begins with a guitar jangle that is not far from Matchbox 20 or most of early aughts AAA radio before it settles into an easy, Gospel R&B vibe in the second half. Years later, it sounds like an unlikely choice for a single, with the electric guitar solo that bisects the song and its “Save the Children” (ten years before Qanon) refrain. But, also, it’s breezy and has a little of this and a little of that. Like most Kool & the Gang songs, it’s sure to offend no one.
“Steppin’ Into Love,” the album’s second track and second radio single easily bests its predecessor. With it’s lite Jazz and slight Funk, it’s a delectable throwback to 1981, when the world was desperate for optimism and when Luther Vandross added a skip to our steps. There’s a sax solo, some strings and just a bunch of guys harmonizing about going out and dancing and falling in love.
While most of “Stay Kool” hangs out around breezy, Contemporary Adult R&B, two of its best tracks are unrepentant throwbacks. “What’s Happening” is a direct reference to “What’s Going On,” lifting the jazzy vibe that introduces that legendary song/album and then extending it for nearly two minutes. Without vocals and decades removed from its older brother, it’s more of a familiar wink than a statement. But it sure sounds good. Meanwhile, “Bang Bang With the Gang” completely defied my expectations. While I braced myself for something desperate to sound harder edged, it is, in fact, a pretty darn good Fusion Rock song about having fun with your boys. In spite of its title, it has nothing to do with Gangsta anything. The bass is Funk forward. The synth has “Innervisions” vibes. And, either out of nowhere or from Eddie Van Halen’s closet,, the electric guitar arrives on top of the horn section. It’s a little like a vintage Living Colour song, but also, unlike most anything else released in the last twenty years. Once upon a time, Kool & the Gang could get very weird. Almost forty years later, they tried it again.
The “Stay Kool” covers a surprising amount of ground, the bass and horn sections keep the sprawl in check. When it does veer of course, however, it does so textually more than musically. Kool & the Gang were never a political band. In fact, they were almost the opposite -- they were a party band. And so, when they make a pass at war in the Middle East, as they do on “Too Low for Zero,” the Funk suffers. It’s simply no fun and it’s quarter-baked message, in spite of its virtue, lacks clarity and benefit. Similarly, “Livin’ in the 21” finds the band borrowing the West Coast G Thang that Dre and Snoop, in part, borrowed for Kool & the Gang to begin with. They add some strings and some medium spicy guitar around a guest emcee, but, predictably, it falls flat. Their gifts to Hip Hop were always their tracks and not their messages.
Though the album fades in its second half, it closes with a funked up, instrumental version of Christopher Cross’ Yacht Rock classic, “Sailing.” Where Cross’ reedy tenor once was, The Gang adds more strings and tasteful trumpet. It’s an unnecessary coda, but it’s also a beautiful song, lovingly rendered. Moreover, it’s a reminder that, over time, Kool & the Gang had come to resemble Chicago and Lionel Richie and The Doobie Brothers more than they ever did Miles or James or Sly. Their “liteness” may be part of what has kept them out of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the same way that P-Funk’s psychedelic wildness may be why George Clinton’s band made it. That liteness was a major reason why they crossed back over to the Pop charts. It’s why their music works so well as the bed for Hip Hop. It’s why they can open up for Steely Dan. It’s why they get played at the lily whitest weddings, sweet sixteens and Bar Mitzvahs. But it’s also why, eventually, they nearly floated away.