Latest Release
- MAR 15, 2024
- 1 Song
- Something Special · 1981
- Celebrate! · 1980
- Light of Worlds · 1974
- Wild and Peaceful · 1973
- Emergency · 1984
- Wild and Peaceful · 1973
- Ladies' Night · 1979
- Gold · 1975
- Emergency · 1984
- In the Heart · 1983
Essential Albums
- Along with Earth, Wind & Fire, Kool & The Gang was arguably the only mainstream Black American band to successfully transition from the 1970s to the 1980s. But where Earth, Wind & Fire toyed with disco as part of a broader diet of R&B, jazz, and other Black idioms, Kool & The Gang embraced the sound consciously and head-on. Released in 1981, Something Special would become the band’s third platinum album in three years. It wasn’t all that functionally different from 1979’s Ladies’ Night or 1980’s Celebrate!: It’s polished, pop-friendly, and song-oriented—a sound that scanned as Black, but was easily embraced by mainstream America. But Something Special also found the group moving beyond disco, with its eight tracks including everything from modern updates on 1960s Motown (“Take My Heart (You Can Have It If You Want It)”) to dolphin-smooth funk (“Get Down On It”) to quiet storm ballads (“No Show”). In a way, it was as though the band members had discovered they were less unified by sound than by their persistent, family-friendly optimism, whether for the children (“Pass It On”), the ladies (“Be My Lady”), or humanity in general (“Stand Up and Sing”). Kool & The Gang worked hard to make you feel good. But they made it sound easy.
- Kool & The Gang continued the winning streak begun on Ladies Night with Celebrate!, which perfects its predecessor’s subtle disco grooves. Like Ladies Night, the album is built around its sterling title song. “Celebration” is one of the most recognizable songs of all time and it was quickly adopted by the public — first by being used to welcome home the Iran hostages, and then as Walter Mondale’s campaign song. Group leader Ronald Bell was right when he predicted the song would be an “international anthem.” In the shadow of such a universal hit the rest of Celebrate! is bound to disappear, but a closer listen shows the album to be the band’s most consistent effort from this period. “Take It To the Top,” “Morning Star” and “Night People” display the disco formula in its most refined state — lush, smooth, with each layer of sound finely integrated into the one below it, like clockwork. “Just Friends” and “Love Affair” are vehicles for J.T. Taylor’s amiable vocals, and if “Celebration” wasn’t an once-in-a-lifetime single, it’s likely that “Love Festival” would have become the album’s standout hit.
- A few months before the members of Kool & The Gang started working on 1979’s Ladies’ Night, they played at a record store to promote their 1978 album, Everybody’s Dancin’. Nobody showed up, and the band was humiliated. Saxophone player and songwriter Ronald Bell remembers a teenage girl who happened to be in the store telling him something they all vaguely sensed, but didn’t want to acknowledge head-on: Yeah, they’d had some big songs—“Jungle Boogie,” “Hollywood Swinging,” “Higher Plane,” “Funky Stuff”—but now they were washed up. Bell took it as a wake-up call: The next time they headed into the studio, they were going to make something pop. Ladies’ Night smoothed out the band’s funk edges and integrated an overtly commercial approach to Kool & The Gang’s songwriting: While the members could still give their instruments a workout, there also had to be verses and choruses, as well as a vocalist—J.T. Taylor—to sing them (all of this was enforced by a new producer, Eumir Deodato, who kept an eye on the album’s creative bottom line). At the time, disco had already experienced its first cultural backlash, mostly by embittered rock fans who thought the music was trite, overproduced, and politically escapist. (The latter seems reasonable. Still, the fact that disco was also largely Black and embraced by the gay community may also have had something to do with the complaint.) But even with that resistance, the disco sound was still performing commercially, and—thanks to upstarts like Chic and established stars like Diana Ross and Michael Jackson—evolving artistically, too. Ladies’ Night struck a highly calculated balance: It was poppier and less hypnotic than Chic, but Blacker than the Bee Gees. Kool & The Gang managed to bend traditional R&B songwriting around the beat of disco (“Too Hot”), while retaining the communal vibe of its days as a funk band (“Hangin’ Out,” “Ladies’ Night”). Bell later said they tried to write their songs like nursery rhymes: You hear them once, but remember them forever.
- Kool & The Gang’s fourth studio album is a full-on funkfest, finding Robert “Kool” Bell and co. neck-deep in hard-grinding grooves. With its serpentine horn lines and down-and-dirty feel, “Jungle Boogie” is the band at its party-starting best, but the appropriately titled “Funky Stuff” and the hectic, heavy-grooving “This Is You, This Is Me” hit just as hard. The band take a couple of brief breaks from funking it up, too: Dreamy ballad “Heaven at Once” and the breezy, jazzy title track hint at their multifaceted musical makeup.
- 1983
- 2010
- 2008
- 2006
- 2005
Artist Playlists
- These hitmakers wed body-moving funk to sleek disco-pop.
- Their original tunes have been the source material for some of modern music’s biggest hits.
- Their funky disco-soul influenced generations of party starters.
- Look beyond the R&B hits to find their roots in soul jazz.
Singles & EPs
- 2007
Appears On
- Dzeko & David Solomon
More To Hear
- Honoring Kool & The Gang and drummer George Brown.
- Bluey celebrates Kool & The Gang and Tower Of Power.
- Q-Tip and Natasha Diggs celebrate the start of the season.
About Kool & The Gang
After finding success as a gritty funk band in the mid-’70s, Kool & The Gang reinvented themselves with a poppier sound and scored massive hits like songs like “Ladies’ Night,” “Cherish,” and the timeless party jam “Celebration.” • In 1964, Robert “Kool” Bell, his brother Ronald, and their friends Clifford Adams, Charles Smith, Woody Sparrow, Robert “Spike” Mickens, Dennis “D.T.” Thomas, Ricky West, and Funky George Brown formed The Jazziacs in Jersey City, New Jersey. • They became Kool & the Gang in 1969 and released their self-titled debut album the following year. • Their commercial breakthrough came with 1973’s gold-certified Wild and Peaceful. The album spawned two Top 10 pop hits: “Jungle Boogie” and “Hollywood Swinging.” The latter was the band’s first R&B chart-topper. • Eclipsed by the rise of disco in the mid-’70s, the Gang enlisted singer James “J.T.” Taylor and modernized their sound. The approach paid off—1979’s Ladies’ Night went platinum and yielded two Top 10 pop hits: the title track and “Too Hot.” • “Celebration,” the lead single off 1980’s Celebrate! album, reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. • Boasting double-platinum sales and three Top 10 pop singles—including the No. 2 smash “Cherish”—1984’s Emergency marked the peak of the band’s commercial success. • Kool & The Gang has continued touring and recording well into the 21st century. Their 2016 single “Sexy” went Top 20 on Billboard’s Adult R&B Airplay chart.
- ORIGIN
- Jersey City, NJ, United States
- FORMED
- 1964
- GENRE
- R&B/Soul