Last original Kool & the Gang member to represent at Hall of Fame

NEW YORK (AP):

You can call the music of Kool & the Gang funky or R&B, soulful or disco, pop or dance. What you cannot call it is partisan.

When Iowa’s delegation at this summer’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago announced its vote for the Harris-Walz ticket, they played Celebration. That was the same song picked a few weeks earlier when Donald Trump reached the number of delegates he needed to win the Republican nomination in Milwaukee.

“The Democrats and Republicans, they’re both using Celebration,” Robert ‘Kool’ Bell, bass guitarist and co-founder of Kool & the Gang marvelled recently. “Our music is for everybody.”

After fuelling so many other people’s political and non-political parties, it will be time for Kool & the Gang to finally celebrate when they are inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame next month in Cleveland.

“It feels wonderful, man, after all these years,” says Bell, who was born in Youngstown, Ohio. “When we first started, we didn’t know where we were going, but we loved what we were doing.”

Bell is the only living member of the original lineup, following a cluster of recent deaths, including drummer and songwriter George Brown in 2023, saxophonist, flutist and percussionist Dennis Thomas in 2021 and Bell’s composer brother, Ronald, in 2020.

“That is a bittersweet sort of feeling,” said Bell, who noted the original lineup in the early ‘60s was nicknamed ‘The Magnificent Seven’. “And now there’s only one left – and that’s me.”

The opening of the Hall of Fame door for Kool & the Gang coincided with a change in hall leadership in 2023 that led to invites for key legacy acts like Foreigner, Peter Frampton and Cher.

On October 19, they’ll join Mary J. Blige, A Tribe Called Quest, Ozzy Osbourne, Dave Matthews Band, the late Jimmy Buffett, MC5, Dionne Warwick, Alexis Korner, the late John Mayall and Big Mama Thornton in the class of ‘24.

Rock, pop and hip-hop royalty will be on hand to help usher them in, including Busta Rhymes and Dr Dre.

Kool & the Gang had 12 Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 including the 1980 chart-topper Celebration, Cherish, Get Down On It, Ladies Night and Joanna. They’ve been eligible for the hall since 1994.

They won seven American Music Awards and were included on the Grammy-winning soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever and Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Several members – including Bell – were asked to sing on the mega-selling 1984 charity single Do They Know It’s Christmas?

Kool & the Gang never let go of its grip on pool parties, weddings and cookouts. The group’s Misled was featured in Netflix’s Leave the World Behind in 2023, and their music was played during this year’s NFL playoffs and Super Bowl.

The induction coincides this fall with the release of Brown’s posthumous album, Where I’m Coming From, a 16-track collection that shows off the drummer as a versatile multi-instrumentalist who explored Brazilian rhythms, country, cool jazz, romantic ballads and pure dance.

The band began in 1964 with brothers Kool and Ronald ‘Khalis’ Bell, along with high school friends Dennis ‘D.T.’ Thomas, Brown, Robert ‘Spike’ Mickens, Ricky West and Charles Smith in Jersey City, New Jersey.