George Brown, a founding member and drummer of the crew Kool & the Gang, who performed on funk, disco and pa hits that featured prominently in motion pictures and feature been sampled a large number of occasions, died on Thursday in Long Beach, Calif. He was once 74.
His loss of life, at a medical institution, was once showed in a remark by way of the band’s publicist, who mentioned the purpose was once most cancers. Mr. Brown had mentioned publicly that he had lung most cancers.
Mr. Brown, referred to as Funky, was once a key contributor to a number of of the band’s greatest hits, together with “Ladies Night,” “Jungle Boogie” and the birthday celebration anthem “Celebration.”
In a July interview with NPR, he described Kool & the Gang as “the sound of happiness.”
In 1964, Mr. Brown related up with Ricky Westfield and the brothers Ronald Khalis Bell and Robert “Kool” Bell, in addition to different pals — Spike Mickens, Dennis “Dee Tee” Thomas and Charles Smith — to shape a band that will mix jazz, funk, disco and R&B and create some of the maximum memorable pop songs of their generation.
Formed in Jersey City, N.J., the band first performed jazz whilst contributors attended Lincoln High School. The band carried out underneath a number of names, together with the Jazziacs, however ultimately settled on Kool & the Gang in the past due Nineteen Sixties.
One of the band’s early names was once Kool and the Flames however the crew modified the Flames to the Gang to keep away from confusion with James Brown’s crew, the Famous Flames.
George Brown was once born on Jan. 15, 1949. His father, George Melvin Brown Sr., labored in the coal business whilst his mom, Eleanor White Brown, was once a maid in Fort Lee, N.J., and in addition labored as a key puncher.
Both made song a continuing phase of Mr. Brown’s upbringing, Mr. Brown recalled in his memoir launched this yr, “Too Hot: Kool & the Gang & Me.”
Mr. Brown, who took to drumming at a tender age, wrote that he stored up from a newspaper supply direction to shop for his first drum set.
In a 2015 interview with Red Bull Music Academy, Mr. Brown described the use of butter knives as drum sticks when he first began taking part in.
“Then I went down to a music store on Newark Avenue in Jersey City and took a $3 lesson from a gentleman who used to play with the Shirelles. He said, ‘Hey man, you’re a natural!’” Mr. Brown recalled. “So he gave me ‘Buddy Rich’s 16 Essential Snare Drum Rudiments’ book. I took one more lesson and never went back.”
The band was once signed by way of the manufacturer Gene Redd to De-Lite Records 1969.
The contributors have been in an early recording consultation in New York for his or her instrumental debut album, “Kool and the Gang,” when Mr. Redd inspired Mr. Brown and Ronald Bell to simply “do something.” It ended in a freewheeling recording consultation that produced songs like “Raw Hamburger” and the album opener, “Kool & the Gang.”
“It just flowed. And we’re just grooving,” Mr. Brown advised The New York Times in an interview final yr.
The sound carried over into the Seventies as the band discovered popularity and added the vocalist J.T. Taylor.
Songs like “Jungle Boogie” “Hollywood Swinging” and “Funky Stuff” become Billboard chart staples. “Celebration” — with its cheery refrain “Celebrate good times, come on!” — made it all the way to the top.
The crew would cross directly to free up dozens of albums, excursion international and gave the impression on the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack, which received a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978.
The crew’s songs have ceaselessly gave the impression on movie and tv soundtracks, together with for “Pulp Fiction” in 1994.
In 2015, the band was once awarded a celebrity on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Mr. Brown was once a manufacturer on an album that the band launched this yr, known as “People Just Want To Have Fun” in anticipation of the crew’s sixtieth anniversary.
Kool & the Gang had a huge affect, in particular in hip-hop.
According to the website WhoSampled, the band has been sampled in virtually 2,000 songs, among the highest of all time. The band’s tune “Summer Madness” accounts for 249 samples, by way of artists together with Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg and Mary J. Blige.
Ronald Khalis Bell, a singer, songwriter and saxophonist for the band, died in 2020. Mr. Thomas, who performed saxophone, died in 2021.
Mr. Brown is survived by way of his spouse, Hanh Brown, and 5 kids: Dorian Melvin Brown, Jorge Lewis Brown, Gregory Brown, Jordan Xuan Clarence Brown and Aaron Tien Joseph Brown.
Three years in the past, Mr. Brown was once recognized with lung most cancers, in line with an interview broadcast with the television station KCAL in Los Angeles. After surgical treatment and chemotherapy, Mr. Brown recovered and returned to traveling in 2022. But this yr, the most cancers returned.
“I didn’t plan on being in a band known around the world, but I welcomed it when it came,” Mr. Brown wrote in his guide. “I didn’t know where the music would lead me, but I knew that if I remained focused and persevered, it would happen as God had intended. And it did.”