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KOOL & THE GANG’S “CELEBRATION”
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Engineer Jim Bonnefond at House of Music, late ’70s |
Back at Lincoln High in Jersey City in 1964, Ronald and Robert Bell, the sax- and bass-playing sons of a one-time associate of Thelonious Monk, formed a jazz combo called The Jazziacs with some friends. The Jazziacs were good enough to earn gigs with the likes of Pharoah Sanders and Leon Thomas (both of whom also jammed with the group), but as the ’60s went on and the group assimilated influences ranging from Sly & The Family Stone to James Brown, their music took a more R&B and funk turn. This led to a series of name changes, from the Soul Town Review to the New Dimensions to, in 1968, Kool & The Gang. “Kool” was Robert Bell, though Ronald Bell was the musical leader of the group. In 1969, on the basis of their tight live act, they were signed by Gene Redd’s then-new De-Lite Records, and their first record, a funky instrumental called “Kool and The Gang,” became a substantial hit.
Through the early ’70s, Kool & The Gang continued to pepper the charts with minor hits, such as “Funky Man,” “Let the Music Take Your Mind” and even a version of Sly’s “I Want to Take You Higher.” But their big breakthrough came at the end of 1973, when “Jungle Boogie” hit the Top 5 and went Gold. They still played some jazzy instrumentals, but the focus of their sound had changed. For the next two years, they had one hit after another on the upper reaches of the R&B charts, including the Number One songs “Hollywood Swinging,” “Higher Plane” and “Spirit of the Boogie.” Their fortunes fell somewhat in the late ’70s, as disco overtook funk as the most popular form of R&B, though they did manage to land their song “Open Sesame” on the soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever, which sold 25 million copies.
By 1979, the group was ready to try something a little different in an attempt to regain its commercial edge, so they made two important moves: They hired a smooth-voiced lead singer from Jersey named James “J.T.” Taylor, and they brought in the Brazilian keyboardist/ producer/composer/arranger and one-time jazzer Eumir Deodato to produce the group. With credits that included arranging stints with Frank Sinatra, Roberta Flack and Aretha Franklin, producing Con Funk Shun and cutting his own eclectic albums (his one megahit was his rhythmic reworking of “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” the main theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey), Deodato had an attractive resume and an obvious ability to work well with demanding performers.
Deodato had been doing a fair amount of work at a popular West Orange, N.J., studio called House of Music, with the studio’s chief engineer, Jim Bonnefond, becoming Deodato’s main man behind the board. So, when Deodato got the gig with Kool & The Gang, Bonnefond came as part of the package, as did working at House of Music. It proved to be a winning combination: The Deodato-Bonnefond team made four albums with Kool & The Gang, and Bonnefond produced and engineered two others for the group after Deodato moved on.
Reprinted with
permission from 
Magazine, December, 2000
© 2000, Intertec
Publishing, A Primedia Company All Rights Reserved
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