The Isley Brothers

The Isley Brothers first assembled at the dawn of the 1950s and proceeded to sustain one of the most enduring, impactful, and varied trajectories in popular music. Across nearly five decades of performances, their notable path encompassed two distinct waves of Isley family members together with sweeping cultural transformations that steered their sound from raw R&B through Motown soul and onward into explosive funk.

The original trio of brothers grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, where their father, a seasoned singer, and their mother, a church pianist who supplied accompaniment for their first shows, urged them toward a professional music path. Starting out as a gospel quartet that included Ronald, Rudolph, O'Kelly, and Vernon Isley, the lineup shifted after Vernon perished in a 1955 bicycling accident, at which point tenor Ronald assumed the lead vocal role for the remaining three.

The siblings traveled to New York City in 1957 and cut a series of unsuccessful doo-wop singles; while delivering an energetic rendition of “Lonely Teardrops” in Washington, D.C., two years later, they inserted the spontaneous exclamation “You know you make me want to shout,” prompting an ecstatic response from the crowd. An RCA executive who witnessed the performance signed the group shortly afterward and directed that their debut single revolve around the newly coined catchphrase; although the call-and-response staple “Shout” did not crack the pop Top 40 upon release, it later emerged as a widely interpreted classic.

Commercial breakthrough remained elusive until the Isleys departed RCA in 1962, at which point they scored again with their landmark reading of the Top Notes’ “Twist and Shout.” As with several of their early R&B sides, the track achieved wider success when a white act revisited it—this time the Beatles—while other artists who scored hits by adapting the Isleys’ template included the Yardbirds (“Respectable,” later taken up by the Outsiders), the Human Beinz (“Nobody but Me”), and Lulu (“Shout”).

During a 1964 tour the brothers added a young guitarist named Jimmy James to their backing ensemble; James, who would soon gain renown under his birth name, Jimi Hendrix, made his initial recordings with the Isleys, among them the single “Testify” issued on their own T-Neck imprint. They joined the Motown subsidiary Tamla in 1965 and collaborated with the celebrated Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting and production unit. Their first outing under this arrangement, the luminous “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You),” stood as their strongest effort to date and came within a hair’s breadth of the pop Top Ten.

“That single remained their sole Motown success; after it reached number three in Britain in 1967, the Isleys moved to England to revive their waning momentum. Having grown accustomed to composing their own material, they chafed under Motown’s regimented production approach, and upon returning to the United States in 1969 they revived the T-Neck label. Their ensuing release, the robust and funky “It’s Your Thing,” climbed to number two on the U.S. charts that year and became their biggest seller.

Also in 1969 the core trio expanded when younger brothers Ernie and Marvin, brother-in-law Chris Jasper, and family friend Everett Collins joined as the new supporting unit. Led by Ernie’s incisive guitar work, the ensemble increasingly folded rock-oriented material into its sets as the 1970s began, registering hits with interpretations of Stephen Stills’ “Love the One You’re With,” Eric Burdon & War’s “Spill the Wine,” and Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay.”

In 1973 the Isleys achieved a major success with their rock-funk reworking of their earlier song “Who’s That Lady,” now titled “That Lady, Pt. 1”; the accompanying album 3 + 3 likewise performed strongly, as did 1975’s The Heat Is On, which yielded the hit “Fight the Power, Pt. 1.” As the decade progressed the group adjusted its style to accommodate the rising disco market; although pop-radio airplay diminished, they continued to top the R&B charts with tracks such as 1977’s “The Pride,” 1978’s “Take Me to the Next Phase, Pt. 1,” 1979’s “I Wanna Be with You, Pt. 1,” and 1980’s “Don’t Say Goodnight.”

While the Isleys maintained visibility into the 1980s, Ernie, Marvin, and Chris Jasper departed in 1984 to form the spin-off group Isley Jasper Isley, which topped the R&B charts a year later with “Caravan of Love.” On March 31, 1986, O’Kelly succumbed to a heart attack; Rudolph subsequently entered the ministry before his death on October 11, 2023, at the age of 84, yet the remaining brothers regrouped in 1990.

Although individual members pursued solo and side projects amid occasional setbacks, the Isley Brothers persisted in various configurations throughout the 1990s and into the new century. In 1996, now featuring Ronald, Marvin, and Ernie, they issued the album Mission to Please; Marvin, however, was soon diagnosed with diabetes and exited the following year—the condition eventually required the amputation of both legs. Ronald and Ernie reconvened for 2001’s Eternal, a fresh collection of R&B songs that included contributions from Jill Scott, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, and Raphael Saadiq; on that project Ronald introduced his alter ego Mr. Biggs. Body Kiss appeared in 2003, followed by Baby Makin’ Music in 2006, the year after Ronald’s conviction on tax-evasion charges. While serving a subsequent prison term for health-related reasons, Ronald completed the final portion of his sentence at a halfway house in St. Louis, Missouri, before his release in April 2010. On June 6 of that year, Marvin passed away at age 56 from diabetes complications. Apart from reissues, the surviving Isleys did not record together again until 2017, when they entered a Las Vegas studio with Carlos Santana and his wife, jazz drummer Cindy Blackman Santana.

Two years earlier, Santana had been touring with Rod Stewart, whose band featured Ron’s sister-in-law Kimberly Johnson-Breaux. When the singer attended a St. Louis performance, he and Santana met for the first time. The guitarist invited Isley onstage to perform “It’s Your Thing” and “That Lady.” In the wake of that encounter the pair explored a joint project. Isley first contributed vocals to Santana IV; thereafter the Isleys joined the Santanas in a Las Vegas studio without prior rehearsal to lay down tracks for what became 2017’s Power of Peace, an anthology of classic soul, pop, and blues covers. The set encompassed interpretations of material by Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Burt Bacharach & Hal David, Willie Dixon, and Curtis Mayfield, among others. The thirteen-song album surfaced in July, one week after Santana’s seventieth birthday.