Biography
Kay-Gee's came together as a funk ensemble in Jersey City, New Jersey, and benefited from close guidance by Kool & the Gang, above all Ronald Bell, who gladly handled production, arranging duties, and occasional songwriting for the group led by his younger brother Kevin. The lineup included Kevin Bell handling guitar plus multiple additional instruments, along with saxophonist Peter Duarte, brass player Ray Wright, woodwind player Dennis White, keyboardist Kevin Lassiter, bassist Michael Cheek, drummer Callie Cheek, and percussionist Wilson Beckett. The band secured a deal with Kool & the Gang's Gang imprint and released its first album, Keep on Bumpin' & Masterplan, in 1974. Ronald Bell wrote most of the songs, giving Kay-Gee's a sonic profile that mirrored the hard, locked-in grooves of early Kool & the Gang; tracks such as "You've Got to Keep on Bumpin'," "Who's the Man? (With the Master Plan)"—the wellspring of that widely used hip-hop sample—and "Get Down" earned the outfit lasting esteem among devoted funk listeners. Burn Me Up appeared the following year and yielded the single "Hustle Wit' Every Muscle," adopted as the theme for the television program Party. By the release of Find a Friend in 1976, Ronald Bell's participation had started to wane, prompting the band to explore disco textures on numbers like "Find a Friend" and "Waiting at the Bus Stop." Their last record, Kilowatt, surfaced in 1978 on New York's De-Lite label as an unabashed disco-funk showcase and contained several favored club cuts, among them "Cheek to Cheek" and "Tango Hustle," before the group split up shortly afterward.