Two years ago, we admitted that Bootsy Collins is probably not the first name that comes to mind when thinking about Jheri Curl Music. And while that may still be true, in the early 80s he definitely dipped an entire platform boot into the jheri curl juice. Here, he joins fellow Ohio funkateers Dayton on this Jheri Jam from 1982, “Krackity-Krack.”
Though still sounding very much like a P-funk groove thanks to Bootsy’s inclusion, “Krackity-Krack”’s whiny synths and hard robotic beat coat this heavy groove in a chrome plating that smoothes out the hard edges of its ’70s funk influence. It’s a hint of things to come: a year later, Dayton would fully embrace the Jheri Curl (in every sense of the word) with this smooth jam, complete with a Roger Troutman-style talkbox:
Remember to follow along on Spotify as we continue to update this year’s playlist. See you tomorrow!
It’s a little hard to believe that we’ve reached our sixth consecutive Jheri Curl June, our annual celebration of all things wet and silky in ’80s post-disco R&B; yet here we are, kicking off Jheri Curl June 6–which, since we’re using Zapp naming conventions, we’re calling Jheri Curl June VIbe.
Our criteria for what qualifies a song for Jheri Curl June are, for us, a little like what qualifies a work of art as pornography: we know it when we see (/hear) it. Basically, if the song calls to mind a big ol’ luscious J.C., then it makes the cut. But since not everyone shares our specifically hairstyle-based form of synaesthesia, we’ve laid out some ground rules in our original introduction post from 2014, our 2016 video, and our podcast from last year. The short version is, if it sounds like it was recorded in Minneapolis in the first half of the ’80s, then it’s in the Jheri Curl Music wheelhouse.
Today’s song doesn’t come from Minneapolis at all, however, but from New York’s garage/boogie scene. “This Beat is Mine” was released in 1981 by the enigmatic Vicky “D”, a collaboration between producer Gary R. Turnier, formerly of pop-disco group Gary’s Gang, and songwriter Andre Booth, who would later emerge as a collaborator with hip-hop artists like MC Shan, Big Daddy Kane, and Lords of the Underground. Like many groups from this era, they weren’t exactly built to last: Vicky “D” released only one other single, the reggae-flavored ballad “Mystery Lover,” before disappearing in 1982.
But what they lacked in longevity, they made up for with pure jheri curl juice, which drips plentifully off every one of “This Beat is Mine”’s 358 seconds: from the mewling synth line to the rapped interlude leading into a funky bass and rhythm guitar breakdown. And if the groove didn’t make it clear enough, the lyrics are here to spell it out for you: “It’s party music, so we all can freak / And do that dance / Oh, clap your hands now to this beat.” Don’t have to tell us twice.
As always, we’ll be posting every weekday for the rest of this month with more silky-smooth classics from the jheri curl area. Watch the Spotify playlist grow:
Somehow, despite his over-decade-long tenure as lead singer for the proto-JCM group L.T.D., we still haven’t gotten around to covering Jeffrey Osborne for Jheri Curl June. But as we say goodbye to our fifth annual celebration of all things Jheri Curl, it feels right to end on the title track from Osborne’s 1988 solo album One Love – One Dream. After all, it’s our one love for Jheri Curl Music that brings us together every year, and our one dream for the wet, silky R&B music of the 1980s to get the recognition it deserves.
But most importantly, “One Love – One Dream” just sounds like it could be the song rolling over the credits of Jheri Curl Music: The Movie. The dry rhythm guitar and softly tinkling synthesizers sound instantly nostalgic in an R&B market dominated by the emerging New Jack Swing; it’s the song you listen to the night you take your jheri curl for one last spin, before trimming it into a hi-top fade. But as Osborne sings, in that sonorous voice that launched a thousand barbecues, “We’ve been together for a long time, baby / And our feelings have never died / Don’t think that anyone could break us up / Because you really mean the world to me / There’s no deeper emotion / I only want you and I’m filled with devotion.” He may not have been singing those lines to a jheri curl (okay, he definitely wasn’t)–but he totally could have been, and that’s the important thing.
As we’ve mentioned before, by the late 1980s, the sound of mainstream R&B was developing into what would become known as New Jack Swing. We’ve been writing about this for five years now, so if you don’t get it by now, let me explain it in Pokémon terms: your starter Pokémon is Disco. With love, attention, and experience, that eventually evolves into Jheri Curl Music. New Jack Swing is its final form. The basic elements exist throughout, but the forms morph into a larger, stronger monster.
Bobby Brown’s “Don’t Be Cruel” was written and produced by Jheri Curl June inductees L.A. Reid and Babyface; and while it knocks harder than their work with the Deele, it still maintains much of the wet, silky flair of Jheri Curl Music.
It’s a poetic fluke of the cosmos that so many Jheri Curl Music innovators’ birthdays fall in June, the genre’s holiest month. So far, we’ve highlighted Prince (June 7), Jimmy Jam (June 6), L.A. Reid (also June 7), and Jesse Johnson (June 1)–as well as Michael Jackson, who passed away on June 25, 2009. Now, on the occasion of his 60th birthday, it’s finally time to induct André Cymone into the JCM Hall of Fame.
As Prince’s earliest musical collaborator, André Cymone played an integral, but regrettably overshadowed part in the creation of the Jheri Curl Music strain more popularly known as the Minneapolis Sound. On our Prince associates podcast from a couple of years ago, I described Cymone as the twin Prince (figuratively, of course) consumed in utero. So many of the more famous artist’s stylistic choices in the first three years of his career–from his embrace of New Wave sounds and fashions to the whole song “Do Me, Baby”–can be more accurately interpreted as a collaborative effort between himself and his one-time surrogate brother. By the time André, understandably fed up with the lack of credit for his work, went solo in early 1981, the persona known as “Prince” had been more or less fully formed; this inevitably did his longtime partner a disservice by making his solo career look like an imitation.
But today we celebrate André Cymone not as an imitator, but as the innovator he was. While he may not have scaled the critical or commercial heights of his musical other half, his efforts–both behind the scenes and in the spotlight–left an indelible mark on Jheri Curl Music, and on the last 30 years of pop and R&B in general.
Lillo Thomas is something of a renaissance man. Besides being a former world-class sprinter (he qualified for the 1984 Olympics, but was prevented from participating due to a car accident), he is also an actor, painter, and of course, a singer. Thomas provided vocals for several Jheri Curl June veterans including Evelyn “Champagne” King and Kashif. He also worked with Paul Laurence, a Jheri Curl June inductee from earlier this month. In fact, Thomas’ “Sexy Girl”–not to be confused with the 1984 jam by the late Glenn Frey–was cowritten by Laurence.
“Sexy Girl” begins as your standard late-era Jheri Curl song with a thumping, New Jack Swing-esque beat; but the chorus, where Thomas’ vocals reach a soaring falsetto, is where the song really takes off. Unfortunately, “Sexy Girl” is not available on Spotify, and there is no official video, but I did find this vertically-oriented video of a shirtless guy Harlem Shaking to it that will just have to suffice. I think it does:
This is our fifth year of Jheri Curl June, and it continues to amaze me how little we have to search for new songs and artists to spotlight: even five years in, we still end each June with a backlog of tracks we weren’t able to cover. But, especially toward the end of the month, it doesn’t hurt to have a little help. That’s why I was grateful when a friend of the podcast, Berlin-via-DC DJ and nu-disco artist Snax, brought Charlie Singleton to my attention earlier this month.
Not to be confused with the Charles Singleton who co-wrote “Strangers in the Night,” Charlie Singleton was a guitarist and songwriter who played a major role in the band Cameo’s early-’80s shift from George Clinton-style P-Funk to Jheri Curl Music–he contributed backing vocals and guitar to our 2014 Jheri Curl June inductee “Candy,” among many other tracks. But he was also the focal point of a few of his own groups, including the delightfully-named early-’80s boogie group Stargasm and his vehicle from later in the decade, Modern Man.
The title track from Singleton’s second album with Modern Man, 1987’s “Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained” has all the makings of a late-period JCM masterpiece: Minneapolis-style synth hits, clean funk guitar, and backing vocals by Charlie’s pals in Cameo–including a healthy helping of Larry Blackmon’s signature “oww!”
As we’ve mentioned time and time again, while Jheri Curl is both a musical genre and a hairstyle, a jheri curl is not required to make top-notch Jheri Curl Music. Jane Child is a prime example of an artist whose hair consisted of just about everything BUT a jheri curl, but who still made a banger that fits firmly within the JCM genre.
Waist-length braids and spiky mohawk may not be the most conventional hairstyle, but it does not exclude one from making excellent Jheri Curl Music.
Raised a classically trained pianist, Child wrote, arranged, and performed all of her self-titled 1989 debut, and was referred to by the press as “the female Prince” (like Prince, she was also signed to Warner Bros. at the time). Her first album is a great collection of late-era Jheri Curl Music, with plenty of synthesizer flares to smooth out the late-’80s hard rock guitars. “Don’t Wanna Fall in Love” is a catchy jam that was Number 2 on the Billboard charts for three weeks–kept out of the top spot, ironically, by Sinead O’Connor’s cover of the Prince-penned “Nothing Compares 2 U.”
There are certain Jheri Curl songs that just hit you in the solar plexus with their energy. “So Emotional,” the third single from Whitney Houston’s 1987 sophomore album Whitney, is just such a song. As soon as the powerful synths come in, I imagine jheri curls bursting into flames like Michael Jackson’s in the Pepsi commercial. Thankfully, “So Emotional” didn’t actually cause anyone’s hair to spontaneously combust, as it was a huge hit in dance clubs in 1988, and playing it would have been a liability for club owners.
Danny Brown put me up on Stacy Lattisaw. After hearing him reference her in “Adderall Admiral” and gush about her in his Nardwuar interview (beginning at 5:45 in the video below), I made a point of checking her out and, lo and behold, she is a perfect fit for Jheri Curl June.
Lattisaw’s most commercially successful period was during her teenage years. By 1986, now only 20 years old, she had signed to Motown and released Take Me All the Way. The album was produced by Kashif and Leon Sylvers III of SOLAR Records, which definitely explains the Jheri Curl sound. “Jump Into My Life,” the second single off the album, is definitely full of late-period Jheri Curl flair with its rhythmic bass and layered synthesizers.
