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  • Jheri Curl June: Lillo Thomas’ “Sexy Girl”

    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.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go5JPaa_1mc

    “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:

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  • Jheri Curl June: Charlie Singleton & Modern Man’s “Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained

    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!”

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  • Jheri Curl June: Jane Child’s “Don’t Wanna Fall in Love”

    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.”

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  • Jheri Curl June: Whitney Houston’s “So Emotional”

    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.

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  • Jheri Curl June: Stacy Lattisaw’s “Jump Into My Life”

    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.

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  • Jheri Curl June: Meli’sa Morgan’s “Fool’s Paradise”

    Like last year’s Jheri Curl June inductee Vesta Williams, Meli’sa Morgan was a backup singer for Chaka Khan before beginning her solo career. The influence is obvious. Morgan and Khan both have larger than life, soulful voices; even larger hair; and a connection to Prince: the title track and first hit single from Morgan’s solo debut album was a cover of “Do Me, Baby.”

    © Capitol Records

    But it’s the album’s third single, “Fool’s Paradise,” that I’m inducting into the hallowed halls of Jheri Curl June–mainly just because it’s a goddamn bop, and this video of Morgan lip-syncing, flanked by three dudes in half-shirts in a room full of bubbles, is what Jheri Curl June is all about:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP3Wrbr2gFg
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  • Jheri Curl June: Krystol’s “Passion from a Woman”

    We enter our annual Ladies’ Week with exactly what this year’s Jheri Curl June needs: some Passion from a Woman. Krystol is one of those groups that, despite having plenty of talent and hitmaking potential, never achieved widespread fame. Their first two albums failed to gain much commercial success, despite being chock full of bangers that are no less catchy than any of Madonna’s output, and certainly better sung. Finally, after suffering from personnel changes due to a birth and a death respectively, the now-three woman group began to achieve more success and exposure. “Passion from a Woman,” from the 1986 album of the same title, made it into the R&B Top 30.

    Unfortunately, Krystol still suffered from a lack of promotion, and were ultimately dropped from their label. But they undeniably paved the way for R&B girl groups of the late ’80s and ’90s–including Jheri Curl June Veterans Exposé.

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  • Jheri Curl June: Georgio’s “Tina Cherry”

    Every year there’s at least one artist who I eagerly anticipate writing about for Jheri Curl June. This year, without question, that artist is Georgio. I already told the story on our latest podcast about the first time I encountered Georgio, flipping through the racks at my local record store (shout out to Purple Narwhal Records in Rockville, Maryland). I took one look at the sculpted cheekbones and tastefully-applied makeup on the cover of his 12″ single “Tina Cherry,” and somehow I knew that this would be my JCJ discovery of 2018. I promptly picked up not only “Tina Cherry,” but the whole stack of Georgio records, and took them to the counter.

    Since then, I’ve made it a habit of picking up whatever Georgio I can find at the record store–I got a copy of “Lover’s Lane,” another single from his 1987 debut, from Electric Fetus in Minneapolis this April. The thing about Georgio I should establish at this point is that his music isn’t great. It’s perfectly competent, on the club/house-ier side of the late-decade JCM spectrum, but there’s a reason why it’s usually priced so cheap that I can routinely afford to walk out with a stack of five or six of his records. My affection for Georgio has a lot to do with my conviction that the best Jheri Curl Music, or at least the most characteristic, is often the most mediocre. It also has to do with the tragicomic history of the man himself, Georgio Allentini.

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  • Jheri Curl June: The Controllers’ “Stay”

    The first time I heard “Stay” by the Controllers, it was blasting from the speakers of a purple motorcycle driving down Warren Avenue on a sultry late August night in Detroit. The part I heard was about midway through, during the synth solo. My first thought was, “What the FUCK is this?!” Then I realized where it was coming from: a dude with long braids and no helmet riding a PURPLE MOTORCYCLE. Check it out in this creepy video I took of him–because he’s my hero, and also because I forgot that Snapchat has Shazam and I wanted to save the song to find later, even though I could clearly have saved myself a lot of trouble by using the feature that is literally made for finding songs.

    Anyway, eventually I found it and, much like with the Whispers’ “Rock Steady,” I did NOT expect it to be by a group of dorky-looking older guys dancing in unison. But boy, I’m glad it is.

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  • Jheri Curl June: Colonel Abrams’ “The Truth”

    In some ways, it’s surprising that it took us this long to feature Colonel Abrams (real name, no gimmicks) for Jheri Curl June. He was born in Detroit–always a big plus for us proud Southeastern Michiganders. He had connections to the architects of the sound, having sung on a few tracks by 94 East, a Minneapolis-based studio band that briefly featured an 18-year-old Prince Rogers Nelson on guitar. And, while the Colonel is better-known as a house artist, one listen to the whining synthesizers and flanged drum-machine claps on his 1985 debut album should be more than enough to get your Jheri Curl sense a-tingling.

    Like JCJ Class of 2015 member James “D-Train” Williams, Colonel Abrams distinguished himself by layering a soulful, gospel-infused baritone over his futuristic soundscapes. Indeed, “The Truth” from his debut album basically is a gospel song, with Abrams testifying “Let’s stop all hatred / ‘Cause love is what we need,” a bank of synthesizers taking the place of the church organ. I’m not a church-going man, but if it was anything like the music video above–featuring the Colonel in a graffitied alley, rocking Sgt. Pepper marching-band chic years before Michael Jackson and flanked by what appear to be the dancers from Pat Benatar’s “Love is a Battlefield” video–then I’d be in that bitch every Sunday morning.

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