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  • Jheri Curl June: LeVert’s “Casanova”

    Jheri Curl June: LeVert’s “Casanova”

    Well, here we are: the last full week of Jheri Curl June. Since we try to go in rough chronological order, this is the week when things start to get a little tricky: as we went over last year, the latter half of the ’80s was a period of decline for jheri curl music, as the pop market shifted toward the fresher, more youthful sounds of hip-hop and New Jack Swing. It was not, however, an overnight process; and so the waning years of the decade offer many examples of transitional songs: retaining the DNA of classic jheri curl, while also beginning to show the effects of the emerging R&B mutations of the ’90s.

    “Casanova,” by Cleveland-based vocal group LeVert, is one such transitional song. Its parent album, 1987’s The Big Throwdown, was co-produced by Reggie Calloway: a member of the jheri-curl old guard, who dedicated readers may remember as a performer on Midnight Star‘s “No Parking on the Dance Floor” and a producer on “Meeting in the Ladies’ Room” by Klymaxx. So yes, those drums may have the soon-to-be-patented New Jack swingbeat; but the keyboard frills and clean guitar part are as jheri-curl as Ice Cube’s yearbook photo.

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  • Jheri Curl Cinema: The Last Dragon (1985)

    This year’s Jheri Curl June Ladies’ Week closes on a bittersweet note, because we’re talking about Vanity: a tragic chapter in the jheri curl chronicle. Born Denise Katrina Matthews in Niagra Falls, Ontario, Vanity is best known as one of the cogs in Prince‘s early-’80s machine–indeed, she was arguably the most critically reviled of his many protégées (at least until Carmen Electra came along). After her association with Prince ended during pre-production for Purple Rain, her place in the musical narrative only declined: there was a floundering solo career, a debilitating addiction to freebase cocaine, a kidney transplant due to the ravages of substance abuse, and finally a conversion to evangelical Christianity that led her to renounce everything associated with her former life.

    It’s obviously not within my power to rehabilitate Vanity’s place in the popular music canon–nor, necessarily, is it fully worth rehabilitating (I mean, have you listened to “Pretty Mess“?) But I do think she’s gotten a raw deal. The one album released under the name Vanity 6 is–like its “sister album,” the Time‘s What Time is It?–one of the great forgotten Prince records of the early ’80s; and, while the Purple One per usual ghost-wrote and -recorded the bulk of the music, it was Vanity’s sassy sex appeal that really sold it (don’t even try and tell me you wouldn’t have gotten down with Vanity circa “Nasty Girl“). And then, of course, there’s The Last Dragon.

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  • Jheri Curl June: Jody Watley’s “Still a Thrill”

    Jheri Curl June: Jody Watley’s “Still a Thrill”

    One of my favorite things about researching and writing for Jheri Curl June is the complex web of connections between the various artists within the genre. Today’s selection, Chicago‘s Jody Watley, is no exception. Naturally, as with most things jheri curl, many roads lead back to Minneapolis: Watley’s 1987 solo debut was co-produced by Prince‘s childhood friend and former bandmate–and, as of this year, JCJ vet in his own right–André Cymone. The other producer on the album? None other than David Z, the older brother of Revolution drummer Bobby, who engineered much of Prince’s work through the mid-1980s.

    But Watley is far from just another footnote of the ever-sprawling Prince Dynasty; she’s a part of jheri curl history on her own strengths. She got her start in the late 1970s as a dancer on Soul Train, where legendary host Don Cornelius chose her to join his in-house vocal group Shalamar (more on them next week). And Cymone wasn’t just a producer Watley nabbed for his Minneapolis-Sound cred; the pair were romantically involved, and would later marry for several years beginning in 1989, with a son, Arie, born in 1992.

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  • Jheri Curl June: Nu Shooz’ “I Can’t Wait”

    Today’s installment of JCJ Ladies’ Week is also a story about the interesting cross-pollination of regional and global influences during the late jheri curl era. It begins in Portland, Oregon–a city better known at the time for its hardcore punk scene than for jheri curl music–where husband-and-wife team Valerie Day and John Smith formed Nu Shooz, a multiracial funk group that put a new-wavey spin on the emergent jheri-curl subgenre of freestyle. In March of 1985, Nu Shooz released their second album, Tha’s Right, which included a catchy little number called “I Can’t Wait.”

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  • Jheri Curl June: Grace Jones’ “I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect for You)”

    For our second day of JCJ Ladies’ Week, we’ll be looking at a mid-’80s track by Grace Jones. The Jamaican-born style icon is probably best known for her androgynous looks and outlandish behavior, but she is in fact a prolific model, actor, and musical artist.

    “I’m Not Perfect (But I’m Perfect for You),” from Jones’ 1986 album Inside Story, was produced by ex-Chic frontman Nile Rodgers and is easily her most accessible song. Musically, it conforms to the now-mainstream sound that jheri curl music had brought to the pop market. But Jones’ signature, commanding contralto voice still sets it apart as distinctly her own.

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  • Jheri Curl June: Teena Marie’s “Lovergirl”

    Just like we did last year, we wanted to take a week out of Jheri Curl June to spotlight the important contributions made by women artists to the genre. And how better to kick off our second annual JCJ Ladies’ Week than with the Ivory Queen of Soul herself, Teena Marie?

    Initially a protégé of Jheri Curl June alumnus Rick James, Teena Marie was an accomplished singer and musician in her own right. She wrote and produced nearly all of her own music, including her biggest hit, 1984’s “Lovergirl.”

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  • Jheri Curl June: The Whispers’ “Rock Steady”

    On Tuesday we talked about the Deele, the Ohio-based R&B group that kickstarted the careers of Antonio “L.A.” Reid and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds. Today we look at one of the songs the duo produced under their production company, Deelesongz, Inc.: the Whispers’ “Rock Steady.”

    The Whispers were formed in 1963 by twins and black Mario Bros. Wallace “Scotty” Scott and Walter Scott, and had several hits throughout the ’60s and ’70s. But “Rock Steady” was their first hit to make it into the Top 10 on the Hot 100, peaking at number 7. I like to think that the success of Rock Steady can be directly attributed to this amazing video:

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  • Jheri Curl June: D-Train’s “You’re the One for Me (Labor of Love Mix)”

    Jheri curl music is an essentially synthetic musical form: like its namesake from the hair world, it is not a genre that occurs in nature, but a heavily processed transformation of traditional African American styles. That’s one of the reasons why Brooklyn jheri-curl duo D-Train was so interesting. A collaboration between the group’s namesake, singer James “D-Train” Williams, and keyboardist/producer Hubert Eaves III, D-Train took the most traditional form of African American music, gospel, and funneled it through the most synthetic of mid-’80s production methods; or, to use a more fitting metaphor, Eaves’ production softened, set, and activated the natural soulfulness of Williams’ vocals.

    Arguably the best example of this technique was D-Train’s breakout hit, 1981’s “You’re the One for Me“: opening with Williams crooning the chorus over an understated piano line, it sounds for the first 45 seconds or so like a throwback to the pre-disco soul of, say, Teddy Pendergrass. But then the beat kicks in, followed by the synthesized handclaps, and suddenly the D-Train has transferred to Jheri Curl Station, with Eaves’ infectious synth line as the engine. It’s the musical equivalent of a big plate full of cornbread and collard greens suddenly transforming into the spaceship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind and taking off into the sky.

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  • Jheri Curl June: Phil Collins’ “Sussudio”

    Okay, okay, I know what you’re thinking: who let this flaccid, schlocky dad-pop interloper into our pristine shrine to the jheri curl and the music it inspired? But just relax, and I’ll explain everything.

    After the massive success of Purple Rain in the summer of 1984, jheri curl music went from being a trendy form of R&B to one of the dominant modes of mainstream pop, full stop. Pretty soon, everybody was starting to sound a little jheri-curl–even people who had no business sounding that way. Even people who could never actually have a jheri curl of their own. People like the incurably lame, and just-as-incurably bald, Phil Collins.

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  • Jheri Curl June: The Deele’s “Stimulate”

    In 1989 Antonio “L.A.” Reid and Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds founded LaFace records, the record company responsible for Usher, OutKast, TLC, Pink, and Toni Braxton, among others.

    Back in 1985, though, they were sporting bright pink satin dress shirts and impressive jheri curls with the rest of the boys in the Deele, yet another funk and R&B outfit from Ohio.

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