When we decided to expand the focus of Jheri Curl June last year to include cinema, I knew there were two films I absolutely had to write about: Purple Rain and Coming to America. As it turned out, I was only able to work the former into our schedule. This year, however, I’m making amends.
Coming to America
Like most human measures of time, Jheri Curl June is intimately tied to the cycles of birth and death. The month opens with the birthdays of two of jheri curl music’s greatest architects, Prince and Jimmy Jam, and closes with the anniversary of the death of its most anointed practitioner, Michael Jackson. So, since we began this year’s festivities with a retrospective on Prince’s 1984 movie debut Purple Rain, it’s only right that we bookend it with a piece on 1988’s Moonwalker: the first full-length feature film dedicated to the music of Michael Jackson.
First, a word of warning. If you’ve been paying attention to my Jheri Curl Cinema series, you’ll have noticed one thing that these films all have in common: judged by conventional critical standards, they’re just not very good. And Moonwalker, quite frankly, is the worst so far. To get an idea of how “not-good”–one might even say “Bad”–Moonwalker is, please note that the film’s distributor, Warner Bros., cancelled a planned Christmas 1988 theatrical release in the United States over financial concerns; just under two years later, however, they apparently had enough faith in Prince’s filmmaking nadir, Graffiti Bridge, to inflict it on cinema audiences worldwide. When your film is considered to have less commercial potential than Graffiti Bridge, you know something is amiss.
That’s right, folks, it’s finally here: Jheri Curl June has returned, and this year it’s going to be even better than before. For those of you new to the party, I wrote an introduction last year that I highly recommend, as it provides a definition and brief history of the genre we like to call Jheri Curl Music. In brief, though, JCM is R&B music, primarily from the early-to-mid-1980s, that “embodies the properties of the jheri curl itself.” It’s “an intrinsically hybrid style: somewhere between Black and white, kinky and straight, silky and dry. It’s fussy and high-maintenance. And, like the Jheri curl parody ‘Soul Glo‘ in John Landis’ 1988 comedy Coming to America, it leaves a greasy residue on everything it touches.”
This year’s Jheri Curl June will follow the same basic format as last year’s: every weekday, we’ll update with a brief post highlighting a classic JCM cut, which we’ll also add to a growing Spotify playlist to be found at the bottom of each post. We’ll always try to provide something visual along with the music–jheri curl is, after all, a profoundly visual genre–but this time around we’re going to be a little less dependent on video clips, as there’s a lot of great jheri curl music that isn’t on YouTube (there’s a lot that isn’t on Spotify, too, but that’s a separate issue). Every week, probably on Fridays, we’ll also have a special feature post that goes into greater depth on a particular artist, album, or film. That’s right, I said film…look forward to a more in-depth discussion of Jheri Curl Cinema next week.
Right now, though, I want to get right to the festivities. So join me after the jump, and find out who’s kicking off the second annual Jheri Curl June.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a new form of predominantly African American popular music began to take shape. Rooted in soul and funk music, but largely stripped of those genres’ grit; with elements of rock and disco, and at least one eye forever resting on potential radio play; the loosely-defined style has gone by a variety of names, including post-disco, pop/funk, and the maddeningly nondescript “urban.” But Callie and I have always preferred to call it “Jheri Curl Music.”
Jheri Curl Music is not necessarily music made by artists sporting the once-trendy hairstyle invented by hairdresser Robert William “Jheri” Redding–though obviously there is a good amount of overlap. Instead, we see it as music that embodies the properties of the Jheri curl itself. Jheri curl, whether the hair or the music, is an intrinsically hybrid style: somewhere between Black and white, kinky and straight, silky and dry. It’s fussy and high-maintenance. And, like the Jheri curl parody “Soul Glo” in John Landis’ 1988 comedy Coming to America, it leaves a greasy residue on everything it touches. Not all R&B from the early to mid-’80s qualifies as J.C.M.; but when you hear that telltale sign–usually a particular kind of muted guitar, clean slapped bass, or synthesizer squeal–you will recognize it instantly for what it is.
Along with its namesake hairdo, jheri curl music faded from mainstream popularity by the end of the 1980s: eclipsed largely by another hybrid R&B style, the hip-hop-influenced New Jack Swing (or maybe we should call it “hi-top fade music”). But it’s never really gone away. Tune in to the obligatory “old-school hour” on any Adult Contemporary R&B radio station worth its salt, and you’ll hear plenty of jheri curl alongside the smooth soul and quiet storm. In recent years, too, the career resurgences of jheri-curl innovators Prince and (posthumously) Michael Jackson–not to mention the coming of age of legions of ’80s kids–have driven a critical and popular reappraisal of music that would have been considered dated and kitschy twenty years ago. Indeed, the sound has been steadily creeping back into contemporary artists’ repertoires since the early 2000s or so: everyone from Snoop Dogg to Daft Punk has gone to the jheri curl well at least a few times, while artists like Dâm-Funk and Chromeo have made it a foundation of their musical styles.
So for the month of June, we’ll be celebrating jheri curl music with a new classic jheri curl video every weekday. Why? Basically because we love J.C.M., and the month of June starts with a “J” (and “Jheri Curl July” just doesn’t sound as good as “Jheri Curl June”). We’ll also be adding to the Spotify playlist at the bottom of this and every other Jheri Curl June post, so you can have easy access to a bunch of classic Jheri curl cuts to bump in your home, car, gym, or hair salon. Today, I’m kicking things off with what might be my choice for the ultimate jheri-curl song, Carl Carlton‘s 1981 single “She’s a Bad Mama Jama (She’s Built, She’s Stacked)”:
“Bad Mama Jama” has a lot of things to recommend it as a classic of J.C.M.: including its lascivious lyrics in the tradition of the Commodores’ “Brick House,” praising a woman who’s “got all the curves a man like” and gets Carl “so excited viewing her anatomy.” But what really makes it for me is that bass synth line, as curly and wet as Carlton’s hairdo. The song is the essence of Jheri curl: sleek, stylish, and more than a little sleazy. I can’t think of a better way to kick off Jheri Curl June.
See you tomorrow!