Celebration (Song)

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    George Brown of Kool & the Gang Dies at 74

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    Mr. Brown kept time for a group that combined funk, disco, R&B and jazz to create some of the most memorable pop songs of the 1970s.George Brown, a founding member and drummer of the group Kool & the Gang, who played on funk, disco and pop hits that featured prominently in movies and have been sampled numerous times, died on Thursday in Long Beach, Calif. He was 74.His death, at a hospital, was confirmed in a statement by the band’s publicist, who said the cause was cancer. Mr. Brown had said publicly that he had lung cancer.Mr. Brown, known as Funky, was a key contributor to several of the band’s biggest hits, including “Ladies Night,” “Jungle Boogie” and the party anthem “Celebration.”In a July interview with NPR, he described Kool & the Gang as “the sound of happiness.”In 1964, Mr. Brown linked up with Ricky Westfield and the brothers Ronald Khalis Bell and Robert “Kool” Bell, as well as other friends — Spike Mickens, Dennis “Dee Tee” Thomas and Charles Smith — to form a band that would combine jazz, funk, disco and R&B and create some of the most memorable pop songs of their era.Formed in Jersey City, N.J., the band first played jazz while members attended Lincoln High School. The band performed under several names, including the Jazziacs, but eventually settled on Kool & the Gang in the late 1960s.One of the band’s early names was Kool and the Flames but the group changed the Flames to the Gang to avoid confusion with James Brown’s group, the Famous Flames.Kool & the Gang in the 1970s. Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesGeorge Brown was born on Jan. 15, 1949. His father, George Melvin Brown Sr., worked in the coal industry while his mother, Eleanor White Brown, was a maid in Fort Lee, N.J., and also worked as a key puncher.Both made music a constant part of Mr. Brown’s upbringing, Mr. Brown recalled in his memoir released this year, “Too Hot: Kool & the Gang & Me.”Mr. Brown, who took to drumming at a young age, wrote that he saved up from a newspaper delivery route to buy his first drum set.In a 2015 interview with Red Bull Music Academy, Mr. Brown described using butter knives as drum sticks when he first started playing.“Then I went down to a music store on Newark Avenue in Jersey City and took a $3 lesson from a gentleman who used to play with the Shirelles. He said, ‘Hey man, you’re a natural!’” Mr. Brown recalled. “So he gave me ‘Buddy Rich’s 16 Essential Snare Drum Rudiments’ book. I took one more lesson and never went back.”The band was signed by the producer Gene Redd to De-Lite Records 1969.The members were in an early recording session in New York for their instrumental debut album, “Kool and the Gang,” when Mr. Redd encouraged Mr. Brown and Ronald Bell to just “do something.” It led to a freewheeling recording session that produced songs like “Raw Hamburger” and the album opener, “Kool & the Gang.”“It just flowed. And we’re just grooving,” Mr. Brown told The New York Times in an interview last year.George Brown on drums in 1974.Getty ImagesThe sound carried over into the 1970s as the band found fame and added the vocalist J.T. Taylor.Songs like “Jungle Boogie” “Hollywood Swinging” and “Funky Stuff” became Billboard chart staples. “Celebration” — with its cheery chorus “Celebrate good times, come on!” — made it all the way to the top.The group would go on to release dozens of albums, tour worldwide and appeared on the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack, which won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978.The group’s songs have frequently appeared on film and television soundtracks, including for “Pulp Fiction” in 1994.In 2015, the band was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.Mr. Brown was a producer on an album that the band released this year, called “People Just Want To Have Fun” in anticipation of the group’s 60th anniversary.Kool & the Gang had a broad influence, particularly in hip-hop.According to the website WhoSampled, the band has been sampled in almost 2,000 songs, among the highest of all time. The band’s song “Summer Madness” accounts for 249 samples, by artists including Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg and Mary J. Blige.Ronald Khalis Bell, a singer, songwriter and saxophonist for the band, died in 2020. Mr. Thomas, who played saxophone, died in 2021.Mr. Brown is survived by his wife, Hanh Brown, and five children: Dorian Melvin Brown, Jorge Lewis Brown, Gregory Brown, Jordan Xuan Clarence Brown and Aaron Tien Joseph Brown.Three years ago, Mr. Brown was diagnosed with lung cancer, according to an interview broadcast with the television station KCAL in Los Angeles. After surgery and chemotherapy, Mr. Brown recovered and returned to touring in 2022. But this year, the cancer returned.“I didn’t plan on being in a band known around the world, but I welcomed it when it came,” Mr. Brown wrote in his book. “I didn’t know where the music would lead me, but I knew that if I remained focused and persevered, it would happen as God had intended. And it did.” More

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      Madonna Hospitalized with Infection, Postpones ‘Celebration’ Tour

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      The 64-year-old pop icon was hospitalized for several days and remains under medical care, her agent said. A new start date for her tour has not been announced.Madonna was hospitalized for several days with a “serious bacterial infection,” forcing her to postpone her forthcoming “Celebration” tour, her manager said on Wednesday.The 64-year-old pop icon developed the infection on Saturday, leading to a stay in an intensive care unit, her manager, Guy Oseary, wrote on Instagram.“Her health is improving, however she is still under medical care,” he said. “A full recovery is expected.”Madonna’s world tour was set to begin on July 15 in Vancouver and to last seven months, highlighting songs from the past 40 years of her career.A new start date for her tour has not been announced.Madonna announced her tour, which would be her 12th, in January, with a five-minute black-and-white video that showed her speaking at a dinner party with a group of famous friends. Her conversation and party games made references to her some of her songs, like “S.E.X.” and “La Isla Bonita,” as well as her documentary and concert film “Truth or Dare.”“I am excited to explore as many songs as possible in hopes to give my fans the show they have been waiting for,” Madonna said in the video.Tickets for her “Celebration” shows in New York, London, Paris and Amsterdam sold out in minutes, according to Billboard.The tour, produced by Live Nation, was to span about 40 cities before concluding in Mexico City on Jan. 30, 2024.In North America, she had stops planned in Detroit, Chicago, New York, Miami and Los Angeles. In Europe, she was scheduled to perform in London, Barcelona, Paris and Stockholm.Caldwell Tidicue, a New York comedian better known as Bob the Drag Queen, was slated to appear as a guest on all dates of the tour.“The Celebration Tour will take us on Madonna’s artistic journey through four decades,” the tour announcement said.After announcing the tour, Madonna collaborated with the pop and R&B singer The Weeknd and rapper Playboi Carti on the single “Popular.” The collaboration brought her back to Billboard’s Hot 100 chart for the first time in years. More

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      Dennis ‘Dee Tee’ Thomas, Saxophonist for Kool & the Gang, Dies at 70

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      Mr. Thomas was a co-founder of the band, which was known for its hits such as “Celebration,” “Get Down on It” and “Jungle Boogie.”Dennis “Dee Tee” Thomas, a saxophonist and a founding member of the band Kool & the Gang, died on Saturday in New Jersey. He was 70.Mr. Thomas died in his sleep, according to a statement from his representatives that did not specify a cause of his death or where in New Jersey he died.Mr. Thomas was a co-founder of the long-running band Kool & the Gang, known for hits such as “Celebration,” “Get Down on It” and “Jungle Boogie.” He saw the band, which experimented with sounds from soul, funk, jazz, pop and R&B, through numerous lineup changes.Mr. Thomas was a “huge personality” in the band, his representatives said, and he helped style the performers’ wardrobes to ensure “they always looked fresh.”“Dennis was known as the quintessential cool cat in the group, loved for his hip clothes and hats, and his laid-back demeanor,” the statement said.The band won a Grammy Award in 1978, the decade when several of its upbeat hits climbed the charts.Around the time the band won a Grammy, it entered a slow period before adding a new vocalist, J.T. Taylor, and adapting its sound to match the disco sensibilities of the era. The group re-emerged in 1979 with the smash “Ladies’ Night,” an ode to a night of partying and dancing.Kool & the Gang, which formed in 1964, experimented with sounds from soul, funk, jazz, pop and R&B.Echoes/RedfernsThe band members followed the hit with the 1980 song “Celebration,” a timeless classic that embodied the group’s buoyant sound. The track became a staple at sporting events and any other displays of joy and enthusiasm. The song was inducted into the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress, an honor reserved for 25 songs every year that showcase the rich heritage of American music.The band members lent their voices to the 1984 charity single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” A number of the decade’s biggest artists recorded the track to draw attention to a famine in Ethiopia.Mr. Thomas formed Kool & the Gang in 1964 with six of his friends — Robert Bell, known as Kool; Ronald Bell; Spike Mickens; Ricky Westfield; George Brown; and Charles Smith. They first called themselves the “Jazziacs,” the statement said, before settling on the name “Kool & the Gang,” a nod to Robert Bell.“We learned that we had to simplify, that most simple music will grab a wide part of the audience,” Mr. Thomas told The New York Times in 1973, about choosing the group’s musical style. “Everybody in the group was a jazz musician at heart, but we knew we had to play R&B to make money.”Mr. Thomas was the band’s “budget hawk” in the early days, his representatives said, adding that he could be seen “carrying the group’s earnings in a paper bag in the bell of his horn.”Mr. Thomas’s alto saxophone solos were featured on several of the band’s tracks. He could also play the flute and percussion instruments, and he was the master of ceremonies at the band’s shows.His last performance with the band was on July 4 at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.Dennis Thomas was born on Feb. 9, 1951, in Orlando, Fla. He and his parents moved to Jersey City, N.J., when he was 2 years old, The Times reported in 1973. He grew up in the city’s Lafayette section, where he met the other founding members of Kool & the Gang.“We want to play a universal music,” Mr. Thomas said in 1973. “We want to lift our audiences up so they think about what they’ve heard.”The band had a dozen top 10 hits on the Billboard charts, and the group received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2015.Mr. Thomas was married to Phynjuar Saunders Thomas and lived in Montclair, N.J., his representatives said.One of his daughters, Michelle Thomas, was an actress on television shows, including “The Cosby Show,” “Family Matters” and “The Young and the Restless.” She died in 1998 of cancer at age 30. He was also preceded in death by another of his daughters, Tracy Jackson.In addition to his wife, he is survived by his daughter Tuesday Rankin; his sons David Thomas and Devin Thomas; his sisters Doris Mai McClary and Elizabeth Thomas Ross; his brother Bill Mcleary; an aunt and several nieces, nephews and grandchildren, the statement said. More