Ronnie Wilson, Founder of the Gap Band, Dies at 73
After beginning his career as a teenager, he joined with his two younger brothers to record R&B hits like “You Dropped a Bomb on Me” and “Outstanding.”Ronnie Wilson, the founder of the Gap Band, which rode a funky party sound to success on the R&B charts in the late 1970s and throughout the ’80s, died on Tuesday. He was 73.The death was announced on Facebook by Mr. Wilson’s wife, Linda Boulware-Wilson. She did not say where he died or what the cause was.The Gap Band topped the R&B charts four times and placed 15 songs in the R&B Top 10 from 1979 to 1990; two of its singles, “Early in the Morning” and “You Dropped a Bomb on Me,” reached the pop Top 40 in 1982. Ronnie Wilson primarily played keyboards but also contributed horn and percussion parts in a rotating vocal and instrumental arrangement with his two younger brothers, Robert, who mainly played bass, and Charlie, the lead singer.Hits like “Burn Rubber on Me (Why You Wanna Hurt Me)” (1980) defined the Gap Band’s sound, which The New York Times critic Stephen Holden described in 1981 as “swinging minimalist funk — sweaty, slangy and streetwise.” Some of their other best-known tracks, like “Outstanding” (1982), struck an erotic tone in a softer manner — less stomping of the feet, more rolling of the hips.The Gap Band appeared on “Soul Train,” the premier television showcase for Black music at the time, and appeared in concert alongside bands like Kool & the Gang.In the years after their popularity peaked, the Gap Band’s tunes were sampled hundreds of times. Ashanti’s 2002 hit “Happy” got its leisurely, bouncy sound from “Outstanding,” and N.W.A.’s canonical “Straight Outta Compton” sped up and darkened “Burn Rubber on Me.”The Gap Band on “Soul Train” in 1979.Afro American Newspapers/Gado, via Getty ImagesIn an interview with the weekly San Francisco newspaper The Sun-Reporter in 1999, Mr. Wilson said that he and his younger brothers were addressed with the honorific “Uncle” before their names by current music stars like Snoop Dogg “because we helped to lay the foundation for hip-hop.”Ronnie Wilson was born on April 7, 1948, in Tulsa, Okla. His father, Oscar, was a minister, and Ronnie and his brothers grew up playing music in church.Ronnie formed his first band as a teenager, and over time he got his brothers involved. The word “Gap” in the Gap Band’s name came from Greenwood Avenue, Archer Street and Pine Street in Tulsa’s Greenwood district — the neighborhood, once known as Black Wall Street, that was the site of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre.The group got an early boost in the music business, and met stars like Bob Dylan, thanks to the rock singer and pianist Leon Russell, long based in Tulsa, who had the Gap Band back him on his album “Stop All That Jazz” (1974). The Wilson brothers signed their first major-label deal, with Mercury, a few years later.Ronnie Wilson later worked as a minister and continued to perform occasionally. His brother Charlie pursued a successful solo singing career. The other brother in the band, Robert, died in 2010.A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.Sheelagh McNeill More
