Kool & the Gang

Few American acts have roamed as widely across genres as Kool & the Gang. Seven Jersey City school friends started in 1964 as an instrumental jazz and soul outfit called the Jazziacs, and over the following decades the group took in R&B, funk, disco, rock and pop along the way. Robert "Kool" Bell and his brother Ronald stayed at the centre of a line-up that changed many times, and the band's restless appetite for different styles became its defining trait.

Their debut, Kool and the Gang, arrived on De-Lite Records in 1969 as an all-instrumental record. The first real mainstream breakthrough came with Wild and Peaceful in 1973, which produced the US top-ten singles "Jungle Boogie" and "Hollywood Swinging". A second peak followed between 1979 and 1986, after a partnership with Brazilian producer Eumir Deodato and the arrival of singer J.T. Taylor, with Emergency (1984) selling two million copies in the US and "Celebration" reaching US No. 1 in 1980. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2024.