Dominated by drive and momentum, heavy on percussion and bass, go-go music is all about the beat. Live, "songs" can continue on for half an hour, as the percussion continues to simmer and punctuate between and across different pieces. "That's why we call it go-go, because it goes on and goes on and goes on," as guitarist Andre Johnson put it in a documentary film.
While the Tiny Desk doesn't allow for that kind of expansive get-down — though they did play seven songs — this visit by Rare Essence perfectly encapsulated the genre's incomparable meld of soul, R&B and, most importantly, funk (with a dash of Afro-Cuban influence).
Rare Essence emerged not long after go-go itself did, beginning as a group in 1976 in Washington D.C. Ever since the group has kept a steady schedule playing around town and around the world — they have ten shows scheduled for the month of July alone.
DC go-go music pioneer Rory “DC” Felton was killed in Southwest Washington, DC on Friday, and detectives are searching for the person who stabbed him.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God” were the only words Penny Felton could say when she got the news that her husband of 36 years was stabbed several times inside of a home on Forrester Street in SW DC.
“Me knowing the type of person he was and how happy he was and how much he liked living, it just weighed me down,” Felton said. “I really was numb.”
DC Felton was the guy everyone seemed to know.
He was one of the original members of longtime DC go-go band Rare Essence and later played with Benny and the Masters.
If he was not rocking his saxophone, he was catching every beat on the cowbell or busting a dance move.
“He loved go-go. He loved anything R&B that had a go-go beat to it,” Lakeisha Duhart told WUSA9. [Read More]
Maxx Kidd “was the Berry Gordy of Washington and got radio stations to play go-go,” says Gregory “Sugarbear” Elliot of EU, referencing the president of Motown in speaking of Carl Lomax Kidd, the music industry entrepreneur, producer, singer, and songwriter who died in Maryland on March 13 at the age of 75. ”He really fought for us. If it wasn’t for him I don’t think go-go would ever have really gotten on the radio."
Although best known for his involvement in promoting D.C.’s homegrown funky polyrhythmic style, Kidd had first established himself locally as a part of the 1960s and 1970s local soul music scene, and later as a music industry marketing person advocating for American R&B acts to get airplay at radio stations everywhere.
Kidd, who grew up in West Virginia, came to D.C. in 1960. After a stint as a calypso singer at a drive-in restaurant, Kidd joined The Enjoyables, whose 1966 Motown-flavored single “Shame"—written and produced by Kidd on the D.C. label Shrine—never became a hit but later became a sought after piece of wax by British vinyl collectors. Shrine was the 1964-1967 R&B label led by songwriter Eddie Singleton and his wife, Raynoma Gordy Singleton (the ex-wife of Motown’s Berry Gordy). Kevin Coombe, a local DJ who is working on a book about the local soul scene, says that Kidd was active at Shrine as a songwriter, and around that time he also met and wrote for Gene “Duke of Earl” Chandler and Billy Butler on other labels. Later, Kidd's connections got a single distributed through Curtis Mayfield’s label Curtom.
Between 1967 and 1975 Kidd wrote songs for various acts, from D.C. and elsewhere, that got released on a number of different labels from ABC Paramount to Buddah to his own Cherry Blossom label. D.C.’s The Stridells, a group from Eastern High School, had a regional hit in 1970, with a song he co-wrote called “Mix it Up.” A number of tunes from this era were compiled on a now out-of-print 2006 release called Washington Lost Soul—Carl 'Maxx' Kidd Singles Collection Vol. 1. It included girl group The Fawns, proto-go-go group The Young Senators, and Elvans Road Ltd., amongst others.
The roots of Kidd’s involvement with go-go also started around this time. Coombe notes that in 1972 “Maxx Kidd was actually the one who introduced Chuck Brown to the representative at Sussex Records” who released Chuck Brown and The Soul Searchers' We The People. In 1974, Kidd’s awesome and funky number “Blow Your Whistle”— that uses the term “go-go”—appeared on Brown and The Soul Searchers' Salt of the Earth.
Al Marks, who later worked for A&M Records, met Kidd in the 1970s when Marks was working for record stores, and as a buyer who sold records to various stores. “I was a 21-year-old white kid who didn’t know anything about R&B music," Marks says. "Waxie Maxie’s was the biggest R&B account in the town. Maxx took the time to educate me as to what it was all about. What the R&B scene was all about. What it took to make a record a hit.” Charles Stephenson, former EU manager and later co-author of the book The Beat! Go-go Music from Washington, D.C. called him “the professor," and says he "learned so much about the business from him.” [Read More]
Anyone who caught a gig by the late godfather of go-go, Chuck Brown, probably heard his fans screaming that line — and now, it shows up in the name of a new musical at Georgetown University.
Wind Me Up, Maria! stars freshman Myiah Smith, who spent most of her childhood in D.C. Hailing from a line of go-go musicians, she sometimes finds herself explaining go-go to her fellow students.
"What I found consistently is that people are always, ‘Oh, go-go dancers, yeah!" Smith says, "and I'm like, ‘No, no. That's not what it is.’”
Smith plays Maria, a Georgetown upperclassman who fetches a summer job tutoring a group of international students. She instructs them on things like SAT vocabulary — using go-go as a teaching guide. [Read More]
The District of Columbia honors go-go “godfather” Chuck Brown in many ways. There is, of course, the Chuck Brown Memorial Park as well as Chuck Brown Way along 7th Avenue NW. Muralist Aniekan Udofia’s rendering of Brown looks down from the side of Ben’s Chili Bowl. The Chuck Brown Band and many other go-go artists continue to perform the music he created.
And then there are less formal tributes, such as the substantial portion of the local population that can correctly complete the phrase “Chuck baby don’t give a _____.”
During his lifetime, Brown won wider recognition, most notably the National Endowment for the Arts Lifetime Heritage Fellowship. But for Brown’s friends and admirers, that’s simply not enough. After all, Brown was an essentially self-taught musician who devised an entire genre of music that quickly became the heartbeat of the DMV’s black communities.
Next month, Brown will receive yet another honor: On Oct. 20, the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame will induct Brown, connecting his legacy with the state’s other homegrown musical giants, which include John Coltrane, Nine Simone, and George Clinton. Brown’s sons Nekos Brown and Wiley Brown will accept the award at the ceremony, which takes place in Kannapolis, N.C. The guest list so far includes Charles Stephenson (co-author of the first book on the go-go genre), trumpeter Steve Coleman (formerly of Brown’s band The Soul Searchers), and longtime Trouble Funk percussionist Timothius “Teebone” David.
While a ceremony approximately six hours away from D.C. may not resonate with Brown’s fans at home, the Hall of Fame induction is still meaningful. “This would have meant the world to my father,” says Nekos Brown. “He always talked about his North Carolina roots. He was born in Gaston, and before he moved up to Virginia and into D.C., his music base came from North Carolina. He would have been very excited, very grateful.” [Read More]
Aug. 22 will mark the birthday of Chuck Brown, the D.C. musician widely known as the Godfather of Go-Go music who died four years ago at the age of 75. In a Northeast D.C. park named in his honor, music lovers and residents paid tribute to the genre innovator Saturday.
“Chuck Brown is like the Michael Jackson of D.C.,” said Harvey Jones, an amateur musician who drew inspiration for his own music from the singer-guitarist. “I just love him, I just love his music; he’s the number one.”
Hundreds of people moved and grooved to the music of the Chuck Brown Band, Plunky and the Oneness, and Secret Society on stage at Chuck Brown Memorial Park (2901 20th St. NE).
“This is the second annual Chuck Brown Day … he’s legendary and we’re excited so many people are out here today,” said Gwendolyn Crump of the D.C. Parks and Recreation Department.
The Chuck Brown Foundation — headed by the late artist’s sons Nekos and Wiley — handed out more than 900 back-to-school backpacks at the event.
“We’re all about the people. We strive for things that our father lived through and things he believed in,” said Nekos Brown who said the foundation focuses on education, homelessness and helping those freed from incarceration readjust to society. [Read More]
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