A year later, the outstanding guitarist Bruce Conte and celebrated organist Chester Thompson became primary soloists alongside the horns, cementing with a multi-cultural wallop an honest amalgamation of sounds. His role quickly ignited the soul core of ToP. Singer Lenny Williams, who'd become the band's new voice, had roots in gospel and a work pedigree which included Sly Stone, Billy Preston and Andrae Crouch. However, Tower of Power's eponymous third album (Warner Brothers, 1973) featured "So Very Hard to Go" and "What is Hip?," and by follow-up Back to Oakland (Warner Brothers, 1974), they'd defined the genre. 1972's successful Bump City album introduced Rick Stevens, vocalist ("You're Still a Young Man"), whose brief career would prove to be utterly star-crossed. The band's emulsion of genres, so vital to a period in which African American and Latino culture, too, took the mainstream in defiance of institutional racism. Also arriving with the band's 1970 recording debut East Bay Grease were singer Rufus Miller, trumpet player/arranger Greg Adams, first trumpeter Mic Gillette, saxophonist Skip Mesquite, percussionist Brent Byers and the hugely influential bassist Francis Prestia. Garibaldi, after a lengthy break, returned to the driver's seat in 1998. By 1970, drummer David Garibaldi had joined, shaping the rhythmic foundation while helping to define the role of the drum set in funk along the way. Suffice to say, the brass and woods were never sacrificed in favor of synths, let alone a preponderance of Lite-FM ballads. The two saxophonists quickly filled out the horn section, adding propulsive rhythm to it all. Tower of Power was founded by tenor saxophonist and vocalist Emilio Castillo, originally from Detroit, and Stephen Kupka (baritone saxophone). ![]() Like rock and roll itself, this was an artform of African Americans, yet few members of the most popular horn bands have been people of color. It's no small irony that R&B artists begat the tradition of imbedding horns into the music, an outgrowth of late1940s jump bands. Into the 1970s, numerous rock ensembles either formed around a horn section or similarly adopted one, so exciting the concept: Joe Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Janis Joplin's Kozmic Blues Band, the revolutionary all-women Isis, Elephant's Memory (Lennon-Ono collaborators) and blue-eyed hitmakers Rare Earth among them, with Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes carrying the torch into the next decade. ![]() And on isolated singles, the Beatles, the Stones, the Doors, the Rascals and so many others were briefly enraptured in brass. As "horn bands" became a thing, the Grass Roots (studio musicians, sure, but an explosive lot out of the Wrecking Crew), the Electric Flag, the second Butterfield Blues Band, the Buckinghams, Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, Ten Wheel Drive, Brass Construction, Chase, Average White Band and the Ides of March (remember "Vehicle"?) tossed this urgency through the pop charts. ![]() Even then, the soulif you willof Tower of Power was born in the muscular arrangements and searing leads of the former as much as the latter's R&B core. ![]() The band, initially dubbed the Motowns, was founded at the juncture which begat Blood Sweat and Tears, Chicago Transit Authority, and Earth Wind and Fire. A big band of scorching funk, Tower of Power traces its roots to 1968 Oakland, where it flourished in a thicket of sound tearing at industry barriers. Horns? They've carried up to six at a time, to hell with diminished door splits. And this convergence of forces, clearly, has yet to cool some 53 years hence. In the realm of power funk and jazz-rock, Tower of Power was an original voice, one carved from a unique place within an exceptionally heady moment.
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