Stories — Brother Louie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-5Y5PX2qHQ

Stories was an early 1970s rock and pop music band based in New York. The band consisted of keyboardist Michael Brown, bassist/vocalist Ian Lloyd, guitarist Steve Love, and drummer Bryan Madey, and had a Number 1 hit with a cover of Hot Chocolate’s “Brother Louie.”

Ian Lloyd (b. Lloyd Buonconsiglio, 1947, Seattle) is an American rock singer and songwriter, best known as the lead singer of the band Stories, whose single “Brother Louie” was number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1973.[1]

In 1971 Michael Brown and Ian Lloyd formed Stories. They released two albums (“Stories” and “About Us”) with a handful of Billboard Top 100 charting singles. Brown left before the band recorded their third (and final) album, (Traveling Underground) which was released under the artist’s name, “Ian Lloyd and Stories”, and included the Billboard top 40 hit, “Mammy Blue”. After Stories he pursued a solo career, with six albums to his credit. Lloyd has performed with numerous recording artists, assuming the role of a session musician. His long discography of work includes background work with artists such as Foreigner, Billy Joel, Peter Frampton, and Yes.

Lloyd continues to record, perform, and was a backup singer, Lloyd worked with numerous major recording artists, most notably Foreigner, who used Lloyd’s vocals on hits like “Feels Like the First Time,” “Cold as Ice,” “Waiting for a Girl Like You,” “Juke Box Hero”, and “Double Vision.” Lloyd can also be heard on Billy Joel’s “I Go to Extremes”, as well as tracks by Yes, Peter Frampton, Survivor, and Ian McDonald.rite, his most recent release being “Everyone’s Happy Cause It’s Christmas Time”.

The Jaggerz — The Rapper

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptZJuU0sFL8

The Jaggerz are a pop/rock band from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They are a one-hit wonder, their only major success being the single “The Rapper”. Released on the Kama Sutra label, “The Rapper” was #2 in the Billboard Hot 100 chart for two weeks in March 1970, and sold over one million copies with the gold record awarded by the R.I.A.A..[1]
The band’s name derives from the Pittsburgh English slang term, “jagger bush,” meaning a thorny bush.[2] They were managed by The Skyliners manager, Joe Rock.

Donnie Iris (born Dominic Ierace on February 28, 1943) is an American rock musician known for his work with The Jaggerz and Wild Cherry during the 1970s, and for his solo albums since the 1980s with his backing band, the Cruisers. He wrote the #2 Billboard hit, “The Rapper”, with the Jaggerz in 1970 and was a member of Wild Cherry after the group had a #1 hit with “Play That Funky Music.” He became known as a solo artist in the early 1980s with the #29 hit “Ah! Leah! and the #37 hit “Love Is Like a Rock”.

In addition to performing on the first three Jaggerz albums and the fourth and final Wild Cherry album, Iris with his solo band has released eleven studio albums, one EP, two live albums, and two compilation albums. He continues to release new material and tours throughout the greater Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Youngstown and Cleveland, Ohio areas.

 

information from wikipedia

Lee Michaels —- Do You Know What I Mean

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JasHDzxaPYY

Lee Eugene Michaels (born Michael Olsen, November 24, 1945, Los Angeles, California) is a rock musician who performs vocals and accompanies himself on organ, piano, or guitar. He is best known for his energetic virtuosity on the Hammond organ, peaking in 1971 with his Top 10 pop hit single, “Do You Know What I Mean”.

One of the most interesting second-division California psychedelic musicians, keyboardist Lee Michaels was one of the most soulful white vocalists of the late ’60s and early ’70s. Between 1968 and 1972, he released half a dozen accomplished albums on A&M that encompassed baroque psychedelic pop and gritty white (sometimes gospel-ish) R&B with equal facility. A capable songwriter, Michaels was blessed with an astonishing upper range, occasionally letting loose some thrilling funky wails. In 1971, he landed a surprise Top Ten single with “Do You Know What I Mean,” one of the best and funkiest AM hits of the early ’70s.
But Michaels was really much more of an album-oriented artist, from the time he began recording in the late ’60s. Michaels started playing music in Southern California, where he was in a band with future members of Moby Grape, the Turtles, and Canned Heat. By the time he signed to A&M, however, he’d moved to San Francisco, joining the management stable of Matthew Katz (which also included, at various times, Jefferson Airplane, Moby Grape, and It’s a Beautiful Day). Michaels was unusual for a San Francisco act in that he relied mostly on an organ-based sound, especially after the first pair of albums, when for a time he played (live and in the studio) with the mammoth drummer “Frosty” as his only accompanist.
“Do You Know What I Mean,” ironically, was a throwaway tune that Michaels wrote hurriedly. Though Lee himself didn’t think much of it, the song was a first-rate blast of blue-eyed soul; around this time, the gospel influence that had often informed his sound came to the fore. His albums in the mid-’70s for Columbia, however, were both critical and commercial disappointments. Michaels moved to Hawaii for an extended retirement from the music business. In the early ’80s he announced the forthcoming independent release of a new solo album entitled Absolute Lee, which finally saw distribution through One Way Records in 1996; however, little has been heard from him since. ~ Richie Unterberger, Rovi

(information taken from wikipedia.org and billboard.com)