Biography All Music Guide Wikipedia
Group Members: Felton Pilate, Michael Cooper
All Music Guide:
Con Funk Shun was formed by high-school classmates Michael Cooper and Louis "Tony" McCall, along with Karl Fuller, Paul "Maceo" Harrell, Dennis Johnson, Cedric Martin, and Danny "Sweet Man" Thomas. All of them had been playing together since their high-school days in Vallejo, CA. Felton Pilate, also from Vallejo, joined the group after his band, a local rival, disbanded.
In the early '70s, the group was a backup band for the Soul Children with the name Project Soul. And when they weren't on the road with the Soul Children, they were creatively working with various Stax staff writers. In the mid-'70s, Project Soul made an effort to become a headliner, but they met dead-ends and little success. However, they found good fortune at Audio Dimensions, a Memphis recording studio owned by producer Ted Sturges. Around this time, he group named itself after the title of one of their instrumentals, "Con Funk Shun." During their three-year stint at Audio Dimensions, Sturges, besides owning the studio, was also Con Funk Shun's producer. Their association resulted in the group's first album, Organized Con Funk Shun.
As their sound developed, Pilate and Cooper emerged as the primary lead vocalists. Around the time their first album for Crankshaft Productions, Inc. was being recorded, the eighth member, MC and technician Dennis Johnson, left the group to attend seminary in California. By 1976, the group signed to Mercury, where they remained for ten years. Their first hit for Mercury was "Ffun," written by Michael Cooper as a tribute to the R&B/funk band Brick. One of the premiere party funk bands of its time, they also began recording ballads and instrumental tracks by the early '80s. Aside from being the primary musicians on all their albums, Con Funk Shun also contributed to each of their albums as writers, arrangers, and/or producers.
Burnin' Love, the septet's last album with Mercury, was recorded without their longtime musical center, Felton Pilate, who left the group in 1986 to become a successful producer. (Pilate eventually became the musical force behind MC Hammer.) Melvin Carter, a frequent collaborator of Con Funk Shun, joined the group upon Pilate's exit, and that same year Michael Cooper left for a solo career. Con Funk Shun disbanded after their last album with Mercury, but reunited in the '90s, and began performing at festivals and concerts around the world.
Wikipedia:
Con Funk Shun is an American R&B and funk band popular in the 1970s and 1980s. Influences include James Brown and Sly & the Family Stone.
History
The band was formed by a pair of high school students in Vallejo, California, drummer Louis A. McCall Sr. and singer/guitarist Michael Cooper. The two got their start as a backup group for the Soul Children under the name Project Soul. They began working with Stax Records staff songwriters, and while recording at Audio Dimensions, a Memphis, Tennessee sound studio, producer Ted Sturges both named the group (after an instrumental recording by The Nite-Liters) and produced their first album, Organized Con Funk Shun.
In 1976, Con Funk Shun signed to Mercury Records, releasing eleven albums over a span of ten years. The group's 1977 LP, Secrets, was certified gold in the US, as were 1978's Loveshine, 1979's Candy, and 1980's Spirit of Love. They scored a string of top ten hits on the US Billboard black singles chart, including 1977's "Ffun" (#1), 1978's "Shake and Dance with Me" (#5), 1979's "Chase Me" (#4), 1980s "Got to Be Enough" (#8), and "Too Tight" (#8). Tensions from within the group built over the 1980s, and the group's last album, Burning Love, was recorded without songwriter and vocalist Felton Pilate. After leaving Mercury, the band broke up in 1986, but some members of the group reunited alongside touring musicians for concerts in the 1990s. In May, 2008, ConFunkShun celebrated 35 years together with a special anniversary cruise with many of their biggest fans.
File:Confunkshun.jpgDeath of Louis A. McCall Sr.
Original drummer Louis A. McCall Sr. was murdered in a robbery at his Stone Mountain, Georgia Village Square Apartments home on June 25, 1997. It would be a full ten years before a suspect Marques Clair, would finally be indicted in 2007 in connection with the murder.
Though Marques Clair was finally indicted in 2007, on July 23, 2008, just two days after the start of the murder trial of the killing of McCall, Superior Court Judge Gregory Adams stopped the trial, "based on an omission" in information, said Jada Hudspeth, a spokeswoman for the DeKalb County Georgia district attorney's office. Hudspeth said District Attorney Gwen Keyes Fleming and her staff will evaluate the evidence in the case before deciding whether to retry Clair. Marques Clair, now 29, was arrested as a suspect in McCall's slaying in 1999, but prosecutors dropped the charge due to the District Attorneys refusal to bring the case before a jury without sufficient evidence.
On August 7, 2008, after the trial ended in a mistrial, the charges against Clair were formally dismissed with prejudice.
Legacy
Con Funk Shun continues to receive airplay on US soul radio stations that play music of the 1970s and 1980s. Additionally, their back-beats have been repeatedly sampled by later artists in Hip Hop, R&B, and rap. Most recently, "Honey Wild", (written by Louis McCall; his wife, Linda Lou McCall; and Danny Thomas), from their 1980 Spirit of Love album was sampled by Lil Wayne for his CD Tha Carter III - Deluxe Edition. In 1996, Dru Hill covered the song on their self-titled début album which was produced by Keith Sweat.
