Rudolph Isley, an Original and Enduring Isley Brother, Dies at 84

He provided harmony vocals and the occasional lead. He also helped write
some of the group’s biggest hits, including “Shout,” “Fight the Power”
and “That Lady.”


By Jim Farber
Oct. 12, 2023Updated 7:57 p.m. ET

Rudolph Isley, who held dual roles in the influential vocal group the
Isley Brothers as a mellifluous harmony singer and co-writer of many of
their greatest hits, died on Wednesday at his home in Chicago. He was 84.

He died in his sleep, his brother Ernie said, adding that he was unaware
of any health issues his brother might have had.

Mr. Isley spent much of his three decades with the Isley Brothers
harmonizing with his brother O’Kelly in support of Ronald Isley’s lead vocals. But he also sang lead on some notable tracks. On “I’ve Got to
Get Myself Together,” recorded in 1969, his gentlemanly tone gave the
song a touch of grace. He also lent a suave lead to the group’s fleeting entry into the disco field, “It’s a Disco Night (Rock Don’t Stop),” which was a club hit in the United States in 1979 and reached the Top 20
in Britain.

The Isley Brothers were always fashionable, and in the 1970s and ’80s
Mr. Isley made a fashion statement of his own by wearing hats and furs
and carrying a bejeweled cane, giving the Isleys added panache.

He and his brothers wrote a number of pivotal hits, beginning with
“Shout,” the group’s 1959 breakthrough, which applied the dynamic of gospel music’s call-and-response to a pop context. They also wrote the enduring political anthem “Fight the Power,” a Top Five Billboard hit,
as well as the Top 10 pop hits “It’s Your Thing” and “That Lady.”


Sixteen of the Isley Brothers’ albums cracked the Billboard Top 40, 13
were certified gold and nine went platinum or multiplatinum.

In 1989, Mr. Isley retired from the mainstream music industry to pursue
his long-deferred dream of a career in the ministry, although he
continued to sing in church. He also recorded some gospel songs, and in
1996 released a religious album titled “Shouting for Jesus: A Loud
Joyful Noise.” He and his brothers were inducted into the Rock & Roll
Hall of Fame in 1992.

Rudolph Bernard Isley was born on April 1, 1939, in Cincinnati, the
second of six sons of Sallye (Bell) and O’Kelly Isley. He began singing
in church as a child, and during his teen years he and three of the
other older Isleys performed together and toured locally.

”I have some very special memories of listening to music with my
brothers when we were young,” Mr. Isley told the music journalist Leo
Sacks for the liner notes to a 1999 boxed set that Mr. Sacks produced, “It’s Your Thing: The Story of the Isley Brothers.” He added: “Billy Ward and the Dominoes, now that was a group. We idolized them. We got
our own thing together because we never lost that harmony group dynamic.”

In the group’s early days, the eldest brother, Vernon, sang lead. He was killed at age 13 when the bicycle he was riding was struck by a car, and
Ronald became the lead singer.

The Isleys were still quite young when Rudolph, O’Kelly and Ronald moved
to New York to pursue a record deal. Contracts with small labels led to
one with RCA, one of the biggest in the business, in 1959, and shortly
after that the Isleys wrote and recorded “Shout.” It sold over a million copies and came to be acknowledged as a rock ’n’ roll classic, spawning covers by Dion, Bruce Springsteen, Garth Brooks and many others. (It was
also heard in “National Lampoon’s Animal House” and other movies.)

In 1962, the Isleys had a Top 40 hit with their cover of “Twist and
Shout,” written by Bert Berns and Phil Medley and originally recorded a
year earlier by the Top Notes. Their recording provided a template for
the far more popular version recorded by the Beatles in 1963.

For a brief time in 1964, the Isley Brothers’ band included a young
guitarist named Jimmy James, who would later be known as Jimi Hendrix.


At the start of the 1970s, the group expanded to include the two
youngest siblings, Ernie and Marvin, along with Rudolph’s
brother-in-law, Chris Jasper; all three contributed instrumental work,
and Mr. Jasper also sang. The result was a mostly self-contained band,
another rarity for Black artists of the day. Together, they pioneered a
unique rock ’n’ roll-tinged brand of funk and soul. Over the years,
their music covered a wide range of genres, from doo-wop to gospel to quiet-storm ballads.

From 1973 through 1981, all the group’s albums went gold, platinum or multiplatinum. Most of the tracks on those albums were co-written by Mr.
Isley and the other members.

The group also scored a platinum album in 1986 with “Between the
Sheets,” whose title track offered their sensual answer to Marvin Gaye’s “Sexual Healing.” Rudolph Isley shared lead vocals with his brother
Ronald on two tracks of that album, the spacey funk number “Way Out
Love” and the sensual grind “Slow Down Children.”

With the rise of hip-hop, the Isleys’ classic material provided the
source for more samples than any act other than James Brown and George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic.

The death of O’Kelly Isley from a heart attack in 1986 hit Rudolph particularly hard. The group’s next album, “Smooth Sailin’” (1987), featured just him and Ronald on the cover and was dedicated to O’Kelly.
Two years later, Rudolph quit the music business.

Still, the ever-resourceful, forward-looking group endured and made a successful comeback in 1996 with the album “Mission to Please,” buoyed
by production and writing from R. Kelly. Rudolph Isley reunited with his brothers for one night in 2004, when the group was given a lifetime
achievement honor at the BET Awards.

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