Crash-Course, No. 21: Chaka Khan ft. Rufus...or at least that's what happened...

For anyone interested in the “how I got here,” my look at The American Breed pointed me toward Rufus – or Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan. Because that’s how things worked out for the most part.

“The thing back then was to have a white band with a black chick out front – that was major money, made the club owners interested. Another racist phase that passed through Chicago.”
- Chaka Khan, providing quality framing

 Rufus formed in Chicago, circa 1970, with several members of The American Breed - e.g., Charles “Chuck” Colbert (bass), Lee Graziano (drums), brought in Kevin Murphy (keys), Paulette McWilliams (vocals) - pulling in members of Chicago bar-band, Circus, e.g., James Stella and Vern Pilder. Now, forget all those names because, apart from Murphy, no other member stuck with Rufus from start-to-finish. Only Chaka Khan came close; then again, her (probably wise and necessary) decision to go solo probably broke the band.

After losing members here and gaining them there, plus a couple name changes (they started as “Smoke”), the band attempted to launch of “Ask Rufus” a nod to an advice column in a trade mag of the same name, Mechanics Illustrated. They became Rufus by 1971, and even recorded a lost debut for Epic Records, but didn’t truly hit their stride until McWilliams made room for her friend, Yvette Marie Stevens, who became Chaka Khan. Stevens picked up Chaka through a naming ceremony at the Affro-Arts theater in Chicago (her mother was active there), and picked up the surname Khan when she married Hassan Khan, while still 17, so she could sign the recording contract her mother refused to sign for her. (Chaka Khan had a chaotic childhood in a stable setting, including sometime with the Black Panthers).

While the charismatic shadow cast by Chaka Khan grew quickly - their label pushed them as Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan as early as their second album - they made their name on the 1972-1975 line-up of Khan on vocals, Al Ciner on guitar, Murphy and Ron Stockett on keyboards, Dennis Belfield on bass and Andre Fischer on drums. They didn’t have to shop demos for long before ABC Dunhill offered them a contract; Ike Turner caught wind of them all the way out in Los Angeles, and invited them out to record at his studio (where he could try to talk Khan into becoming an “Ikette”). Their 1973 eponymous debut didn’t go anywhere, but the power and potential of Chaka Khan’s vocals inspired Stevie Wonder to write songs for her (“Tell Me Something Good” was the first and biggest), and their follow-up album, 1974’s Rags to Rufus, blew all the way up to platinum (“You Got the Love” was the other big single). Rufusized followed in 1974 and, on the back of “Once You Get Started,” “I’m a Woman (I'm a Backbone)” and others, that went platinum too.

One Hit No More, No. 24: The American Breed, Who Did Bend, and Shape

Fuckers would tangle up if you so much as looked at 'em...

The Hit
During high school, and before developing an operating record store M.O., I picked up the odd impulse-buy cassette tape at local gas stations. If I recognized enough of the artists and had about $5 left after buying gas (and probably junk food), I'd get about a month's worth of "fresh-to-me" music out of the good ones (the Dutch imports, though; jesus christ). The education as to what’s what came from classic rock radio and, at some damn point, the Freedom Rock compilation they sold on late-night TV.

I stumbled into The American Breed’s “Bend Me, Shape Me” on a gas station cassettes, apparently. It’s a good late 60s pop tune (1968), nice (literally) galloping rhythm, nice layering of horns over guitars, etc. – and I swear I’ve heard recordings where they really juiced the rhythm parts (or my speakers just sucked and/or accidentally improved on the original). The American Breed neither wrote the song nor recorded it first: the writing team of Scott English and Larry Weiss wrote it, while a guy named Bill Traut (who has another cameo later) graced it with those horns. An all-female band called The Shape got first crack it at (can't find that, so here are The Models doing it), but it was another act – The Outsiders (of “Time Won’t Let Me” fame) – who had the best shot at knicking it out from under The American Breed.

The Rest of the Story

The kindest and rudest thing I can say about The American Breed is that key members got sidetracked making commercial jingles (and quite a few of them, and in The Bigs – e.g, writing/singing for Coca Cola and American Airlines) during the band’s hey-day. That these guys knew their way around a song well enough to turn that into a day job is the kind side; the rude side comes with a sneer at the commercialism of the overall project (yeah, I like the “artistes”) and they fact they didn’t write their biggest hits. (Don’t worry, the bona fides come later.)