RUDOLPH ISLEY
Original Isley Brother (1939–2023)
THE impetus for The Isley Brothers’ breakthrough hit owed much to the exuberance of Rudolph Isley. The vocal group’s early gigs involved a spirited encore of Jackie Wilson’s “Lonely Teardrops”, at which point Rudolph would begin playing to the audience. “We were doing a show at Washington DC,” oldest sibling O’Kelly once recalled to Black Music. “Rudolph starts wailing: ‘Get your hands up, get your feet up and shout! Everybody shout!’ Afterwards we said, ‘Say, why don’t we write a song like that?’” 1959’s resulting “Shout!”, co-written by Rudolph, O’Kelly and younger brother Ronald, duly stormed the US R&B charts, after which they rarely looked back.
In 1962, the Isleys’ dynamic version of “Twist And Shout” sent them into the Top 20, inspiring The Beatles to take it on the following year. Memorably delivered on , the song’s impact led Paul McCartney to once declare: “If it were not for The Isley Brothers,
