Rudolph Isley, a founding member of who helped perform such raw rhythm and blues classics as 鈥淪hout" and 鈥淭wist and Shout鈥� and the funky hits 鈥淭hat Lady鈥� and 鈥淚t's Your Thing,鈥� has died at age 84.
鈥淭here are no words to express my feelings and the love I have for my brother. Our family will miss him. But I know he鈥檚 in a better place," Ronald Isley said in a statement released Thursday by an Isley Brothers publicist. Further details were not immediately available.
A Cincinnati native, Rudolph Isley began singing in church with brothers Ronald and O'Kelly (another sibling, Vernon, died at age 13) and was still in his teens when they broke through in the late 1950s with 鈥淪hout,鈥� a secularized gospel rave that was later immortalized during the toga party scene in 鈥淎nimal House.鈥� The Isleys scored again in the early 1960s with the equally spirited 鈥淭wist and Shout,鈥� which the Beatles liked so much they used it as the closing song on their debut album and opened with it for their famed 1965 concert at Shea Stadium.
The Isleys' other hits included 鈥淭his Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You),鈥� later covered by Rod Stewart, and the Grammy-winning 鈥淚t's Your Thing.鈥� In the 1970s, after younger brother Ernest and Marvin joined the group, they had even greater success with such singles as 鈥淭hat Lady" and 鈥淔ight the Power (Part 1)鈥� and such million-selling albums as 鈥淭he Heat Is On鈥� and 鈥淕o for Your Guns.鈥�
Rudolph Isley left the group in 1989, three years after the sudden death of O'Kelly Isley, to become a Christian minister. He was among the Isleys inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1992.
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This story's headline has been corrected to show that Rudolph Isley, not Ronald Isley, died.
The Associated Press
