![\"War01\"](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/War01.jpg\")
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On September 17, 1970, a Long Beach funk band by the name of War became the last group to ever jam with Jimi Hendrix\u2014but of course, not before Jimi showed drummer Harold Brown \u201chow to eat in Europe.\u201d With stomachs full of chicken tandoori, Jimi asked Brown and the War crew to come to the downstairs of Ronnie Scott\u2019s, the legendary club in London, and did what they always do: jam.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can still find the rare tracks on the internet from that jam session,\u201d Brown said. \u201cAnd Hedrix kept telling me, \u2018Yeah Brown, right there.\u2019 Dum, da-dum, dum, da-dum. <\/em>That\u2019s who we were, man\u2014just a band that loved music and jammed. And we are at one of our most critical junctures. We need our fans to come together.\u201d<\/p>\n That juncture is War\u2019s nomination that could get them inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, marking the third time the legendary masters of funk have scored a nomination for the honor.<\/p>\n Of course, War was a long time in the making.<\/p>\n Long before the moniker of War came, the two original members, Brown and Howard E. Scott, met at the Cozy Lounge in Long Beach. The pair was first known as The Creators, covering James Brown and Richard Berry tunes while adding their own form of funk on top.<\/p>\n \u201cOur dads would drop off us at gigs \u2018cause we weren\u2019t even old enough to drive,\u201d Brown said. \u201cWe played all over Long Beach as we expanded. The Rec Center across the street from Poly\u2014that\u2019s where me and Charles [Miller, saxist\/flutist] graduated from. The Sock Hop at Poly. The Officer\u2019s Club. On the beach by the Pike. In San Pedro down the street from Johnny Otis\u2019s place [the Harlem Hot Spot on the pier].\u201d<\/p>\n Brown\u2019s spitfire style of reminiscing\u2014bouncing between humility and pride\u2014jumps from The Creators to Nite Shift, the band\u2019s second name, inspired largely by Brown\u2019s late night work a steel yard. It was then, in the summer of 1965, that they were tapped to become Otis Redding\u2019s band but singer, guitarist, pianist, and overall musical guru Lonnie Jordan was too young. While the band lamented the loss of becoming part of Redding\u2019s crew, it turns out that \u201cGod had other plans,\u201d as Brown put it.<\/p>\n The back cover of the band’s album, <\/em>The World Is a Ghetto, considered by <\/em>Rolling Stone to be one of the 500 best albums ever made and 1973’s best selling album of the year.<\/em><\/p>\n They became the first all-black band to play on the Sunset Strip at the famed Whiskey A Go Go. The Palladium would follow (and his father’s nod of approval given Brown shot down a full-ride scholarship to attend college in favor of pursuing music). But it wasn\u2019t until the band hit North Hollywood at The Ragdoll that they would strike gold.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember,\u201d Brown said, \u201cthe owner telling me, \u2018Everyone who plays here becomes famous.\u2019 And our last night playing there\u2014it was a Saturday\u2014someone told us that Eric Burdon [the lead singer of the Animals] was in the house. Yeah, y\u2019know, we were excited but we tried not to let it get to us, y\u2019know? We\u2019d been a band for seven years already.\u201d<\/p>\n A skinny, Danish harmonica player by the name of Lee Oskar then asked the band if he could join in. Not knowing Oskar, the band then known as Nite Shift jammed it out, going from shuffle to Afro to Latin styles. Jerry Goldstein, the man behind the 1963 classic, \u201cMy Boyfriend\u2019s Back,\u201d thought they were good\u2014so good that they band was invited to Benedict Canyon. Greeted by a woman in a black bikini and Ray Bans.<\/p>\n Beyond the salmon, they were taken to a pool where Burdon himself sat and invited the entire crew to Canyon Drive off of Rodeo to have a sit down with himself, Goldstein, and Steve Gold, the guy who discovered La Bamba. Noting that the Nite Shift crew looks like \u201cyou all just came outta war,\u201d Gold opted to call them War since \u201ceveryone was talking about peace.\u201d<\/p>\n Renamed War with Eric Burdon, the band headed up to San Francisco to record masterpieces like \u201cSpilled the Wine\u201d\u2014named after an incident in which the band got intoxicated and spilled wine on one of the recording consoles in the studio. Following Hendrix\u2019s death and two albums, however, Burdon left the band, leaving them to their own devices, including tracks that would catapult them into legends: \u201cThe Cisco Kid\u201d (from their The World Is a Ghetto<\/em> album, the best-selling album of 1973), \u201cAll Day Music,\u201d \u201cWhy Can\u2019t We Be Friends?\u201d \u201cSummer,\u201d \u201cGypsy Man,\u201d \u201cThe World Is a Ghetto,\u201d and, of course, \u201cLow Rider,\u201d inspired by Brown\u2019s many trips to Tijuana bars and the life of mechanics.<\/p>\n Which brings us back to the situation at hand: why isn\u2019t War in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame? With two members, Charles Miller and Papa Dee Allen, having transitioned\u2014Brown\u2019s term for passing, named after a song he wrote, \u201cTransition,\u201d and occasionally drops into song when mentioning transitions\u2014there remain five living members, whose turn it is to revel in the fact that their life’s work is an essential thread in the very expansive fabric of rock and roll.<\/p>\n Surely, Brown and crew are not at the height of exposure they were beforehand. The band that still performs as War only has Lonnie Jordan as its original member while Brown, Dickerson, Oskar, and Scott banded together to form The Lowrider Band.<\/p>\n The Lowrider Band, playing Seattle’s Jazz Alley in 2007. Photo courtesy of Shoji Onozawa.<\/em><\/p>\n Mostly, the answer to the question that has been asked three times by the Hall of Fame and countless times by fans is up to the fans themselves: the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has nominated fifteen musicians\/bands for fans to vote for, but War must make it into the top five in order for the public\u2019s votes to be tallied with other ballots from Hall of Fame members.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t say it enough but this is a critical time,\u201d Brown said. \u201cWe\u2019re reaching out to our fans, to everybody we can because we represent Long Beach, we represent funk\u2026 Even the younger crowd\u2014a lotta young people don\u2019t understand how hard we worked before we were ever walking down the street with Janis Jopling or opening for Tina Turner or The OJs. We were together for seven years before we made big and hopefully this induction, if it happens, will remind them that there\u2019s hope.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"War02\"](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/War02.jpg\")
The band\u2014the creators behind classics like \u201cLow Rider,\u201d \u201cWhy Can\u2019t We Be Friends?\u201d \u201cSpill the Wine,\u201d and a plethora of other hits\u2014hasn\u2019t just jammed with Hendrix. We\u2019re talking Joplin. We\u2019re talking Eric Burdon (more on him later). We\u2019re talking Bob Marley, who once walked a street in Atlanta with Brown and War bassist BB Dickerson, nudged each in the arm and said, \u201cYou guys be \u2018street musicians,\u2019 music for the people. I gotta song for you.\u201d Right then and there, sampling the motif from War\u2019s \u201cSlippin\u2019 into Darkness\u201d track, Marley began singing what would become \u201cGet Up, Stand Up\u201d\u2014which still samples the motif from War\u2019s classic song.<\/p>\n![\"WarBANN02\"](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/WarBANN02.jpg\")
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\u201cThat woman was named Lois,\u201d Brown said. \u201cFirst time I was ever offered lox and bagels. I asked for hot sauce.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"WarLowider\"](\"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/WarLowider.jpg\")
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