Influences: Redbone

Quick! Name a band that has nothing but Native Americans in it AND has at least hit the top 40 charts with an awesome song. Don’t say “The Village People” either because they don’t count. They only had one Native American in their group and I don’t even know if he was a real Native American at that. You’ll have to Google that one to find out. Meanwhile, the answer is Redbone. They were a popular musical group in the 70’s and hit number 5 on the Billboard Top 100 with their song, “Come And Get Your Love”, and it was the song that inspired the book that would become my first published book, Children of the Flower Power.

Originally from Fresno, California, brothers Patrick Vegas (bass and vocals) and Lolly Vegas (guitar and vocals) moved to Los Angeles in 1969 to form the group Redbone.

The name Redbone itself is a joking reference to a Cajun term for a mixed-race person, also called “halfbreed”, the band's members being of mixed blood ancestry. The band referenced Cajun and New Orleans culture many times in their lyrics and performing style. Patrick and Lolly, who were a mixture of Native American and Mexican heritage, had previously performed and recorded under the stage surname Vegas, in part to downplay the Latin American association of their birth surname, Vasquez. According to Patrick Vasquez, it was Jimi Hendrix - himself part Native American - who talked the musicians into forming an all-Native American rock group, and they signed as the band “Redbone” to Epic Records in 1969. The band then consisted of Patrick Vasquez, Lolly Vasquez, Peter Depoe and Tom Bellamy. Their debut album, simply titled “Redbone”, was released in 1970.

Prior to forming Redbone the brothers had some initial success as songwriters. In 1967 P.J. Proby recorded his only Top 30 hit “Niki Hoeky” by Jim Ford, Lolly Vegas and Pat Vegas. The next year, Bobbie Gentry performed the Cajun-influenced song on The Summer Smothers Brothers Show.

Redbone played primarily rock music with R&B, Cajun, Jazz, tribal, and Latin roots. Their first commercial success came with the single “Maggie” from their second album “Potlatch”, in 1970, and two other hit singles followed - “The Witch Queen of New Orleans” (1971, #21 on the Billboard Hot 100 and “Come And Get Your Love” (1974, #5 on the Billboard Hot 100). The song was written by Lolly Vasquez and stayed in the Billboard chart for 24 weeks, and was awarded a gold disc by the R.I.A.A. on April 22^nd, 1974.

Lolly Vasquez was one of the first guitarists to make extensive use of the distinctive Leslie rotating speaker effect in his electric guitar amplification set-up. Vasquez played improvised, jazz-influenced guitar. Drummer Peter DePoe is credited with pioneering the “King Kong” style of drumming, which features sharply accented polyrythms involving the bass and snare drums and is similar to funk styles of drumming. The band referred to Depoe’s “King Kong Beat” in their lyrics to the song “Prehistoric Rhythm” on their debut album.

In 1973, Redbone released the politically oriented “We Were All Wounded at Wounded Knee“, recalling the massacre of Lakota Sioux Indians by the Seventh Calvary in 1890. The song ends with the subtly altered sentence “We were all wounded ‘by’ Wounded Knee“. It charted in several European countries and reached the #1 position in The Netherlands but did not chart in the U.S. where it was initially withheld from release and then banned by several radio stations. Original drummer Peter DePoe had left in 1972, and was eventually replaced by Butch Rillera around this point. Following this the band achieved much of their commercial success. Tony Bellamy (guitar, piano and vocals) left the band in 1977, with Rillera leaving shortly after. He died, at age 63, in a Las Vegas hospital on December 25th, 2009, as the result of liver failure.

The band's current remaining membership is led by Pat Vasquez. Raven Hernandez (guitar, vocals and songwriter) joined Redbone in 1996 to replace Lolly Vasquez after he suffered a stroke that left him unable to tour with the band. Although Redbone has had some limited activity in recent years, their songwriting and touring output is slight compared with that of the early 1970s. A proposed reunion tour in 2003 did not occur. Evidence suggests the existence of an “imposter band” illegally touring the United States and posing as Redbone under the name (or alias) “Denny Freeman“. Freeman - who Pat Vasquez confirmed to be unaffiliated with Redbone in an interview with the Montana Standard - defrauded the county fair board of the Butte Silver-Bow County Fair in Butte, Montana, under pretenses of being a co-founding member of Redbone, yet he was never a band member.

Prior to forming Redbone, Pat and Lolly Vasquez released an album in the mid 1960s entitled “Pat and Lolly Vegas at the Haunted House“. Of the twelve songs on the album, six were originals by the Vasquez brothers. Pat and Lolly also released several singles from 1961 to the mid 1960s. One of them was titled “Robot Walk” / “Don't You Remember” The first self-titled album by Redbone was released as a double album in North America. In Europe it was released both as a double and as a single album on the Epic label. Their third album, “Message From A Drum”, was released in Europe (except Spain) with the title “The Witch Queen of New Orleans” and a different cover than the one released in the U.S. and Canada was released with.

One of the 1970s drummers, George Spannos, released his own hit album “Passion in the Dark” in 1983 under the name Danny Spanos, having a Top 40 hit single with “Hot Cherie“.

Redbone was inducted into the Native American Music Association Hall of Fame in 2008.

On March 4th, 2010, Lolly Vasquez died of lung cancer in Reseda, Califronia.

Source: Wikipedia

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