Oscar Wilson, a Pentecostal minister, and Irma Wilson married, wife Mahin, a substance abuse rehabilitation center director. Wilson led his brothers to Los Angeles, where they recorded a gospel single, “This Place Called Heaven, ” for the A&M label and won At a Glance …īorn Charles Kent Wilson in Tulsa, OK, Januparents: the Rev. “Leon Russell got us on our feet, took us around the rock & roll world, then he kicked us out of his nest, ” Wilson told Rolling Stone. It barely made an impact on the charts at the time, however, and when Russell dropped the band as accompanists in the mid-1970s, the brothers found themselves without a record label. The Gap Band ’s little-known debut album was released in 1974 on Russell ’s own Shelter label. They toured with Russell for several years, also working with Russell ’s friend Willie Nelson for a time. But that attitude evaporated after two hours of playing, after which the Gap Band had been hired as Russell ’s backup ensemble. Invited to audition at Russell ’s studio, the band encountered a hostile attitude from the singer at first. At a performance at the International Club in 1974 the band was spotted by an acquaintance of the iconoclastic country rock singer, Leon Russell, a familiar figure in Texas and Oklahoma musical circles due to his long beard and mane of silver hair. In the year 2001 a nearby street, intersecting both Greenwood and Pine, was renamed Gap Band Avenue in recognition of the band ’s accomplishments.Īfter the addition of Charlie Wilson to the Gap Band as lead vocalist in 1973, the band ’s fortunes began to improve beyond gigs in small Tulsa clubs. The group ’s original name, in its first incarnations around 1970, was the Greenwood Archer and Pine Street Band, referring to major streets in the neighborhood where the brothers grew up that was later shortened (at first as the result of a typographical error on a poster advertising one of the band ’s performances) to the acronym Gap Band. What became the Gap Band grew out of jam sessions held in neighborhood garages in the brothers ’ Tulsa neighborhood. ’ My mother said, ” Go to bed! Go to bed! You “re not going to sing that blues. “When I heard Stevie Wonder ’s ‘Fingertips, ’ ” Wilson told Rolling Stone, “it was like, ‘I can sing like that, Mom. Secular music was forbidden at home, but the brothers smuggled music by the likes of James Brown into the house. With his older brother Ronnie and younger brother Robert, Wilson often sang in church before their father ’s Sunday sermons, accompanied on piano by their mother. Oscar Wilson, a minister in the Church of God in Christ. His reemergence a decade later was due not only to musical talent, but also perhaps to spiritual rebirth.Ĭharlie Wilson was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on January 29,1953 he was the son of the Rev. As the lead vocalist of the trio of performing brothers that went by the name of the Gap Band, Wilson had propelled the group to a consistent string of major hits. With his 2000 album release Bridging the Gap, Charlie Wilson became one of the few leading figures of 1980s R&B to mount a successful comeback in the changed musical landscape of the turn of the century.
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