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George Brown, a founding member and drummer of the group Kool & the Gang, who played on funk, disco and pop hits that featured prominently in movies and have been sampled numerous times, died on Thursday in Long Beach, Calif. He was 74.<\/p>\n
His death, at a hospital, was confirmed in a statement by the band\u2019s publicist, who said the cause was cancer. Mr. Brown had said publicly that he had lung cancer.<\/p>\n
Mr. Brown, known as Funky, was a key contributor to several of the band\u2019s biggest hits, including \u201cLadies Night,\u201d \u201cJungle Boogie\u201d and the party anthem \u201cCelebration.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a July interview with NPR<\/a>, he described Kool & the Gang<\/a> as \u201cthe sound of happiness.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1964, Mr. Brown linked up with Ricky Westfield and the brothers Ronald Khalis Bell and Robert \u201cKool\u201d Bell, as well as other friends \u2014 Spike Mickens, Dennis \u201cDee Tee\u201d Thomas and Charles Smith \u2014 to form a band that would combine jazz, funk, disco and R&B and create some of the most memorable pop songs of their era.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Formed in Jersey City, N.J., the band first played jazz while members attended Lincoln High School. The band performed under several names, including the Jazziacs, but eventually settled on Kool & the Gang in the late 1960s.<\/p>\n One of the band\u2019s early names was Kool and the Flames but the group changed the Flames to the Gang to avoid confusion<\/a> with James Brown\u2019s group, the Famous Flames.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n George Brown was born on Jan. 15, 1949. His father, George Melvin Brown Sr., worked in the coal industry while his mother, Eleanor White Brown, was a maid in Fort Lee, N.J., and also worked as a key puncher.<\/p>\n Both made music a constant part of Mr. Brown\u2019s upbringing, Mr. Brown recalled in his memoir released this year, \u201cToo Hot: Kool & the Gang & Me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Brown, who took to drumming at a young age, wrote that he saved up from a newspaper delivery route to buy his first drum set.<\/p>\n In a 2015 interview with Red Bull Music Academy<\/a>, Mr. Brown described using butter knives as drum sticks when he first started playing.<\/p>\n \u201cThen I went down to a music store on Newark Avenue in Jersey City and took a $3 lesson from a gentleman who used to play with the Shirelles. He said, \u2018Hey man, you\u2019re a natural!\u2019\u201d Mr. Brown recalled. \u201cSo he gave me \u2018Buddy Rich\u2019s 16 Essential Snare Drum Rudiments\u2019 book. I took one more lesson and never went back.\u201d<\/p>\n The band was signed by the producer Gene Redd to De-Lite Records 1969.<\/p>\n The members were in an early recording session in New York for their instrumental debut album, \u201cKool and the Gang,\u201d when Mr. Redd encouraged Mr. Brown and Ronald Bell to just \u201cdo something.\u201d It led to a freewheeling recording session that produced songs like \u201cRaw Hamburger\u201d and the album opener, \u201cKool & the Gang.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt just flowed. And we\u2019re just grooving,\u201d Mr. Brown told The New York Times in an interview last year.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The sound carried over into the 1970s as the band found fame and added the vocalist J.T. Taylor.<\/p>\n Songs like \u201cJungle Boogie\u201d \u201cHollywood Swinging\u201d and \u201cFunky Stuff\u201d became Billboard chart staples. \u201cCelebration\u201d \u2014 with its cheery chorus \u201cCelebrate good times, come on!\u201d \u2014 made it all the way to the top<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The group would go on to release dozens of albums, tour worldwide and appeared on the \u201cSaturday Night Fever\u201d soundtrack, which won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1978.<\/p>\n The group\u2019s songs have frequently appeared on film and television soundtracks, including for \u201cPulp Fiction\u201d in 1994.<\/p>\n In 2015, the band was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mr. Brown was a producer on an album that the band released this year, called \u201cPeople Just Want To Have Fun\u201d in anticipation of the group\u2019s 60th anniversary.<\/p>\n Kool & the Gang had a broad influence, particularly in hip-hop.<\/p>\n According to the website WhoSampled<\/a>, the band has been sampled in almost 2,000 songs, among the highest of all time<\/a>. The band\u2019s song \u201cSummer Madness\u201d accounts for 249 samples, by artists including Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg and Mary J. Blige.<\/p>\n Ronald Khalis Bell, a singer, songwriter and saxophonist for the band, died in 2020<\/a>. Mr. Thomas, who played saxophone, died in 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Brown is survived by his wife, Hanh Brown, and five children: Dorian Melvin Brown, Jorge Lewis Brown, Gregory Brown, Jordan Xuan Clarence Brown and Aaron Tien Joseph Brown.<\/p>\n Three years ago, Mr. Brown was diagnosed with lung cancer, according to an interview broadcast with the television station KCAL<\/a> in Los Angeles. After surgery and chemotherapy, Mr. Brown recovered and returned to touring in 2022. But this year, the cancer returned.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t plan on being in a band known around the world, but I welcomed it when it came,\u201d Mr. Brown wrote in his book. \u201cI didn\u2019t know where the music would lead me, but I knew that if I remained focused and persevered, it would happen as God had intended. And it did.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n