Chocolate Milk

A strutting, colourful funk band who made their name in the late 1970s, Chocolate Milk's squelchy bass lines, swaggering grooves and infectious falsetto hooks were later sampled by many early hip-hop artists. Originally formed in high school by Amadee Castendell, Frank Richard and Mario Tio, the New Orleans friends cut their teeth playing for tourists on Bourbon Street and at local clubs and attracted the attention of legendary producer Allen Toussaint. They backed Toussaint at live shows and worked for him as session musicians on records by Patti LaBelle, Irma Thomas and Lee Dorsey before landing a deal with RCA for their own debut album 'Action Speaks Louder Than Words' in 1975. The album's title track was a protest song that reached number 15 in the Billboard R&B Charts and follow-up singles 'Girl Callin'', 'Say Won't Cha' and 'Groove City' cemented their reputation as a gloriously funky party band and drew comparisons with contemporaries Earth, Wind and Fire and Kool and the Gang. With Toussaint co-writing and producing many of their tracks, albums 'Chocolate Milk', 'We're All in This Together', 'Comin'' and 'Milky Way' captured the spirit and atmosphere of street music at the time but, as fashions changed, the band moved to Los Angeles and Memphis and tried to adopt disco sounds on singles 'Blue Jeans' and 'Move Your Body Baby'. The change in style proved less successful and the band split after 1982 album 'Friction', but in the late '80s and early '90s their music was chopped up and used as backbeats for rap acts including Eric B and Rakim, Stetasonic and Juvenile.

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