Ernie Isley (born March 7, 1952) – Harvest for the World (1976)
The legendary Isley Brothers guitarist and songwriter co-wrote this powerful anthem for a better world along with Chris Jasper and Marvin Isley.
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Ernie Isley is the longtime lead guitarist for the Isley Brothers and one of their primary songwriters.
See our earlier post on lead singer Ronald Isley for more on the group’s history.
Perhaps more than any other guitarist of the twentieth century, Ernie can lay claim to the title of Jimi Hendrix’s musical heir. Hendrix played guitar with the Isley Brothers during 1963-65 (prominently featured on their 1965 single “Move Over And Let Me Dance”), and lived with them at their home in Teaneck, New Jersey where he was treated like one of the family.
“I’m eleven years old at the time,” Ernie told CBS Sunday Morning in 2017, “and in all the musicians I had heard, I never heard anybody play a guitar like that.” When the Beatles came to America and appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time on February 9, 1964, Ernie and his younger brother Marvin watched them on TV while sitting on opposite ends of their living room couch, with Jimi in the middle.
Ernie learned to play drums at age 12, but was not initially interested in playing guitar. However, Jimi was always playing and practicing while Ernie did his homework. His first professional gig came when he was 14, on drums with his older brothers’ backing band at an Isley Brothers concert in Philadelphia, where they shared the bill with Martha and the Vandellas. As Ernie recalled in a 2015 interview, “Martha and the Vandellas didn’t have a drummer on the same show so I wound up playing drums behind them on ‘Dancing In The Street’ and ‘Heat Wave’ and all of that.”
He eventually took up the guitar in 1968, and early the next year played bass on the group’s #1 R&B / #2 Billboard Hot 100 smash hit “It’s Your Thing” (1969). From that point on, his playing style and wardrobe were heavily influenced by Hendrix.
The Isleys were originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, and the killing of four unarmed anti-war student protestors at Kent State on May 4, 1970 especially hit home for them. Their 1971 cover album Givin’ It Back opened with a powerful medley of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Ohio” and Hendrix’s anti-war anthem “Machine Gun.” It became a staple of their early seventies concert sets.
Ernie along with the rest of the group were credited with writing the remake of their own 1964 hit “Who’s That Lady.” “That Lady” was the opening cut to the Isley Brothers’ 3 + 3 album, their 1973 debut LP on Epic Records and also the first to include Ernie and Marvin plus their brother-in-law Chris Jasper as official members. It featured blazing, Hendrix-flavored guitar work by Ernie, which played a major role in the song rocketing to #2 R&B and #6 on the Hot 100 on its way to going gold.
The introspective closing cut “The Highways of My Life” on 3 + 3 was also co-written by the entire group. The album was recorded by engineers Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff who helped program the ARP synthesizers played by Jasper.
For their next album, Live It Up (1974), the superb jam “Midnight Sky (Part 1 & 2)” was primarily written by Ernie. According to interviews with Chris Jasper, the three older Isleys wanted to release it as the album’s lead single, until Jasper visited executives at Epic/CBS and convinced them that the title track (which he had mostly written) had more commercial potential. He was vindicated when “Live It Up” hit #4 R&B. But “Midnight Sky” was not far behind it, reaching #8 R&B when it was issued as a single in November, 1974.
The album’s stellar closing cut “Ain't I Been Good To You (Part 1 & 2)” featured one of Ernie’s epic guitar solos.
The following year, the Isley Brothers released their only record to hit #1 on both the R&B and pop charts, The Heat Is On (1975). Propelled by its opening cut, the powerful anti-authority anthem “Fight The Power (Part 1 & 2)” which went to #1 R&B and #4 on the Hot 100, the album went double platinum. The song’s lyrics came to Ernie as he was in the shower, getting ready for his first trip to Disneyland, and he jumped out to write them down.
"Fight The Power” was recorded on the same day as another of their most socially conscious songs, “Harvest For The World.” Both were mostly written by Ernie, with additional instrumentation by Jasper.
“Harvest For The World” was held back from The Heat Is On and instead released as the title track to their next album in 1976. The LP opened with the track’s prelude, just over two minutes long, before its stirring lyrics kicked in and called for a better world where the planet’s riches are shared more equally instead of being hoarded by a greedy few.
“All babies together, everyone a seed…Half of us are satisfied, half of us in need
Love's bountiful in us, tarnished by our greed…When will there be a harvest for the world?”
A big thank you to B. Zollicoffer, longtime friend and supporter of Jointz Of The Day, for first turning us on to this classic message song.
Happy Birthday to the great Ernie Isley.
Further info:
“The Ernie Isley Interview,” by Charles Waring, SoulandJazzandFunk.com, August 19, 2015.
“Ernie Isley talks living with Hendrix, lost solos and That Lady,” interview by Jeff Slate, MusicRadar.com, January 14, 2016.
“The Isley Brothers on hiring Jimi Hendrix,” interview with Ernie and Ron Isley, CBS Sunday Morning, July 30, 2017.
#soul #funk #IsleyBrothers #ErnieIsley
Love the lyrics to Harvest For The World. It's so ideologically hopeful. Never heard an Isley Brothers song I didn't like but Voyage To Atlantis has my heart.
"It's Our Thing" is such a great record! It's even more amazing when put into context that they had to reinvent themselves and the band for a younger audience. In doing so, they knocked it out of the park with this LP and a few years later, struck gold with "3+3."