Lenny LaCour (born April 27, 1932) – Bump Your Thang (1975)

The unsung Chicago producer and label owner co-wrote this phenomenal disco-funk jam, which sold for $1500 before it was recently repressed for RSD 2023.

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Lenny LaCour aka King Creole is a multi-talented singer/songwriter, arranger, producer and label owner who released his first singles in the 1950s and helped popularize rock’n’roll. He ran many independent labels in the decades that followed including Lucky Four, Dynamic Sound, and Magic Touch. Many of his records are highly collectable today.

Born in Bayou Brevelle on the Cane River in Louisiana, Leonard James LaCour Sr. moved to Chicago when he was eighteen. Being part French Creole helped him sing in both Black and white clubs around the city, and he began writing songs and producing his own demos in the early fifties.

LaCour’s biggest-ever single never charted. “It’s the only million seller not on the Billboard charts,” he said in a 2003 interview. But in 1956, it helped popularize the new sound of rock’n’roll from coast to coast. That year, LaCour won a jingle contest in Chicago for the Pepsi-Cola brand Orange Crush. Using the name King Creole, he cut TV and radio ads for the soda. Then one of his songs “Rock ‘n’ Roll Romance” was recorded, billed to The Big Rocker, and pressed as a promotional record that was given away free nationwide with six-packs of Orange Crush.

LaCour founded his first record label Lucky Four in 1960, and released a series of singles by Chicago artists over the next few years. In the mid-sixties, he moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin where he set up two more labels, Dynamic Sound and Magic Touch.

One of the first singles he produced for Dynamic Sound was by the Milwaukee soul/funk group Marvelle & The Blue Mats, led by Marvelle Love. LaCour and Sam Brantley wrote both the upbeat rockin' jam “The Dance Called The Motion” (1966) with Brantley on lead vocals, and its B-side, the laid back funky “Mellow Man.”

The group also appeared on an early Magic Touch release. The very funky jam “Soul Fever” (1967) was co-written by LaCour and Love, b/w the upbeat “A Whole Lotta Lovin'” which LaCour co-wrote with Brantley.

While in Milwaukee, LaCour met saxophonist Harvey Scales, and released several singles on Magic Touch by his group the Seven Sounds. The first was the funky anthem “Broadway Freeze” (1968) b/w the upbeat heartbreak tale “I Can't Cry No More.”

When LaCour went back to Chicago in 1970, Scales and company followed him and that same year released two singles on Chess Records. The first came out that March, the funky jam “The Yolk,” with an even funkier B-side “The Funky Yolk,” aka part two of “The Yolk.” Both sides were co-written by Scales and LaCour. Next they dropped another pair of funky jams, “Get Down 1970” b/w “Funky Football,” which Scales and LaCour again co-wrote, produced by LaCour.

A few years later, LaCour and Scales formed an alliance with Enterprise Recording Studios co-owner Bob Kaider, who rented LaCour space for Magic Touch’s offices in the former bank building where the studios were located. In 1975, LaCour and Kaider co-produced a very funky single for Scales and his group (now known as the Seven Seas) on Magic Touch. The superb funky socially conscious song “Trying To Survive” was co-written by Scales and Seven Seas flutist and saxophonist Mel Taylor.

Its B-side was the phenomenal disco-funk jam “Bump Your Thang,” written by LaCour. Before it was repressed for Record Store Day in 2023, original copies were selling for $1500 on Discogs.

The following year, LaCour wrote and produced the superb disco-funk track “Funky Disco” (1976) by the C.O.D.’s, the B-side to “Gimme Your Love.”

As hip hop records came on the scene in the early eighties, LaCour jumped on board with a solid funky rap jam by the Light Touch Band, who released “Chi - C - A - G - O (Is My Chicago)” (1982) on Magic Touch. It was written and produced by LaCour, and arranged by Jimmy Mitchell. Original copies are currently selling for an average of $277 on Discogs.

Also in 1982, LaCour produced the the funky jam “Party Hardy” by Slapback, which he co-wrote with F. McNabb and L. Faro, b/w “Back Again.”

Happy Birthday to the great Lenny LaCour.

Further info:

“Almost Famous: Lenny LaCour may not have many hits to his credit, but he’s churned out more rock ‘n’ roll than you can shake a crawfish at," by Dave Hoekstra, Chicago Reader, February 6, 2003.

#soul #funk #disco #LennyLaCour