Cameo on The Jukebox

Larry Blackmon is a legend.  After years of finding their way and not making serious progress, Cameo finally attained legendary status following a string of massive hits starting in 1979 and fading only in the late 80s.  Starting in 1974 as a 14-man funk outfit (yes, 14.  Those were the days men did the jobs computers try to do today).  They were known as The New York Players.  During the disco boom, they signed to Casablanca Records as Cameo and were promoted in the company’s movie to showcase their talent:  Thank God It’s Friday! 

The film featured Cameo’s Find My Way, but the sound was more disco than funk and rather bland.  The break came when they trusted what became their signature style of heavy dance-oriented funk with I Just Want to Be, which blew up the RnB charts and was a massive jam as a killer Funk track.  Badass would be the best word to describe it.  Cameo, fronted by Larry Blackmon, made the best-ever decision to stick with funk rather than go with generic disco, and their gamble paid dividends as conventional Disco waned.  At the same time, Funk with Prince, Rick James, Roger, Zapp, The Time, Cameo, The Gap Band, and Slave thrived.
Cameo tracks feature heavily on our Jukebox, where you will find all the monster Funk classics and those tracks that propelled Cameo into one of the UK’s most popular bands through the 80s and beyond.  In the UK, Cameo has had a sustained run of massive success.   Shake Your Pants and Your Love Takes Me Out is there, and of course, the giants are Word Up, Single Life, Candy, Freaky Dancing, Back and Forth,  and much more.  For a decade, Cameo were the torchbearers as the world’s premier Funk band, deservedly so.