Louis A McCall, Sr

Career

Louis A. McCall Sr. and singer/guitarist Michael Cooper formed Con Funk Shun as high school students in Vallejo, California. Adding members Karl A. Fuller, Paul A. Harrell, Cedric A. Martin, Felton C. Pilate and Danny A. Thomas, the band got their start as a backup group for the Soul Children under the name Project Soul. They began working with Stax Records staff songwriters, and while recording at Audio Dimensions, a Memphis, Tennessee sound studio, producer Ted Sturges both named the group (after an instrumental recording by The Nite-Liters) and produced their first album, Organized Con Funk Shun.

In 1976, Con Funk Shun signed to Mercury Records, releasing eleven albums over a span of ten years. The group's 1977 LP, Secrets, was certified gold in the US, as were 1978's Loveshine, 1979's Candy, and 1980's Spirit of Love. They scored a string of top ten hits on the Billboard black singles chart, including 1977's "Ffun" (#1), 1978's "Shake and Dance with Me" (#5), 1979's "Chase Me" (#4), 1980s "Got to Be Enough" (#8), and "Too Tight" (#8). Tensions from within the group built over the 1980s, and the group's last album, Burning Love, was recorded without songwriter and vocalist Felton Pilate. Pilate had left Con Funk Shun following a physical altercation involving McCall. McCall himself was let go from the band after missing two concert dates in order to deal with medical problems resulting from a teenage car crash. After leaving Mercury, the band broke up in 1986, but some members of the group reunited alongside touring musicians for concerts in the 1990s.

Later career

After leaving Con Funk Shun in 1986, Louis joined forces with his wife, a music business consultant, and started an artist management company in the Washington, DC area. They discovered R&B aspiring artist Keith Martin in 1989, signing on as his managers. When Linda Lou McCall was hired by rapper MC Hammer in 1990, the McCalls put Martin on Hammer's Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em tour as a backup musician and vocalist, which launched Martin's career in the music industry. In 1992, Linda Lou formed her own company, The Entertainment Qartel, Inc. (EQartel), specializing in music business administration and entertainment marketing and promotions. In addition to doing radio promotion for EQartel's Atlanta-based street team, the Rhyme Scene Unit, Louis also became a successful event planner, most notably producing a celebrity benefit for actor/activist Danny Glover at The Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco in January 1993.

Death and aftermath

Louis McCall was found murdered outside a friend's Stone Mountain, Georgia home on June 25, 1997, the apparent victim of a home-invasion robbery. His wife, Linda Lou, fought to keep the case active for eleven years, even asking the Governor of Georgia to assist in reopening the case in 2003. Finally, a suspect was indicted in 2007 in connection with the murder. It would take another year before the case made it trial on July 21, 2008, with Marques Clair as a defendant.

However, just two days after the start of Clair's murder trial, Superior Court Judge Gregory Adams halted the trial, "based on an omission" of information, said Jada Hudspeth, a spokeswoman for the DeKalb County Georgia district attorney's office. Hudspeth said District Attorney Gwen Keyes Fleming and her staff would evaluate the evidence in the case before deciding whether to retry Clair. Clair, 29 at the time of trial, had been arrested with another suspect in McCall's slaying in 1999, but prosecutors dropped the charge due to the District Attorney's refusal to bring the case before a jury with insufficient evidence. On August 7, 2008, after a mistrial was declared, the charges against Clair were formally dismissed with prejudice.

Legacy

Born in Alameda, CA, Con Funk Shun founder and drummer, the name of the late Louis A. McCall Sr. was chosen by the City Planning Board in April 2014 to be used to name one of the streets in the proposed residential community Alameda Landing. On September 21, 2014, the seven band members were honored by the National R&B Music Society in a black tie dinner and award ceremony in Atlantic City NJ with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Louis' wife, Linda Lou McCall, will also be given an Unsung Heroine award for her key role in the success work of Con Funk Shun and her continued role in keep the group's legacy alive, in addition to her overall 45 year contribution to R&B music.

In addition to being the band's leader, responsible for booking many of their most lucrative tours, Louis, along with Linda Lou, wrote several songs for Con Funk Shun, including "California 1", "Bad Lady", and "Honey Wild", Most recently, "Honey Wild", (co-written with Con Funk Shun member Danny Thomas), from their 1980 Spirit of Love album was sampled by Lil Wayne for his CD Tha Carter III – Deluxe Edition.

Personal life

In 1968, at the age of 16, McCall was seriously injured in an automobile accident in Vallejo, California. Louis met his wife and Washington, DC native, the former Linda Lou Bolden, in 1973, both were working at Stax Records. The couple married on January 15, 1976 in a civil ceremony in San Francisco, California. They had two children, Lindsay Chérie (born in 1979) and Louis Anthony II (born in 1982). Not long before his 1997 death, McCall and Linda separated. However, the two remained close both personally and professionally. On March 2, 2014, Louis' first grandchild, Liam Richard Long, was born to his daughter, Lindsay, a Tempe police officer, and her husband in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Albums

Singles