Ronnie Wilson, founder of the Gap Band, dies at 73

Ronnie Wilson, founder of the Gap Band, which rode a funky party sound to success on the R&B charts in the late 1970s and throughout the ’80s, died Tuesday. He was 73.

The death was announced on Facebook by Wilson’s wife, Linda Boulware-Wilson. She did not say where he died or what the cause was.

The Gap Band topped the R&B charts four times and placed 15 songs in the R&B Top 10 from 1979 to 1990; two of its singles, “Early in the Morning” and “You Dropped a Bomb on Me,” reached the pop Top 40 in 1982. Ronnie Wilson primarily played keyboards but also contributed horn and percussion parts in a rotating vocal and instrumental arrangement with his two younger brothers, Robert, who mainly played bass, and Charlie, the lead singer.

Hits such as “Burn Rubber on Me (Why You Wanna Hurt Me)” (1980) defined the Gap Band’s sound, which New York Times critic Stephen Holden described in 1981 as “swinging minimalist funk — sweaty, slangy and streetwise.” Some of their other best-known tracks, such as “Outstanding” (1982), struck an erotic tone in a softer manner — less stomping of the feet, more rolling of the hips.

The Gap Band appeared on “Soul Train,” the premier television showcase for Black music at the time and appeared in concert alongside bands such as Kool & the Gang.

In the years after its popularity peaked, the Gap Band’s tunes were sampled hundreds of times. Ashanti’s

2002 hit “Happy” got its leisurely, bouncy sound from “Outstanding,” and N.W.A.’s canonical “Straight Outta Compton” sped up and darkened “Burn Rubber on Me.”

In an interview with weekly San Francisco newspaper the Sun-Reporter in 1999, Ronnie Wilson said that he and his younger brothers were addressed with the honorific “Uncle” before their names by current music stars such as Snoop Dogg “because we helped to lay the foundation for hip-hop.”

Ronnie Wilson was born April 7, 1948, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. His father, Oscar, was a minister, and Wilson and his brothers grew up playing music in church.

Wilson formed his first band as a teenager, and over time he got his brothers involved. The word “Gap” in the Gap Band’s name came from Greenwood, Archer and Pine streets in Tulsa’s Greenwood district — the neighborhood, once known as Black Wall Street, that was the site of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre.

The group got an early boost in the music business and met stars such as Bob Dylan, thanks to rock singer and pianist Leon Russell, long based in Tulsa, who had the Gap Band back him on his album “Stop All That Jazz” (1974). The Wilson brothers signed their first major-label deal, with Mercury, a few years later.

Wilson later worked as a minister and continued to perform occasionally. His brother Charlie pursued a successful solo singing career. The other brother in the band, Robert, died in 2010.

A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.