Ronnie Wilson

Gap Band co-founder BORN 1948

Able to switch between trumpet, keyboards, percussion and background vocals, Ronnie Wilson was the most versatile member of The Gap Band, the influential and much-sampled soul and funk group he co-founded in Tulsa with his younger siblings, singer Charlie and bassist Robert. Patenting a distinctive dance sound defined by hollering vocals and grinding basslines, The Gap Band – whose name was an acronym for Greenwood, Archer & Pine, a black neighbourhood in Tulsa – stacked up 33 US R&B hits between 1977 and 1995, including 1980’s Oops Up Side Your Head, which Wilson co-wrote. The group grew out of Ronnie’s late-’60s band Creative Sounds and debuted in 1974 on Leon Russell’s Shelter label before tasting mainstream success in the 1980s. After the band dissolved in 2010, Wilson sang gospel and found solace in religion.

Charles Waring