Redbone’s ‘Come and Get Your Love’ made historical past 50 years in the past : NPR

Fifty years in the past this month, President Richard Nixon was dealing with impeachment. Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s house run document. Leaders of the American Indian Motion had been on trial after the armed standoff at Wounded Knee. And the track “Come and Get Your Love” was one of many largest hits on the radio.

This soulful pop tune by the band Redbone was, in some methods, associated to what was occurring politically. It turned the primary track by an all-Native and Mexican American band to crack the Billboard High 10, peaking at No. 5 on April 13, 1974.

Since its launch on Redbone’s 1973 album Wovoka, “Come and Get Your Love” has been utilized in commercials, on TV exhibits together with the Netflix sequence F Is for Household and in films. The track captured a brand new Technology of followers in 2014, when actor Chris Pratt danced to it within the opening scene of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy.

Musician Stevie Salas remembers first listening to “Come and Get Your Love” as a sixth grader in Oceanside, Calif., the place it got here on throughout a college dance. Salas, who’s Apache, has performed guitar with musicians comparable to Rod Stewart, Bootsy Collins, Mick Jagger and Justin Timberlake. He is additionally an government producer on a documentary about Native musicians referred to as Rumble: Indians Who Rocked The World. However again in sixth grade, he had no concept the musicians behind “Come and Get Your Love” had been Native and Mexican American — till he noticed them on TV.

“Redbone got here on they usually had been all dressed like Natives. I imply, that was simply mind-blowing,” Salas remembers. “However on the identical time, you’d see individuals dressed like that, you understand, on Halloween. So I do not know, are they actual Indians? It is like that. However they positive look cool.”

The pompadour years

Redbone’s founders had at all times cultivated a putting look, although the choice to showcase their Native tradition onstage took time.

Brothers Pat and Lolly Vasquez grew up in Fresno, Calif. In keeping with Pat’s memoir, their mom was Shoshone, whereas their father had each Mexican and Native roots together with Yaqui, Papago and Navajo. Their maternal grandfather was a musician from Texarkana who performed Cajun and Mariachi music, and who taught Pat and Lolly to play guitar. When the brothers began enjoying as a duo, Pat switched to bass.

Within the late Fifties, the 2 began enjoying gigs in and round Los Angeles, from sock hops to household picnics. After a music trade veteran beneficial they alter their surname to enchantment to white expertise bookers, they put a spin on their stepfather’s identify, De La Vega, rebranding as Pat & Lolly Vegas. Their stage fashion on this period was fits and slicked-back pompadours: “We used to get our hair executed and all these items. We had an actual straight look,” remembers Pat Vegas, who, at 83, is the final surviving authentic member of Redbone. (Lolly died in 2010.)

Along with the membership gigs, the Vegas brothers had been session musicians and songwriters. They appeared within the 1967 seashore comedy It is a Bikini World, and teamed up with different musicians to document surf music underneath the identify The Avantis.

The Vegas brothers had been profitable making music that appealed to the mainstream. However they had been additionally impressed by the Civil Rights motion, and by Native activists who had been calling out the poverty on reservations, damaged treaties and different injustices. “Our mates had been going on the market and marching and protesting,” Pat Vegas says, explaining that as entertainers, they wished to indicate the world a extra correct depiction of Native individuals. “As a result of it was being neglected. They noticed us in Western films being chased by the cowboys, and we did not wish to be part of that. We wished to indicate that we had grown and we had been a part of the longer term.”

Pat & Lolly Vegas ultimately ditched the pompadours, and got down to kind a band of all Native and Mexican American gamers. They had been joined by rhythm guitarist Tony Bellamy, who was of Mexican and Yaqui descent, and drummer Pete DePoe, who was Cheyenne. They grew their hair lengthy, and commenced performing in Native gown on stage. The selection wasn’t only a response to the politics of the second, Vegas says — it was who they had been.

“My mother was happy with her Native American roots, and I used to be too,” he says. “So mechanically, we knew what we wished, and the sound got here out that manner, and it was stunning. I simply wished to be actual.”

A sound each political and ‘all about love’

The brand new group referred to as itself Redbone, a slang time period that some would possibly discover offensive, although the members stated they used it to imply combined race. The band signed with Epic Information and set about creating its personal sound, what Vegas has referred to as “Native American swamp rock.”

In 1973, a bunch of Native activists occupied the city of Wounded Knee in South Dakota — the identical web site the place, 83 years earlier, a whole bunch of Lakota had been massacred by U.S. troopers. Pat Vegas says he “felt the battle,” and wished to contribute.

For Redbone’s album Wovoka, Vegas wrote the track “We Have been All Wounded at Wounded Knee.” The track turned a success in Europe, however CBS refused to launch it within the U.S., fearing it was too controversial. Vegas has stated that he understood the corporate’s reasoning and that he wasn’t indignant (although some students, like College of Idaho professor Jan Johnson, have referred to as it a missed alternative and an instance of “historic amnesia” round occasions that make us uncomfortable).

There was, nevertheless, one other track on Wovoka that the label thought could possibly be a success. As Pat Vegas tells it, he and his brother labored on “Come and Get Your Love” late one evening in Philadelphia, the place they had been performing a sequence of gigs. It was completed the following day.

In his memoir, Pat claims that the track was co-written by the 2 of them, however that Lolly claimed sole credit score for it with the label. He writes that whereas he was “appalled” and “livid” along with his brother, he selected to remain silent, believing that elevating a stink would damage Redbone’s fame. Once I requested how the disagreement affected their relationship, he says, “We acquired over it.”

‘A sound that was so inclusive’

“Come and Get Your Love” spent 18 weeks within the High 40 and was the fourth hottest track of Billboard‘s Scorching 100 for 1974. Within the years since, its presence has continued to echo via pop: The Eurodance group Actual McCoy launched a club-ready cowl, Cyndi Lauper up to date her personal “Women Simply Need to Have Enjoyable” by mashing it up with Redbone’s hit —and, in 2020, Sony’s Legacy Recordings launched the track’s first official music video, an animated brief by Native artist Brent Discovered and producer and director Juan E Bedolla.

Within the Nineteen Seventies, the track’s large recognition gave the members of Redbone a platform to take pride of their Native heritage. Rapper Taboo Nawasha of chart toppers the Black Eyed Peas says that is what he, one other musician of Native and Mexican ancestry, strives for in his music.

“With a sound that was so inclusive, [“Come and Get Your Love”] was for everybody to come back and rock out,” Nawasha says. “Redbone kicked down the door and stated, ‘We’re proud to be Native, test us out. We’re right here, we’re alive and we will deliver that nice vitality and that good medication to the world.’ “

Reflecting on the track 50 years later, Pat Vegas says lots of people suppose “Come and Get Your Love” is about romance. They are not totally mistaken — however there’s extra to it than that.

“It is love throughout, in each aspect and each a part of your being, you understand?” he says. “And that is the message: What is the matter along with your thoughts and your signal? Come and get your love. In different phrases, the place you come from and who you’re would not matter as a lot as what you consider, and what you are feeling.”

The audio model of this story was edited by Rose Friedman and produced by Isabella Gomez Sarmiento. The digital model was edited by Daoud Tyler-Ameen.