The DJ culture is in reality a culture of collectors, where participants are scrambling to find the Holy Grail 12-inch slab of vinyl. This can only be found where obscurity meets musical success, thus giving the finder copious amounts of cultural capital amongst his/her peers. So it is no surprise that the world of DJs and hip-hop eventually caught up with Indianapolis’ Ebony Rhythm Band nearly 40 years after they began and 30 years after they finished.

"I thought what was happening now was going to happen a lot earlier," says Lester "Lammy" Johnson, ERB bassist.

In a way, though, the Ebony Rhythm Band had remained almost deliberately unheard of in its own time by its recklessness and will to be weird. Reactions from audiences in Indianapolis nightclubs were a little muted. People were a bit confused not only by the strange synthesis of blues, R&B, jazz, rock and roll and soul music, but even by the way the band dressed. They had been self-described by drummer Matthew “Phatback” Watson as “the first black hippies.” Photos of the band in that period show a fun-loving group in bell-bottoms, vests and big hats, which was far from the stage show garb that was still popular in Indy in those days.

“It was a mixed bag,” Johnson says of the local reaction. “Some people liked what we did, and some people thought we were a bunch of idiots. The purists didn’t particularly care for it, but the younger people liked it ’cause we were different. Matching outfits — we thought that stuff was silly. We thought those bands looked like a bunch of waiters. We didn’t want to be a show band.”

The band started around 1968 as the house band for LAMP Records, an Indianapolis R&B label that was based at 21st and Illinois. Though they were formed out of studio work, the fellows wanted to branch off into their own style of music and move away from the heavily arranged restrictions of being a back-up band. The recordings (lovingly reissued by Stones Throw Records as Soul Heart Transplant: The LAMP Sessions) reveal a band as tight as the Funk Brothers from Motown, but as adventuresome as a ’60s psychedelic rock band.

“We had different kinds of musical backgrounds,” Johnson says. “We had a blues and R&B background, but we were being influenced by things we liked as well — obscure stuff like Ultimate Spinach [and] Steppenwolf. We liked the spirit of what they did.”
The band effectively dissolved in 1975, and its members scattered, though Johnson still remains on the Indianapolis scene, including performing with the mysterious Jandek in December 2006, though he laments the loss of elements from the old days.

“You have bigger, more sophisticated venues,” he says, “but what you don’t have is the club breeding ground. Back then in Marion County, you’d have about 60 clubs that had music six nights a week. It was endless. There were no DJs. There were a few, but they weren’t taken very seriously, so everyone had live music.”
Johnson remains optimistic.

“I think it’ll make a comeback though,” he says. “I think people want to see something real.”

The core members of the Ebony Rhythm Band — Johnson, Watson and organist Ricky Jackson — still keep in touch today and have recently reunited for live performances at Radio Radio. Johnson says the guys are working on new recordings through the mail and have more performance and business plans in the near future.
“We were different,” Johnson says, “and we were like more [of] what we see now. What we were doing was universal, and we didn’t even realize it. We were part of what was and a part of what will always be.”