In 1967 the band switched focus, starting to play electric guitar and bass and recruiting drummer Stephen Jo Bladd and fast-talking ex-disc jockey singer Peter Wolf, born Peter Blankenfeld, both from Boston. The band formed under the name Snoopy and the Sopwith Camels while Geils was attending Worcester Polytechnic Institute for a couple of semesters. Funk) and harpist Richard Salwitz (stage name Magic Dick). Geils (born Februdied April 10, 2017), bassist Danny Klein (Dr. The band started as an acoustic blues trio in the mid 1960s with singer and guitarist J. Geils Band was an American music group from Worcester, Massachusetts, USA that had a successful blues-rock/R&B-influenced sound in the 1970s, before moving towards a more pop-influenced sound in the 1980s, which brought them MTV airplay and their 1982 international hit single “Centerfold”. It’s not always in fashion, but it’s never out of fashion either, I don’t think. “Y’know, the music I play - blues, jazz - is timeless,” he said. Geils has been scarce in recent years, but he never envisioned an end to his music career. Geils also enjoyed a lifelong passion for restoring and driving sports cars as well as racing, and he started the KTR European Motorsports shop, eventually selling it in 1996. During the ’00s, he returned to jazz for a pair of solo albums as well as teaming with Beaudoin again for the Kings of Strings. He was also part of the New Guitar Summit with Duke Robillard and Gerry Beaudoin and produced an album for blues rockers the Installers, Nail It!, in 2004 and occasionally joined the band onstage. Outside the Geils Band, the guitarist produced an album for Geils bassist Danny Klein before forming Bluestime. No details on a settlement have ever been revealed. Geils Band, sans Geils and with Duke Levine and Kevin Barry on guitar, continued touring despite the legalities. District Court alleging “trademark infringement and deceptive business practices” if the other band members continued to use the J. Geils and Francesca Records, the label he co-owned, responded with the suit in U.S. The group filed a challenge to Geils’ trademark claim, citing a 1982 agreement limiting the guitarist’s use of the band name or even his abbreviated J. Patent and Trademark Office in 2008 and received it the following year. His ouster from the band started in November 2011, when Geils informed the others that he had filed for a trademark on the group name with the U.S. into the fold” for the group’s reunion concerts and tours. But group manager John Baruck said in 2012 that “it was always a struggle to get J. The name was not an issue - and, if anything, was an intriguing curio not unlike Jethro Tull or Uriah Heep - during the Geils Band’s initial run to 1985 and again when the band reunited in 1999. It’s so confusing.’ But it stuck, just like Booker T. you were fantastic.’ I said, ‘Bill, it’s a pleasure to meet you, but I’m not J.’ ‘You’re not?’ It became a ritual Bill and I would go out and have lunch or dinner, and after the second glass of wine he’d go on this thing: ‘You’ve got to change the name of the band. We did the show, and after the fifth encore Bill came into the dressing room, wrapped his arms around me and said, ‘J. Wolf added: “By the time we got to the Fillmore by Bill Graham, he hadn’t seen us. unless we kept it under that name,” Wolf recalled during 2012, after Geils and the band became embroiled in a bitter legal dispute over the name. was working with a manager who wouldn’t let me or anyone else work with J. Geils Blues Band after he transferred from Northeastern to the Worcester Polytechnic Institute to study mechanical engineering. Geils also became a fan of the Boston folk scene and met the other members of the J. Geils Band's Top 10 Biggest Billboard Hot 100 Hits “It really became the foundation for everything that came later.” “That music felt very real to me - very raw, very much from the gut,” Geils said. He learned trumpet - which he played in the Northeastern University marching band - and drums first, then gravitated to guitar after hearing Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and other blues pioneers on the radio. Born in New York City and raised in Far Hills, New Jersey, Geils was schooled on his father’s jazz albums, listening to Ellington, Count Basie and Benny Goodman records at home and checking out Louis Armstrong in concert as a youth. I just go with whatever it feels right to play at the time.”Įllington was, in fact, one of Geils’ earliest musical touchstones. “I’ve never considered myself just a blues player or just a rock player or anything like that. “ Duke Ellington said there’s only two kinds of music - good and bad - and I always adhered to that,” Geils told Billboard during the mid-’90s, when he launched the band Bluestime with Geils harmonica player “Magic” Dick Salwitz.
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