When my wife and I were first married, we lived in a little house in the city of Oshawa, Ontario. Each day we would drive together to neighbouring Bowmanville in order to go to work at the school where we both were teachers. As we made this daily drive, we would often go past an off-line betting establishment that was known as The Cocky Jockey. This was a place that you could go and place bets on live horse races from around the world. From driving past that place each day, the name of the establishment entered into the vernacular of our daily family conversations. This was especially true on those days when I started talking as if I had all of life's answers. Whenever my head would begin to get too big, my wife would bring me back down to earth by saying, "Don't be a cocky jockey!" These gentle admonishments have become part of the back-and-forth of our marriage to the point that there are times when my wife isn't even around to say it, but I still hear those words just as clearly. Today's post was one of those times.
Sometime in the early spring of this year, I will author music post #1000. Over the course of researching and writing all of those posts, I feel as though I have learned a lot and that my understanding of the world of music has grown. Over that time, I have developed a fairly solid rhythm when it comes to the planning, researching, writing, editing and publishing of my posts. But every now and again, a post comes along that surprises me and takes me in a direction that I wasn't even remotely expecting. "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO is one such post. When I first sat down to plan out the week and decided to write about this viral dance hit from a decade ago, I assumed it would all be pretty straight-forward. In my mind I was prepared to start writing the post by saying that LMFAO was a group made up of two guys who went by the names of Sky Blu and Redfoo. I was further prepared to write about how they were one of the hottest acts around in 2011 and 2012. I would have expanded upon this by stating that their first of two #1 hit songs was a send up of viral internet dance sensations and was called "Party Rock Anthem". Because of that song, a dance known as the Melbourne Shuffle became all the rage. I would have concluded the post by acknowledging that LMFAO broke up not long after they had their moment in the spotlight. That would have been the post! That was my mindset as I set about to conduct my research so as to find the informational "meat" to put on the "bones" on my story outline. That is when the rabbit hole swallowed me up, and the wise words of my wife rang out in my ears…don't be a cocky jockey! In other words, don't write the story until I actually know what the story is all about. So, with much credit given to my wife...here is the real story of LMFAO and their song "Party Rock Anthem".
Whenever I write about someone who has an obvious stage name, one of the tidbits I like to use in a post is who these people really are. What is their real name? Where were they originally from? That sort of biographical data allows me to paint a somewhat more human picture of these artists who exist in the spotlight. I followed this pattern with Sky Blu and Redfoo of LMFAO. For those of you who are familiar with the background of LMFAO, then what I discovered will come across as old news. But for someone like me who didn't really pay that much attention to this act when "Party Rock Anthem" blew up in 2011, the news that both Sky Blu and Redfoo were, in fact, members of Motown royalty and could trace their family tree all the way back to a time when their family line and President Jimmy Carter's family lines were connected, well, it captured my attention and took this post in another direction.
There have been many times over the course of my 900+ posts where I have written about ordinary folks who, as teens, developed a love of music and began to play. The next thing we know, they are playing with some influential musician who helps them to launch their careers. Whenever I wrote about somebody like that (as I did this past week with Corey Hart. You can read that post here), I would find myself asking how such life-altering meetings managed to happen? How does a regular Joe end up gaining access to an established celebrity? How do they manage to afford paying for studio time and hiring session players and the like? Well, in the case of the guys from LMFAO, part of the reason for their success is that they were born into the lifestyle. I learned this when I started my research with the simple question of what were the real names of Sky Blu and Redfoo. Here is what I found out.
Redfoo is the member of LMFAO who has big hair and wears the white rimmed glasses. His legal name is Stefan Kendal Gordy. Sky Blu's legal name is Skyler Austen Gordy. If the surname "Gordy" rings a bell, it should. Both gentlemen from LMFAO are, in fact, offspring of the legendary founder of Motown Records, Berry Gordy. As it turns out, Redfoo is Berry Gordy's son and Sky Blu's half-uncle. Redfoo is also the half-brother of 1980s recording star Rockwell (who had a big hit with the song "Somebody's Watching Me"). Rockwell's legal name is Kennedy William Gordy. He is named after President Kennedy, with "William" being the real first name of Smokey Robinson. Former President Jimmy Carter was Redfoo's second cousin once removed.
Both Redfoo and his half-brother Rockwell (he was called that because, apparently, he "rocked well") grew up with people like Michael Jackson as childhood friends and folks like Diana Ross and Smokey Robinson as people they considered to be family. Sky Blu is Redfoo's half nephew. He is the son of Berry Gordy IV which makes Motown founder Berry Gordy III his grandfather.
Michael Jackson and his pal Rockwell.
In order to tell the story of LMFAO, it is instructive to talk a bit about the history of the Gordy family. I will do this by going back in time and then taking the story up to the present day. Here we go!!! Berry Gordy II was the patriarch who moved the family from the Deep South to Detroit, Michigan (which is where Tamla Records was established by Berry Gordy III using money that Barry Gordy II had set aside as tuition money for his children. Tamla Records morphed into Motown Records shortly thereafter, and the rest is music history). Berry Gordy I was the product of a union between a slave owning man named James Thomas Gordy and a female slave known as Esther Johnson. James Thomas Gordy also had children with his own wife. It is that line of offspring who are connected to former president Jimmy Carter.
This is where Motown all began.
Berry Gordy II sired eight children during his marriage to Bertha Fuller. Motown founder Berry Gordy III was the seventh of those eight children. All of these eight children ended up playing important roles at Motown Records either in the business end of things, or else on the creative side. Since we have come this far, why not go all the way? The eight children of Bertha and Berry Gordy II (in order of birth) were: (1) Fuller Berry Gordy (Motown business executive), (2) Esther Gordy (It was Esther who was in charge of the family's tuition fund from which her brother Berry Gordy III was given a small loan to start Tamla Records. Esther worked in Motown's art dept. for many years). (3) Anna Gordy (She was a songwriter who wrote many songs at Motown. She started her own record label known as Anna Records that helped distribute Motown artists' albums on a national scale. At one time Anna was married to Marvin Gaye. She wrote some of the songs on his album What's Goin' On?). (4) Loucye Gordy (She was head of Jobete Publishing, which served as the publishing arm of Motown Records). (5) George Gordy (He worked as a business executive at Motown and helped produce albums for The Spinners). (6) Gwen Gordy (She was a songwriter at Motown and helped her sister Anna with the formation of Anna Records. She wrote songs with and for her brother-in-law Marvin Gaye. She also wrote songs for Jackie Wilson). (7) Berry Gordy III (He founded Tamla Records with a loan from the family college fund that was granted to him by his sister Esther. Tamla Records became Motown Records. Under his stewardship, Motown artists reached #1 on the charts over 100 times! Berry Gordy III was inducted into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame for helping to develop that "Motown sound" that so many of us have come to know and love). (8) Robert Gordy (When his sister Loucye passed away from cancer in the mid 1960s, it was Robert who stepped up and took over the running of Jobete Publishing).
As you can clearly see, while Berry Gordy III has always been acknowledged as the founder of Motown Records, he could not have had the success that he did if not for the help of his entire family. Due to the fact that the music business was such an integral part of the Gordy family's way of life, it should not be surprising that so many of the children of the original "Gordy eight" went into the business as well. Fuller Berry's daughter, Iris, helped manage acts such as DeBarge, Teena Marie and even Rick James. Berry Gordy III had a son named Kerry who was a songwriter and manager for stars such as Prince and Rick James as well. Berry Gordy III had another son with another woman who they named Kennedy William or, as we call him, Rockwell. Berry Gordy III had a daughter with Diana Ross named Rhonda Ross. Rhonda Ross went on to win a Daytime Emmy for her work on the soap opera Another World. This brings us to Redfoo and Sky Blu, who both have white mothers. Redfoo is the son of Berry Gordy III, while Sky Blu is the son of Berry Gordy IV who, in turn, is son of Berry Gordy III. Apparently, the naming of children with the same names is not just a thing that the Gordy family did. Marvin Gaye's sons are named Marvin II, Marvin III and Marvin Gaye IV.
Father and son: Berry Gordy III and Stefan Kendal Gordy aka Redfoo
Both Redfoo and Sky Blu were drawn to the world of electronic dance music and hip hop at a young age. In addition to hanging out with the likes of Michael Jackson, Redfoo and Sky Blu were both friends with singer will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas. In order to exert better control of the music he was involved with, will.i.am (all lowercase, for those wondering if the spelling of his name is a typo), started his own record label. One of the first acts he signed was Redfoo and Sky Blu, who, by then, were performing as an act known as LMFAO. For anyone unfamiliar with what the acronym LMFAO stands for, it means "Laughing My F*cking A** Off". It is an acronym that gained popularity because of the language used by people texting on their phones, or else tweeting on social media sites. As LMFAO, Redfoo and Sky Blu were quite familiar with rave culture and the world of dance clubs. When they learned of a viral dance craze known as The Melbourne Shuffle that was gaining popularity in Australia and around the world, they created a song about it called "Party Rock Anthem". In doing so, the guys also created public personas for themselves that carried them through the whole of their career as a duo. In the video for the song, Redfoo and Sky Blu created a parody of the dystopian movie 28 Days. The storyline of the video shows the boys emerging from comas that lasted for 28 days. They emerge into a world in which everyone is being infected like zombies. Except, instead of turning into typical zombies, those infected become "Melbourne Shuffle" dancers who cannot stop shuffling. The electronic dance tune that accompanied this song was one of the summer of 2011's most played songs on the radio and the internet.
After the success of their second #1 hit, "Sexy and I Know It", the Gordy family members decided that they had had enough and went on hiatus. Fans and critics alike expressed surprise that they would step back from the spotlight just as they were beginning to take off. Many wondered if ill will was the reason behind the breakup of LMFAO. The boys replied to that in the best way that they could. They issued a statement that reiterated that they were family and that their relationship would always be based on love. Regardless of what the future holds for Stefan and Skyler Gordy, I am sure it will be filled with creativity and, hopefully, with happiness and success as well.
As for me, I end this post the same way that it began and that is with a gentle reminder that I must remember to follow where these stories lead and not presume to know the outcome before I begin. In other words, don't be a cocky jockey! Every day I'm shuffling! Every day I'm shuffling! LMFAO!
Every day I'm shuffling"
The link to the video for the song "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO can be found here. ***The lyrics version is here.
The link to the official website for LMFAO can be found here.
The link to the official website for the Motown Records (featuring modern artists as well as the classic Motown stars) can be found here.
The link to the video that shows how to do the Melbourne Shuffle can be found here.
***As always, all original content contained within this post remains the sole property of the author. No portion of this post shall be reblogged, copied or shared in any manner without the express written consent of the author. ©2024 http://www.tommacinneswriter.com
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