The Reinventions of Shalamar
By Eric Grigs | May 30, 2020
I was reintroduced to the music of Shalamar recently while reading an amazing book a friend of mine had given me about the disco era. It contained hundreds of album covers, including several early Shalamar ones. My favorite: Big Fun—also one of their best early musical outings, by the way—where the group are depicted riding orca whales like horses, jumping out of the water in perfect unison, each on their own personal Shamu. It’s ridiculous, but certainly lives up to the album title, fully capturing the boundless spirit and good times that their infectious dance music provides from the moment you hit play.
Through the years, the band’s roster was quite a revolving door. However, it was somewhat standard practice for record labels of the time to Frankenstein a supergroup together and tinker with it over time to find the sweet spot for delivering hit records. Or an even darker approach: never emphasize the individual performers’ names or personalities much so that each member becomes interchangeable or replaceable.
In creating Shalamar, Soul Train’s booking agent Dick Griffey and producer Don Cornelius plucked featured dancers Jody Watley and Jeffrey Daniel out of the show’s crowd, filling two slots of the three founding members. Gary Mumford completed the original trio, although their first recordings still heavily relied on additional session singers worked into the final mix.
The sound started to gel a little more when Mumford was replaced by Gerald Brown, scoring on the charts with “Take That to the Bank,” a top 20 UK hit from their second album Disco Gardens. Unfortunately, Shalamar’s members weren’t actually taking much to the bank. Brown confronted Griffey for lack of payments owed from his contract and promptly left the group. In fact, disputes about their advances, problems with side deals, and payments of royalties would go on to cause future tensions with Griffey and the group’s members throughout the time they were together.
Without a lead male vocalist in the middle of a promotional tour for Disco Gardens, Jeffrey Daniel suggested singer Howard Hewett replace Brown. Soon after, Hewett found himself lip syncing on TV to promote the current album cuts until the newly reconstituted Shalamar went into the studio to record a third album. This began the group’s run of its most beloved iteration of Hewett, Watley, and Daniel.
Five albums with this lineup followed, two of which went Gold and two certified Platinum. Immediately, this “classic” trio would score their biggest hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with “The Second Time Around” reaching #8, and they would also rack up numerous hits on the R&B and Dance charts—with much of their immense success happening in the UK.
But as the years advanced and their popularity grew, behind-the-scenes tensions built up among the trio. Watley has described her relationship with Daniel as volatile and abusive. The record label increasingly pushed Hewett to the forefront, stoking his ego as the leader of the group by giving him more featured vocals and minimizing Jody’s contributions and value. Daniel was getting offers to do more choreography and vocal work apart from the group. On top of the interpersonal issues, all the members of Shalamar consistently struggled getting paid appropriately and compensated for royalties throughout their performing careers together.
It all came to a head during promotion for 1983’s The Look. While preparing to film the video for “Dead Giveaway,” Hewett and Watley had a falling out. Except for the on-stage group performance shots and ending reveal, Watley used a body double for many of the scenes. And once filming wrapped, she officially called it quits. Many colleagues from the SOLAR record label and friends in the industry who orbited around her warned that she was making a big mistake by leaving—and it actually did cost her a percentage of her first solo project that went to repay Griffey for breach of contract. But, in time, history showed it was the right move. Her first and second solo albums, released in 1987 and 1989, each spun off three top-ten hits, with most of those singles co-written by Watley.
Separately, Jeffrey Daniel also left the group also around the same time. As “Dead Giveaway” was climbing the charts and giving Shalamar another top 40 hit, away from the public eye the group was over. The last performance of this classic trio came on the heels of that video shoot in London, on Top of the Pops, appropriately for the track titled “Disappearing Act.” If you watch the group’s performance of the single where Watley takes lead vocals, Hewett barely engages with the band or the crowd, mostly facing away from the camera. And for a dancer at the top of his game, Daniel surprisingly spends the entire time sitting down. Both are checked out and it’s Watley who does all the heavy lifting for their swan song together.
Yet, as had happened twice before, the label decided to shuffle the deck and draw new cards. Hewett stayed on for another album with newcomers Micki Free and Delisa Davis.
While not their highest charting hit, many people remember the group from a popular song from the group’s later period, helped by a huge marketing assist. “Dancing in the Sheets” owes a lot of its success for its inclusion on the Footloose soundtrack, which dominated both movie screens and radio playlists of the time. This new trio also had songs on other movie soundtracks (hello, D.C. Cab!), even scooping up a Grammy nomination for their contribution to the Beverly Hills Cop album. But by this fourth iteration, the luster was beginning to fade and Hewett left the group to build his personal brand. While his solo albums received mixed reviews and minor success, his well-earned reputation as a soul artist continued to open new doors for collaboration, like his duet with Dionne Warwick on the soaring “Another Chance to Love.” Obviously, Hewett didn’t trigger the same massive pop culture explosion as when Watley stepped out on her own. Listening to Jody’s vocals as Shalamar progressed, you can hear someone who is holding back an enormous amount of talent, ready to seize her moment in the spotlight. Daniels largely returned to his dance roots (still best known for his body-popping moves on Soul Train and Top of the Pops, and also as the man who taught Michael Jackson to moonwalk). He helped choreograph the “Bad” and “Smooth Criminal” videos for Jackson.
Over a decade later, Babyface tried to engineer a Shalamar reunion of the classic lineup. He sought to produce a new album, but had to settle for a cover single of the Shalamar song “This Is for the Lover In You.” Babyface handled lead vocals, dropping in a rap by LL Cool J, and featured Watley and Hewett on the chorus and bridge of the track respectively, with Daniels on back-up vocals. All three Shalamar alums appeared together in the video—but actually were mainly digitally reunited because of scheduling conflicts. However, they did do a live performance together for the song on Top of the Pops in 1996—inspiring hope in fans for a true reunion—but Watley notes the magic was gone, and she had no appetite to reform the group. Although, the three recorded a song together at Westlake Studio in Los Angeles for her album Flower in 1998, but didn’t make the cut.
In the 2000s, Hewett and Daniel began touring again under the name Shalamar with Carolyn Griffey, daughter of the late co-founder Dick Griffey. However, Watley discovered the new Shalamar had been using her likeness on promotional materials and insinuating that the group was “back together again,” damaging her reputation with a string of sloppy performances and misleading TV spots. Luckily, Watley found the name Shalamar was never trademarked, and being a founding member, she had some claim to it. After registering it formally in the U.S., a contentious and public legal battle ensued with Griffey, but the courts ruled in Watley’s favor—with prejudice (meaning it cannot be appealed again). Now, legal ownership of the Shalamar brand belongs to Jody Watley.
Five years ago, Watley selected two new bandmates, Nate Allen Smith and Rosero McCoy, and began producing new music with a reconstituted group under the name “Shalamar Reloaded,” ensuring audiences knew that it was not a reunion tour of the classic trio and side-stepped any misrepresentation that plagued the brand in later years. Watley then changed the concept to Jody Watley featuring SRL, resulting in two hit singles in 2018, “Mood” and “The Passion.” Grammy-winning artist Watley continues to release solo music today. And to bring things full circle, she even invited former member Gerald Brown to add featured vocals to the 2013 remix of “Nightlife” under the Shalamar brand. Nearly a half century later, Shalamar’s ever evolving story and revolving door approach to making music continues.
Dig deeper into the music from this article
Spin our recommendations for the best tracks to explore from Shalamar’s history of hits on our newest Spotify playlist, Shalamar Reinventions. We’ve also included some additional song highlights from the solo careers of former Shalamar band members.
Eric Grigs is a pop culture writer, artist, and co-host of the Pop Trash Podcast.