The Mafia Family That Wasn’t
My mother used to say that “you cannot stand in the rain and not get wet.”
And older brothers O’Kelly, Rudolph and Ronald could not spend years around organized crime and not learn to act like gangsters.
It took help from the mob to get out of their Motown contract. Groups with value did not simply walk away from labels “Scott Free.”
Just saying…
Mr Barry owed his success to a mob associate.
The brothers were a family so they misused each other. The older brothers stole royalties from their younger brothers and withheld money and assets. Jimi Hendrix was once a member of the band, he left. Little brothers Ernie, Marvin and Chris finally grew tired of their mistreatment so in the early 1980s they left, and the world saw O’Kelly, Rudolph and Ronald for what they weren’t, and that was hitmakers.
The Isley Brothers are America’s oldest working band. But they are not what you think.