Much Love featuring Rudy Love Sr.
Gig Seeker Pro

Much Love featuring Rudy Love Sr.

Wichita, Kansas, United States

Wichita, Kansas, United States
Band R&B Funk

Calendar

This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

Music

Press


"Music legend keeping the 'Love' in Kansas"

WICHITA, Kansas – He’s worked with the Temptations, the Rolling Stones and Van Morrison. He sang with Stevie Wonder and spent more than a decade managing Sly and the Family Stone. But Rudy Love always found his way back to Wichita and on the eve of his induction into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame, KSN caught up with the local music legend.

Rudy Love has found a home in Wichita strumming his guitar in a makeshift Wichita studio surrounded by people who share his passion for music.

“All the things that have made me however much fame I have I worked on in Wichita,” said Love.

His latest project has been the front man for a band fittingly titled Much Love. The up-start group is crafting a demo tape in hopes of landing more gigs in the area. It may not rival his stint as a vocalist for Motown or a more recent trip to the House of Blues to perform with his son Rudy Jr., but it's the next verse in an anthology of musical works.

“I've had something like 30 chart records in the last 50 years or so,” he said.

Music is in his blood. It was passed down from his father and shared by his 14 brothers and sisters.

“I don't know whether we'd heard about birth control or what,” he said jokingly.

It led to Rudy Love and the Love Family, a group that took off locally, but gained popularity worldwide. Their influence is still around today. Jay-Z even sampled one of their songs.

”The next thing I know it's on “American Gangster” and they’re asking me if they can send me a check,” he said. “And I said, OK, if you got to do something, go ahead and do it.’”

And the list could go on like riding in the Jackson’s motorcade or sharing a VIP box with Prince at Dodgers Stadium. To this day, it’s all a little surreal.

“This guy Rudy Love --I would have paid to be him,” he said.

Only he gets to be him for free and isn’t ready for this game to end anytime soon.

“I should be looking for the bench, but I’m still trying to get coach to let in for a quarter or two.”

Love will be inducted into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame with the likes of Count Baise and Charlie Parker Saturday at Liberty Hall in Lawrence.

- KSNW 3 Television


"Music from the heart"


Music from the heart
Rudy Love will be inducted into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame on Saturday.
0 Comments
BY JOE STUMPE
Eagle correspondent
Three days before his induction into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame, Rudy Love was rehearsing in an east Wichita basement with his latest band, Much Love. The group is new and sounded "nervous" — at least to Love's practiced ear.

"Don't go up or down," he told the drummer, "but smack it hard."

He ran through the ending to another song twice, to make sure everybody had it down.

"OK, that's good," he said, moving on to the next number.

If anybody can whip a band into shape quickly, it's the 62-year-old Love, who went from heading a sibling group, the Love Family, to serving as bandleader for R&B great Sly Stone.

On Saturday, Love will be inducted into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame along with Wichita guitarist Pat McJimsey, who died in 2004, jazz greats Count Basie and Charlie Parker and seven other groups and musicians. Love and six other inductees will perform at Liberty Hall in Lawrence.

"I think they just got tired of me," Love joked during a break in the practice. "They said ‘He won't ever quit unless we give him something.’æ"

Love's sister Peggy, who was sitting nearby, probably gives a more accurate account of her brother's feelings when she called the induction "incredible. What an honor, what a privilege."

As Love tells it, his career as a singer, songwriter and musician was set by his father, gospel singer Robert Love, who fathered a large family that became well known for music, sports and food. Rudy was the oldest of 17 children.

"I never had a chance, a choice — Daddy started us singing before we could talk," he said.

Not that Love ever really wanted to do anything else.

"Rudy Love and the Love Family, we had so many good things," he said. Love and his family recorded albums and, though they never became household names themselves, they opened for many people who were.

"That was exciting, to have my family be like what we always dreamed up as kids," Love said. Then there was the decade he spent with Sly Stone, one of whose songs, "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),” he'll perform in Lawrence.

"When I first saw Sly and the Family Stone, I didn't want to be like them, I wanted to be him," Love said.

Love has performed in Las Vegas and Hong Kong, L.A. and New York — and quite a few less glamorous places. Perhaps not surprisingly, his own children are all involved in the music business in one form or another.

Whatever style of music is popular at the time, Love said his approach has always been that "music from the heart reaches the heart. If I can feel it, they can feel it."

And although being inducted into the Hall of Fame undeniably stamps him as a kind of elder statesman, Love has no plans to give up performing. The band Much Love has several gigs in the Wichita area scheduled in upcoming weeks. Joining him will be Apryl Mueller on vocals, Blake Coleman on drums, Gene "Flip" Brown on bass and Phil Bollig on guitar. Peggy and two more sisters, Shirley and Dennise, also contribute vocals.

Love won't deny that there have been ups and downs during his career, as when he discovered that some of his albums were being sold in Europe under somebody else's name (with the proceeds going into somebody else's pocket).

But mostly it's been "wonderful," he said. "I would have paid to be me. I would have paid to be Rudy Love."

If you go

RUDY LOVE

What: The Wichita musician will be inducted into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame

Where: Liberty Hall, Lawrence

When: 6:30 p.m. Saturday

How much: Tickets $40. For more information, go to ksmusichalloffame.org
- The Wichita Eagle


Discography

Still working on that hot first release.

Photos

Bio

What makes us unique is our set list, our 4 part harmonies, our show energy, the ability to make songs our own, our mashups, the ability to adjust on the fly, and simply the overall quality of the musicianship. This band believes that it has that "X" factor that it takes to make for a memorable evening. It is something that must be seen to be truly experienced.

We are five experienced musicians with thousands of gigs between us who have opened for multiple nationals acts, performed at hundreds of weddings, and corporate events, and are ready to entertain at your establishment or event. We come from different places musically, and different backgrounds to bring the audience music in a way that they can’t help but feel the groove and want to dance.

Our backgrounds range from OU football player, to son of a musical legend, to aspiring music producers, and to a former college dance team member.

Musically our influences include the greats from every genre you can think of. This would include the vocals and keys of Sammy Davis, the Funk and Groove of Parliament and Sly and the Family Stone, the showmanship of Michael Jackson, the Spunk of Pink, and the Guitar Virtuosity of Hendrix. All of this, and much, much more, comes together to play covers, and “mashups” that will keep the audience guessing, engaged, and on their feet.