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Forty years ago, a twenty-year old with powerhouse vocals took the music world by storm. Her name was Chaka Khan.

She, along with her band Rufus, recorded some of the best and most memorable albums of the seventies. Their music combined elements of funk and R&B, as well as jazz with a touch of classical in some of their material.

The group’s first self-titled album was released in 1973. At that time, the group consisted of Khan, Ron Stockert (lead vocals, keyboards), Kevin Murphy (bass, background vocals, organ, clavinet), Al Ciner (background vocals, lead and acoustic guitar), Dennis Belfield (background vocals and bass) and Andre Fisher (background vocals, drums and percussion). With the exception of Khan and Fisher, the other bandmates were white and together they all put together a very good album. Although the album only did moderately well, cuts such as “Whoever’s Thrilling You is Killing Me,” “Keep It Coming” and a cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Maybe Your Baby,” which all were anchored by Khan’s searing vocals, generated a lot of buzz.

Not long after the album’s release, the group went back into the recording studio to work on their second album.

The album, released in March 1974, was entitled Rags to Rufus. The album cover featured a close-up of a denim shirt with the group member’s heads coming out of its pocket.

The album opened with one funky scorcher of a cut entitled “You Got the Love,” which Khan said in her autobiography Through the Fire was one of her most memorable moments in making the album. It was written by Khan and a then unknown guitarist named Ray Parker Jr. Although uncredited, he played guitar on this track. “That song just happened when Ray Parker Jr. popped up with a song idea for me,” Khan wrote. “When he started that guitar line, the words flowed like water. The whole thing must have been written in all of ten minutes.” Parker’s guitar playing, combined with Khan’s spine tingling vocals, make “You Got the Love” one of the best recordings ever made in Khan’s Rufus days.

The following track is the hip mid-tempo “I Got the Right Street,” which garnered quite a bit of airplay at the peak of the album’s popularity.

The third track is the poignant ballad “Walkin’ in the Sun” followed by the album’s funky instrumental title track, highlighted by some superb synthesizer and keyboard playing.

Next up is the gospel-tinged “Swing Down Chariot” which has Khan and Ron Stockert sharing lead vocals. It’s an outstanding track which is one of the closest things Khan did to gospel music. Indeed, it makes you feel like you are in church from the organ intro to the group sounding like a church choir as they repeatedly sang “Ride that horn!”

Side two opens with the one minute, fifty-five second jam “Sideways,” which seems to be basic dialogue recorded while the group was in the studio.

Next up is another gorgeous ballad “Ain’t Nothing But A Maybe.”

What follows is the song that broke the group through big time, “Tell Me Something Good.” This Sly Stone-influenced mid-tempo funk track made a lot of noise among music listeners when it was first released. It was very different from most other records of the time when disco began to peak and it stood out like a diamond in the rough.  The track also won Rufus their first Grammy for Best R&B Song by a Group, Duo or Chorus.

When the group was recording the album, they were surprised to get a visit from superstar Stevie Wonder. He had admired Rufus ever since he heard their rendition of his track “Maybe Your Baby.” Wonder had written several songs for the group. Khan rejected one of the tracks, “Come and Get This Stuff,” which Wonder’s ex-wife Syreeta later recorded on her second album Stevie Wonder Presents Syreeta.  “You got anything else?” Khan recalled asking Wonder. Wonder then asked her what her sign was and when she told him she was an Aries, he presented the song to her which at the time just had the hook. The song was “Tell Me Something Good.”  Khan then worked with Wonder on the lyrics of the song. According to Khan’s brother, Mark Stevens, in the Centric documentary Being, Khan wrote 50 percent of the song but was so overjoyed by working with Wonder, she basically forfeited a co-writing credit.  Khan said in her autobiography she is not bitter about it, but in hindsight was “young and naïveabout a lot of stuff in the music business.”

“Tell Me Something Good” was one of the last songs recorded for the album, almost a few months before its release. When Ron Stockert, Al Ciner and Dennis Belfield left the group, the album was only halfway finished. When Tony Maiden joined, he reportedly contributed guitar and the talk box technology for “Tell Me Something Good,” in which he sang during its chorus (“tell me, tell me, tell me”) and certain other parts of the song.  However, his contributions to the song were uncredited on the album (it was even speculated at one point that Wonder was the one who contributed the talk box technology to the song, which he utilized on his albums).

The next song on the album was the uptempo “Look Through My Eyes,” which further showcased Khan’s soulful wailing; it was followed by the truly gorgeous piano-driven “In Love We Grow,” one of the prettiest tunes Khan ever recorded and is worthy of wider recognition. The last track on the album is the gentle and tender ballad “Smokin’ Room.”

Perhaps due to the lack of success of Rufus’ first album, Rag to Rufus didn’t take off right away in sales. As luck or fate would have it, Bob Monaco, who got Rufus the recording deal with ABC Records, met with then-Warner Brothers Records president Bobby Applegate. Applegate told him that a new R&B FM radio station heard Rufus and wanted to get a copy of their new album, and he sent over copies of the new album to the station.  Monaco told Applegate that if he could do anything to get “Tell Me Something Good” more airplay in Los Angeles, he’d greatly appreciate it. Soon, the DJ from that radio station wanted fifty copies of Rags to Rufus for a station giveaway and also met with the executives of ABC Records, ultimately propelling the album into the charts and into gold status.

The album went to number four on both the soul and pop album charts in the summer of 1974.

The album’s first single, “Tell Me Something Good,” which was edited and remixed to three minutes and thirty seconds from the four minute and forty second album version, went to #3 on both the soul and pop singles charts. The song hit gold and became one of the most memorable songs of 1974 and remains an all-time classic.

The second single released, “You Got the Love,” went to number one on the soul singles chart in December 1974 and #11 on the pop singles chart.

What ultimately led to the breakup of the original Rufus group had a lot to do with the aforementioned album cover. The cover featured a button saying “Rufus” and another button saying “featuring Chaka Khan.” In fact, from this album to future albums and starting with the “You Got the Love” single, all of the group’s records and albums were labeled as Rufus featuring Chaka Khan. Although Khan admitted to being a bit thrilled from the attention, she didn’t feel comfortable being singled out and wanted to be  part of a group, not a solo act. She later realized that ABC Records used her as the “sex appeal” of the group for marketing purposes. Nevertheless, all but Kevin Murphy and Andre Fisher quit the group. Tony Maiden and Bobby Watson, both of whom had played with Billy Preston, became a part of the group.

When I interviewed for SoulTrain.com last year, he told me that the original bass player and guitar player of Rufus had quit one night while playing at Maverick’s Flat, where he just happened to be. Fisher, whom he knew, asked him right then and there to join the band, and the rest is history.

Subsequent albums such as Rufusized, Rufus featuring Chaka Khan and Ask Rufus were huge sellers and extremely popular, but most importantly laid the foundation that would later help Khan forge her superstar solo career. Khan said in her book that if she had acted “diva-like” when Stevie Wonder presented those songs to her, he might have walked away. Thank goodness that didn’t happen, because the music world would have lost out on one of the best voices ever in music history.

Download Rags to Rufus on iTunes.

-Stephen McMillian

Stephen McMillian is a journalist, writer, actor, filmmaker, dancer/performer, Soul Train historian and soul music and movie historian. He is also a former Soul Train dancer. He is featured in the Soul Train documentary Show Me Your Soul and is also featured in the book Love, Peace and Soul: Behind the Scenes of America’s Favorite Dance Show Soul Train which is available on Amazon and in bookstores.