What Happened? Cameo

Cameo

The founder and longtime creative sparkplug of the group is Blackmon, who came from New York City's Harlem neighborhood and grew up near the famed Apollo Theater. Starting at age four, he was taken to the Apollo by an aunt and uncle, and he kept going on his own.

Another influence on Blackmon, one that showed up in the complex arrangements of many Cameo songs, was classical music; he studied at New York's Julliard School. Working as a tailor by day and frequenting New York clubs at night, Blackmon was inspired by the Ohio Players and other horn-heavy funk bands of the early 1970s to create a group of his own in 1974. At first the group was called the New York City Players, but soon they changed their name to Cameo With a full horn section in action, the group numbered 13 players at its largest, and after a few years of playing New York dance clubs, they were signed in 1976 to the Chocolate City label, a subsidiary of the larger urban independent label Casablanca.

Cameo released their excellent debut album, 1977's Cardiac Arrest, was highlighted by four singles. Three of those hit the Billboard R&B chart: "Rigor Mortis" (number 33), when Blackmon heard the first one, "Rigor Mortis," on the radio at the tailor shop where he was still working, he put down the chalk with which he had just marked the cuffs of a customer's jacket for alteration, and walked out, never to return. They quickly followed it with “Funk Funk" (number 20), and "Post Mortem" (number 70). Although the group was clearly inspired by elder funk groups like Parliament, Funkadelic, and the Ohio Players, Cardiac Arrest made Cameo's case for belonging in the same division an open-and-shut one case.

In an attempt to keep the ball rolling, 1978 saw the release of Cameo's second and third albums. Neither We All Know Who We Are nor Ugly Ego were as solid as the debut, but the group's singular characteristics were becoming increasingly evident. The winding, horn-punctuated "It's Serious" (from We All Know Who We Are) narrowly missed the Top 20 of the R&B chart, while "Insane" (from Ugly Ego) dipped just inside it, peaking at number 17. The best halves of these two albums would've made a fine sophomore LP.

1979's Secret Omen, featuring a disco-fied re-visiting of Cardiac Arrest's "Find My Way" and the magnificently funky and slightly loony "I Just Want to Be" (a number-three R&B chart hit), was stacked with fine album cuts and brought Cameo back as a group that excelled in the LP format. "Sparkle" was one of their best ballads, a sinewy number that hit the Top Ten. Five albums released between 1980 and 1983 (Cameosis, Feel Me, Knights of the Sound Table, Alligator Woman, Style) brought about a slight dip in quality on the album front. Despite an abundance of filler on each record, none of those albums were strict disappointments, delivering hot Top 20 R&B singles like "Shake Your Pants," "We're Goin' Out Tonight," "Keep It Hot," "Freaky Dancin'" "Just Be Yourself," "Flirt," and "Style."

Cameo set up its own label, Atlanta Artists, and landed a distribution deal with the large Polygram conglomerate. With Cameo's sound revamped to take advantage of 1980s synthesizer technology but not losing sight of its funkier roots, Blackmon entered a creative songwriting period. One of the most significant ripples in Cameo's time line came during that period, in 1982, when they packed up and set up shop in Atlanta. Pared down to a quintet and located in a less hectic city, the group became bigger fish in a smaller pond. Blackmon even started his own label, Atlanta Artist. The label's first LP, Style, also marked a significant shift in sound, with synthesizers taking on a pronounced role.

 It did not take long for the Atlanta move to begin to pay off. "She's Strange," the title track of a 1984 album, was one of the first singles from outside the rap sphere to feature rapped passages; the song topped R&B charts and cracked the pop top 50. Single Life reached the number two spot on the Billboard R&B chart, and Cameo's popularity built steadily.

Cameo finally hit the big time in 1986 with "Word Up!," again the title track of the album on which it appeared. Blackmon, using an exaggerated version of his usual nasal singing voice, collected a sequence of stock dance-floor song phrases ("with your hands in the air like you just don't care") and deployed them over a ferocious funk beat in such a way that they landed on the then-new slang phrase of the song's title (it meant "that's right"). The song topped R&B charts, reached high levels on pop charts, and remained a staple of party and wedding DJ dance mixes two decades later. For a year or so, Blackmon was a major star, and newspapers reported on attention-getting antics like an episode in which he allegedly had the roof of his limousine raised to accommodate his growing Afro. He was notoriously known for the bright red codpiece. The Word Up! album spawned another major hit, "Word Up," "Candy," and "Back and Forth" -- held down the Top Five plateau of the R&B chart. "Word Up" even went to number six on the pop chart, giving them their biggest bite of the mainstream. The song was everywhere.

What goes up must come down, and that's exactly what happened to Cameo. Despite the fact that two more singles -- "Skin I'm In" and "I Want It Now" -- scaled up to number five on the R&B chart, neither Machismo nor Real Men Wear Black performed well as albums. After 1991's Emotional Violence, the group's profile was lowered significantly, but they did tour sporadically to the delight of hardcore fans as well as plenty of misguided people who thought Cameo was all about "Word Up" and nothing more. Notably, Blackmon spent a few years of the '90s at Warner Bros., as the vice president of A&R.

1994 saw the release of In the Face of Funk that got some club play, a single release, and at least one track that received critical acclaim (for "You Are My Love").

In 2000, Cameo released their last-recorded album Sexy Sweet Thing, the album's title track, also had a single and video release. Around this time, they frequently performed in the U.S. and at various dates in Europe.