The O'Jays

Yeah, you have to, right? I got some Philadelphia Soul.

If you don't know me by now, by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Love Train, the OJs, like that kind of thing.

And then James Brown, right? He's the birth of funk.

I got you.

mellow.

Under me is I Love Music by The O'Jays, a track from 1975.

And I guess if there's anything that I wish for all of us in the darker months is loads of music, loads of boogies.

So let's keep this summer feeling going.

I struggled so hard with-

... there's no, there's no O'Jays on this list

...

I would have a damn-

There's no O'Jays on this list

No O'Jays, no Whispers.

No Whispers.

All right.

There you go.

The OJs.

That's what we doing.

We give them what they want.

Love that one.

The OJs and Love Train.

That's Joe T. Vannelli on the remix on this week's Dance Party Weekly.

Love the way he's taken the classic disco track and remixed it into 2026.

Not necessarily with, I guess you could say, our age demographic, our age group or whatever, but...

I remember listening as a kid to Lenny Williams and the OJs and stuff like that.

Those guys are way older than me.

They weren't my generation, but it didn't matter because the music was good and I connected to it.

So a bit of a step back for Billy Paul.

But the label's next two releases featured both Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes and the OJs with I Miss You and Backstabbers respectively, and those albums spawned three top ten singles on the pop charts, including the song Love Train by the OJs, which would become Philadelphia International's first number one single.

And the fourth release by Philadelphia International was, coincidentally, Billy Paul's fourth LP of his own, entitled 360 Degrees of Billy Paul, released in late 1972.

So, that is where that story takes us, and that is a very brief overview of Billy Paul's career leading up to the album that we're talking about today.

I really struggle to figure out why this is so emphatic to spread the news around.

What news? Why is the news being spread around? Who's lying? What's the truth? And it just feels like platitudes more than any type of major statement to be made.

Like you compare it to something like Stevie Wonder's Living for the City or comparatively like The OJs for the love of money.

Like there's a purpose.

You guys know.

If you grew up, if you're a person of a certain age, you know it was Gladys Knight & the Pips, and Al Green, and Teddy Pendergrass, and The O'Jays, and the Isley Brothers, and Frankie Beverly and Maze, and I mean, it was just, you know, everybody, right? So Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Aretha.

It was just that, right? So the first time I saw her perform, uh, I was a kid.

Uh, my parents took me to the Houston Astrodome to see Gladys Knight & the Pips, and it was just a spectacular show.

And in the middle of the show, we throw in four classics, and we call it the Classic Dance Floor Four.

And this week, coming up around about 10 to the top of the hour, we've got music from The O'Jays, Rod and Franklin, Jerry Knight, and Chaka Khan.

So stick around for that one.

We call it the Classic Dance Floor Four.

It's time for this week's Classic Dance Floor Four.

We go back in time, play four classics, original music, no remixes, no re-edits, just the way the music was meant to be.

And this week we're gonna start off with The O'Jays and Favorite Person into Rodney Franklin and Dance Tonight.

We're gonna have a little break and come back on the other side with Jerry Knight and Nothing Can Hold Us Back, and finishing it all off today, Chaka Khan and Some Love.