Blackmail (14)

In 1973, New Orleans Renard Poché and his bassist brother, Roger, began playing music with Gerald Tillman (born in 1955), called “Professor Shorthair”. The teenaged friends started a band that it seems was first called the Bold Souls; but, within the next year or so, the name changed to Blackmale (also known as Black Male). Joined by drummer Newton Mossop, Jr, they were a highly funkified outfit in a Meters configuration led by Gerald on organ, before expanding to include another keyboardist/vocalist, Gerald ‘Buffalo’ Trinity, and Chris Phillips on percussion. (At least one other player of note briefly passed through Blackmale along the way, keyboardist and Colorado transplant Johnny Magnie, who later co-founded several other significant local groups, Lil Queenie & the Percolators, the Continental Drifters, and much later, the subdudes.)