Day After Day #323: Low Rider

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Low Rider (1975)

Even if you're not a car person, you can appreciate a great song about a car. There are tons of them, but a classic one came out in the mid-'70s courtesy of the supremely funky band War.

Hailing from Long Beach, California, the band was previously known in the 1960s as Nightshift and in '68 began backing up football-player-turned-singer Deacon Jones. Producer Jerry Goldstein caught one of the group's shows in 1969 and brought them together with singer Eric Burdon, who had just left the British band the Animals. They played live shows together before going into the studio and recording their debut album Eric Burdon Declares "War." The psychedelic song "Spill the Wine" became a hit.

The band featured Howard Scott on guitar and vocals, Lee Oskar on harmonica and vocals, Thomas "Papa Dee" allen on percussion, Charles Miller on sax and vocals, B.B. Dickerson on bass, Leroy "Lonnie" Jordan on keyboards and vocals and Harold Ray Brown on drums. They blended a lot of different styles, including R&B, Latin, jazz and rock.

Burdon and War played in the U.S. and Europe, with their London show in September 1970 notable for being Jimi Hendrix's last public performance; he joined them on stage for the last 35 minutes of the show and then died the next day. The group released a second album in 1970, The Black Man's Burdon, and was touring in Europe when Burdon collapsed on stage during a concert due to an asthma attack. War continued the tour without him and Burdon left in the middle of the tour.

War began releasing albums on their own, scoring hits like "The Cisco Kid" and "Me and Baby Brother." In 1975, they released Why Can't We Be Friends? The title track was a big hit, going to #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. The second single was "Low Rider," written by the band and Goldstein about lowriders, classic cars that were hydraulically boosted to become hot rods. The song is the epitome of cool, kicked off with cowbell and powered by Dickerson's bass and a sax and harmonica riff by Miller and Oskar. Miller also provides the oh-so-low vocals.

"All my friends know the low rider/The low rider is a little higher/The low rider drives a little slower/Low rider is a real goer."

The song went to #1 on the Billboard R&B singles chart and #7 on the Hot 100. Released during the '70s oil crisis, the song makes reference to saving gas.

"Low rider knows every street, yeah/Low rider is the one to meet, yeah/Low rider don't use no gas now/Low rider don't drive too fast."

According to an interview with Jordan, Miller had just bought a car that would be good for lowriding. "He walked into the studio, sat down, had a bottle of tequila, salt and a lemon, listened to the track and started singing in a low voice."

Jordan said the band gave tapes of the song to local lowriders and they all played it in their cars, which helped it gain popularity and get on the radio. The album went to #8 and both "Low Rider" and "Why Can't We Be Friends?" were nominated for Grammy awards.

After that year, War had another top 10 album with Platinum Jazz in 1976, but their subsequent releases were less successful. The band went through many lineup changes over the years. Miller left the band in 1979 and was murdered the next year; Papa Dee Allen died of a brain aneurysm suffered onstage in 1988. Most of the surviving original members reformed War and released a new album in 1994. In 1996, the band tried to split from Goldstein, but were unable to do so; Brown, Oskar, Scott and Dickerson (who hadn't played with the group since 1979) formed the Lowrider Band while Jordan stayed with Goldstein and leads a version of War with him as the only original member. Both groups continue to play live.

"Low Rider" has been used in many movies, TV shows (most notably as the theme to George Lopez's self-titled ABC sitcom from 2002 to 2007) and commercials. It was sampled by the Beastie Boys on their song "Slow Ride" and covered by Korn and Barry White. It was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2014. And it's still super cool.