I posted recently about the Black Keys new album, Ohio Players, which naturally got me to thinking about the actual group, the Ohio Players. I can only assume the Black Keys from Akron, Ohio were tipping their geographical hat to the original Ohio Players, who were from Dayton, Ohio. I mean Dayton is only three hours down I-71 from Akron… but I digress. The Ohio Players were a funk/disco band that had some prominence in the 70s. They had a string of hits like “Fire,” “Love Rollercoaster,” and “Funky Worm.” I don’t really hear them talked about much these days.

They were known for their music but I’d be remiss if I failed to mention that they were also pretty well known for their fabulous album covers… I mean, those things got me through puberty. The first one that really caught my eye was the album cover for 1974’s Fire, pictured here:

That one remains a favorite to this day. I mean, the thought of a naked firewoman conjured up exotic thoughts in my young mind…It remains to this day, a powerful image of a powerful woman.

In 1975, they released their album Honey, whose album cover (shown above) featured a lovely young model on the cover. It was a gatefold cover and if you unfolded the album, you realized that the woman on the cover was naked and she apparently had spilled the aforementioned honey all over herself. Who hasn’t occasionally spilled food on themselves? I was like, 11, when this album came out so it raised a lot of questions for me at the time. What does someone do when they’re covered in honey? Why didn’t someone get this woman a washcloth? Is it getting hot in here? That’s gonna be tough to get off in the shower…someone should help her. Anyway, the album cover spawned the first of the urban legends surrounding this album. It was said that for some reason the honey ruined the lovely model’s skin in some sort of allergic reaction and ended her modeling career. This, of course, turned out to be a false rumor.

But that wasn’t the only dark rumor that this album spawned. Their second single from the album, “Love Rollercoaster” spawned an even darker urban legend. Having posted last year about the urban legend surrounding the Phil Collins’ song “In The Air Tonight,” you can tell we love our urban legends around here. Especially when they involve “Murder and Mayhem,” like one of our playlists… I asked the Rock Chick and my friend RJ if they had heard the famous story about “Love Rollercoaster” and both had not heard the legend. I feel it incumbent upon myself to share the story…

Like I mentioned, I was only 11 when this record came out. I remember I went over to this kid in the neighborhood’s house. Jeff was his name. Jeff was a year older than me. We were casual friends, probably more like acquaintances. He had an older sister and a younger sister. They lived in this split level house and the downstairs was just one big room as I recall. They were a musical family and there was always an electric guitar propped in a corner or a keyboard in the middle of the room. Although admittedly, I never saw or heard anyone actually playing the instruments. My parents had a stereo but they rarely turned it on. I seem to recall at the Peterson’s house (name changed to protect the semi-guilty) there was always music playing somewhere in the house.

I’m over at the house and Jeff asks me if I’ve heard “Love Rollercoaster,” a record – a single, in fact – his sister had recently purchased. I’d heard the song on the radio somewhere. He then asked me, with a straight face, if I knew about the murder that had been recorded and purposely placed in the back ground of the song. Well, I was only 11, this kind of thing scared the crap out of me, much like the time some high school buddies of mine and I played “Stairway To Heaven” backwards… I could have sworn I heard “Satan…” but as usual, the Devil is in the details, not the music.

Jeff puts the record on the record player and lo and behold, in the middle of the song, there’s a breakdown. Just drums and the funky guitar. And then I heard it in the background… a blood curdling scream. This scream was the type of sound that turns your blood to ice water. I jumped back from the record player in a state of sheer terror. I think I immediately left the Peterson’s house…Jeff had gotten his intended result, I was freaked out. Apparently, according to Jeff the record producer – whatever that was, who knew at 11 what a record producer was – stabbed the girl on the cover, who was his girlfriend and recorded it because he was crazy. He must have been crazy because then he put the recording of the poor woman’s scream in the middle of the song…like you do when you’ve killed someone. The blood curdling scream was the last sound the poor murdered woman ever made.

Here’s the song directly from the album. The scream begins at the 2 minute 32 second mark. If you can find the single version, it’s at the 1:24 mark.

Obviously, this is another urban legend that turned out to be completely false. The scream was done by Billy Beck, the Ohio Players’ keyboard player. It turns out a DJ out in California made a crack about someone in the band killing a girl in the background in order to hit that high note and the rumor took off like fire in a dry summer field of wheat. The band took a vow of silence on the rumor which had the intended affect – it fanned the flames of the murder story and fueled more record sales. Scary shit sells. But in the end, as the saying goes, no beautiful women were hurt or killed in the making of this funky single. However, it does appear they burned through quite a bit of honey.

The track was later covered by the Red Hot Chili Peppers for the Beavis And Butthead soundtrack…alas, no blood curdling scream included though. However, that RHCP’s version is the Rock Chick’s favorite version of the song.

Hats off the the Ohio Players and their wonderful song “Love Rollercoaster.” Well played, gentlemen. When I played the song and highlighted the piercing scream to the Rock Chick, she said, “This has to be an urban legend kind of thing, right?” It’s hard to get one past the Rock Chick… well, if you don’t count me somehow tricking her into marrying me.

Cheers!