The hidden legacy of the Pointer Sisters, genre-busting pioneers of message music

If you spun the dial of your AM/FM radio on any given day in the early 1980s, chances are you heard a Pointer Sisters' record. The group was in heavy rotation in a variety of formats whose playlists included Duran Duran, Bruce Springsteen and the Human League or Patti LaBelle and Earth, Wind and Fire. The electro-pop sound of the Pointer Sisters' "Jump (For My Love)," "Automatic" or "Neutron Dance" dominated the charts during the first half of the decade. The popularity of these records rested in the accessibility of their lyrical content and melodic structure and the hypnotic nature of their rhythms. Anyone could sing "Jump for My Love" after hearing the chorus once; after "Neutron Dance" was featured prominently in Eddie Murphy's breakout film Beverly Hills Cop, it was regularly mixed into Jane Fonda-inspired aerobic workout routines. The sonic recipe that catapulted the Pointer Sisters into this chapter of their crossover success combined the gospel-infused vocals of soul music and the polyrhythmic, metronomic grooves of funk and disco with an instrumental palette that represented the era's new waves of experimentation. These songs partook of the musical technology and electronic sounds that permeated the music of artists like Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock and Kraftwerk. In a decade that came to be defined by economic uncertainty, the developing AIDS crisis and an expanding war on drugs that precipitated the ballooning of the prison industrial complex, the Pointer Sisters inspired audiences to dance, to love and to sing with abandonment. These songs promoted the reclamation of personal freedom and joy that was often overshadowed by the angst and anxiety of the decade.

"Automatic," "Jump (For My Love)" or "Slow Hand" would not be considered protest records in the way in which we view Nina Simone's "Mississippi Goddam" or Aretha Franklin's "Respect," but they did represent a type of resistance culture that typifies the culture industry's engagement with BIPOC and women artists. From the very beginning the Pointer Sisters fought against genre categorization, racist marketing strategies and intellectual exploitation. Engagement in this type of resistance work against the music industry is one of the oldest and repeated narratives of popular music history. It informs the undercurrent of female empowerment, reinvention and sonic fluidity that has permeated much of popular music in the past three decades. The Pointer Sisters' embodiment of these ideals resonated with a generation of women during the '80s and is underscored in the music of contemporary girl groups like Destiny's Child and SWV and solo artists such as Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, Beyonce, Taylor Swift and many others. Just as the sonic and physical freedom exemplified by these artists was shaped by the gender and race politics of the 1990s and early 2000s, the musical range and resistance politics of the Pointer Sisters bore the imprint of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The musical legacy of the Pointer Sisters has never fully been explored despite the sustained popularity of their music. Barack Obama's use of the 1973 recording "Yes We Can Can" during his 2008 Presidential campaign offered a subtle reminder of how the group contributed to the diverse soundtrack of Black Power Era America. The song re-entered my own consciousness when, during the height of the pandemic, it was featured during an episode of the BET series American Soul. Dramatizing the history of the influential television show Soul Train, American Soul features contemporary artists portraying the vast array of artists that appeared on the show. The episode titled "Satisfaction" centered on the Pointer Sisters' 1975 performance of "Yes We Can Can" and it immediately sent me to my CD collection, stereo and headphones.

In the months that followed I thought more and more about the song, its poignant message and its relevance to all that was taking place, especially the wave of social unrest that the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor sparked last spring and summer. Bonnie Pointer's death last summer also prompted me to return back to this song and consider its significance. Why is it not discussed in the existing scholarship on Black protest music? What did it reflect in terms of the Pointer Sisters' proximity to the Black Power and Black Nationalist movements that emerged out of their hometown of Oakland during the late 1960s? How significant was the group in marrying the girl group aesthetic with Black Power-era protest culture?

The musicological history of the Pointer Sisters is both long and varied, largely because it consists of many different chapters that revolve around different combinations and pairings of biological siblings Anita (b. 1948), Bonnie (1950-2020), Ruth (b. 1946) and June (1953-2006). Raised in a strict religious household, the sisters (along with older brothers Aaron and Fritz) were influenced greatly by the political and cultural scene that developed in Oakland, Calif. in the decade following World War II. Like thousands of southern Blacks, the Pointer Sisters' parents, Elton and Sarah Pointer, migrated to the West Coast during the height of World War II. The complicated and layered racial consciousness that evolved out of the experiences of southern Blacks who migrated to urban cities during this period was strongly reflected in the group's sound identity.

Three musical genres underscored the Pointer Sisters' sound. The first was country music, which pointed to their family's Arkansas roots. The Pointer siblings, especially Anita and Bonnie, spent many of their summers in Prescott, Ark. with extended family members. During these moments they were exposed to the poverty and racism that exemplified much of Black southern life. But they also discovered the diverse soundscape of the region. "I only remember listening to one Arkansas radio station," Anita recalled years later. "All they played was country music: Hank Williams' 'Your Cheatin' Heart,' Tex Ritter's 'Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darlin'' and Willie Nelson's 'Funny How Time Slips Away.' The only time I heard Black artists was when I snuck out to the local juke joints and pressed my ear to the door .... To me it was all good music. With country, the short story format really resonated with me."

Anita and Bonnie's identification with country music resulted years later in the writing of the song "Fairytale." Released in 1974, the song had all of the hallmarks of the '70s honky tonk sound — steel pedal guitar, fiddle, blues-influenced piano, raw vocals and lyrics that detailed heartbreak and unrequited love. It won the Grammy award for Country and Western Vocal Performance Group or Duo and became a lightning rod for the racial politics surrounding country music. When the Pointer Sisters were invited to perform at the Grand Old Opry in 1974, they were greeted by a country music fan base that was polarized over their race. Some protested the performance, while others embraced the group. Anita described the experience in her autobiography Fairytale: The Pointer Sisters' Family Story:

The coupling of music and protest culture has a long and varied history in America, but in the late 1960s the blending of liberation ideology with Black popular music conventions gave birth to a new type of protest music — the message song. The fragmentation of the Black civil rights movement into a number of different social movements in the late 1960s marked not only a significant shift in America's political culture, but also the different ways in which music functioned within those movements. By 1966, Dr. King had shifted the vision of his activism beyond the geopolitical boundaries of the South through the launching of his "End of the Slums" movement. While the singing of freedom songs still accompanied his marches through the streets of Chicago and Detroit, the protest music of the Black Power and Black Nationalists movements flowed primarily out of the popular music milieu of the late '60s.

The message song of the late 1960s and early 1970s, was unlike the freedom song of the direct-action campaigns in that it reflected the embracing of the ideology of Black-centered empowerment. This along with the anger and hope of the Black community were projected through Nina Simone's "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free," Jimmy Collier's "Burn Baby Burn," The Impressions' "We're a Winner," Aretha Franklin's "Respect" and James Brown's "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud.)" The message song both documented and spoke directly to the tensions that existed in late '60s America. However, as the trauma and violence of the late '60s gave way to a new wave of violence and corruption in the early '70s, the rhetoric of message songs diversified and encompassed everything from new visions of Black empowerment to direct critiques of the Nixon administration and Black feminist ideology. Funk bands like Sly and the Family Stone and the JBs, soul artists Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield and Stevie Wonder and male soul groups like The Temptations, the O'Jay's and Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes were prominent purveyors of these messages.

Noticeably absent from this message song phenomenon were the girl groups that dominated '60s popular culture. As Jacqueline Warwick outlines in her work Girl Groups, Girl Culture: Popular Music and Identity in the 1960s, these groups, which first appeared in the late 1950s, provided insights into the world of the prepubescent girl, who was excluded from the Cold-War era milieu of male-centered social rebellion and personal freedom. The 1960s marked the expansion of this aesthetic to a more mature, woman-centered perspective with the emergence of the Shirelles, the Marvelettes, the Ronettes and the Supremes, but singers who made up these groups still had a limited amount of agency over their music and images. Despite these restrictions, some of these groups, especially those associated with Motown (e.g. The Supremes, Martha and the Vandellas and the Marvelettes) personified Dr. King's vision of Black mobility, freedom and racial integration. Even as the Black liberation movement gained momentum and fragmented into the variant social movements during the late 1960s and early 1970s, the material recorded by girl groups rarely shifted away from narratives of love and angst.

In a popular music scene that was heavily populated with girl groups, the Pointer Sisters stood out, as did Labelle, a trio that evolved from the traditional girl group into something more expansive. The differences between the Pointer Sisters, LaBelle and more conventional girl groups like Honey Cone or The Three Degrees were multifaceted.

First, they rejected the practice of building their sound around the juxtaposition of a single lead vocalist and the group. This custom was central to the sound identity of many of the '60s girl groups, especially The Supremes, the Ronettes, and Martha and the Vandellas. With the Pointer Sisters and Labelle, each member of the group sang both lead and background voices. This mirrored the liberation ideologies promoted by some grassroots movement organizations that rejected power hierarchies and placed the emphasis on the collective and not the individual. Their respective group sounds were based on the equal importance of each voice.

Secondly, they operated as autonomous groups that were not tethered to the musical vision of a particular male Svengali or production team, as were the Supremes with Motown chief Berry Gordy and songwriting team Holland, Dozier, and Holland, The Ronettes with Phil Spector or The Shangri-Las with producer George "Shadow" Morton. And unlike ensembles like Love Unlimited, the female trio that complemented Barry White's Love Unlimited Orchestra, or the Rick James-constructed Mary Jane Girls, the Pointer Sisters were not ancillary to a larger soul-funk collective.

A different approach behind the scenes helped these groups evolve as unique performers. Labelle's metamorphosis from the conventional girl group (Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles) to Afro-futuristic glam rock group of the 1970s was initiated through their work with producer and songwriter Vicki Wickham. The Pointer Sisters benefited greatly from the agency that small indie labels like Blue Thumb Records sometimes provided. The musical eclecticism heard on the group's early albums correlated with the diversity exhibited through Blue Thumb Records' business model. The label's roster during the 1970s included jazz bandleader/composer Sun Ra, disco/soul powerhouse Sylvester, rap progenitors The Last Poets and a host of other artists that stretched across musical genres.

The Pointer Sisters' albums during these early years were emblematic of a collaborative vision that was developed among the group, producer David Rubinson and a collective of instrumentalists who understood the strong, self-defined sound identity that these women had developed prior to signing with the label. They generally contained songs that were musically engaging and personally empowering. "The way I am is that I do what I like and then try to make it commercial. I don't take things that are already finished and package them," Rubinson recalled years later. "I love, as Frost said, to 'take the road less traveled.' Being another girl singing group did not interest me. It didn't interest them either. So I listened to the songs they had written ... and I introduced them to things I liked." One of the songs Rubinson and the Pointer Sisters' envisioned as a strong addition to their debut album was a cover of New Orleans-based songwriter/pianist Allen Toussaint's "Yes We Can." The song would not only give the Pointer Sisters their first hit record — it would also link them to the paradigm of the Black Power era message song.

Written and produced by Norman Whitfield, the song marries the psychedelic funk sound that saturated '70s Black films with the hard gospel girl group sound of the venerable ensembles like Davis Sisters and the Caravans. It is a sound that foreshadows the modern gospel girl group aesthetic of the Clark Sisters and the R&B girl groups of the 1990s. The Pointer Sisters' performance of anger through "You Gotta Believe" is not just sonic or rhetorical, but also in the movie is kinesthetic or reflected in the movement of their bodies. They gesture with their hands, roll their necks and at one point surround Abdullah, whose attempts to escape are impeded by his male co-workers. This scene and the inclusion of the song on the movie soundtrack are examples of how the complicated tensions that existed between Black men and women often challenged the legitimacy of the liberation narratives promoted through the Black Power era message song. The song made the R&B top 20 in 1977, but seemingly never resonated with a mainstream audience. But the legacy of the song is far-reaching as it foreshadows similar musical conversations in the music of post-civil rights generation artists like Queen Latifah, Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu and Mary J. Blige.

The Pointer Sisters' engagement in musical activism extended into the '80s. In 1985, they joined the collective of artists who recorded the song "We Are the World," which raised funds to support relief efforts in Africa. Months later they allied with musicians who launched a boycott of Sun City, an entertainment venue in apartheid South Africa. Artists United Against Apartheid made their anti-apartheid stance globally known with the protest song "Sun City."

In recent years most of the media attention the Pointer Sisters have received has focused on their addictions and financial problems. However, the group's impact is far-reaching. They challenged the spatial politics of popular music and widened the spectrum of spaces that Black bodies and Black voices were seen and heard during the 1970s and 1980s. The freedom they embodied through the eclectic repertory of their early albums and their image provided a template that was embraced by the R&B, gospel and pop music girl groups that emerged during the late 1990s and early 2000s. The alignment of their music with liberation ideologies and social movements is being replicated by a new generation of female artists. Just listen to The Chicks, H.E.R., Beyonce, Rhiannon Giddens or Lauryn Hill. "Yes We Can Can" and "You Gotta Believe" were not just anthems that spoke to the protest culture of a not so distance past — they serve as a significant part of a larger Black feminist manifesto in music that represents how Black women speak themselves into larger narratives of liberation and freedom.

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