Working as a tailor by day and frequenting New York clubs at night, Blackmon was inspired by the Ohio Players and other horn-heavy funk bands of the early 1970s to create a group of his own in 1974. It gave me a real sense of history and the importance of keeping that tradition going.'Īnother influence on Blackmon, one that showed up in the complex arrangements of many Cameo songs, was classical music he studied at New York's Julliard School. He saw, as he told Geoffrey Himes of the Washington Post, 'everyone from Otis Redding to King Curtis, Bill Cosby to Sam Cooke, Pigmeat Markham, Jackie Wilson, Flip Wilson, Marvin Gaye, even the Jackson 5 when they were babies. Starting at age four, he was taken to the Apollo by an aunt and uncle, and he kept going on his own. The founder and longtime creative sparkplug of the group is Blackmon, who came from New York City's Harlem neighborhood and grew up near the famed Apollo Theater. In performance the group has varied in size from those three to as many as 13 members, with rotating groups of musicians added as necessary to fulfill the requirements of particular tours or of the styles current at a particular point in time.

They were among the first African-American acts to make Atlanta, Georgia, their headquarters, and songwriter and frequent lead vocalist Larry Blackmon has shown a knack for putting various strands of contemporary black music together in original and entertaining ways.Īt the core of Cameo lie three musicians: Blackmon, Tomi Jenkins, and Nathan Leftnant. Cameo has remained among the last active survivors of the funk movement of the 1970s because they have not only kept up with the times musically but also, for many years, have tended to anticipate major trends. But listeners who know Cameo only through a group of hit singles are missing the qualities that have made them among the most durable African-American vocal groups of the modern era. Their list of top-level R&B hits is somewhat longer. The R&B vocal group Cameo broke through to pop chart success with several singles in the 1980s, most notably the top-ten hit 'Word Up!' in 1986.

Cameo we all know who we are