In 1967, Brenton Wood seemed to be on the cusp of mainstream success.
The Compton crooner’s single “The Oogum Boogum Song” was a hit, reaching No. 34 and No. 19 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart and Top Selling R&B Singles chart, respectively. A few months later, Wood debuted his second hit, “Gimme Little Sign,” which peaked at No. 9 on Billboard’s Hot 100.
Wood, whose real name was Alfred Jesse Smith, died Friday of natural causes at his home in Moreno Valley, manager and assistant Manny Gallegos confirmed to Variety. He was 83 years old.
Wood’s sexy and upbeat songs are infectious. His captivating and approachable storytelling style is captivating as he clearly explains the essence of a budding romance. Easily groove to the beat whether you’re solo or with a partner.
Wood continued to release tracks, but none achieved similar success. Dissatisfied with the music industry, he quit for a few years, but then gradually returned to club activities. There he found an audience that would support him for decades: Latinos.
He would play in major cities in California, then travel through Mexico to Arizona before returning home. As his audience grew older, Wood began performing on themed cruises and festivals with some of the biggest names in Chicano music, including Los Lobos, The Midnighters, and Ozomatli. Wood’s romantic oldies resonated with a new generation of lovers and became the soundtrack of Southern California life. Quite literally, Wood found a third career as a performer at weddings, quinceañeras, and anniversary parties.
Bob Marlis, a former Warner Bros. Records executive and co-author of Heart & Soul: A Celebration of Black Musical Styles in America 1930-1975, calls the artist a “local hero” of L.A. “Standard bearer”. For the Southern California pop-soul scene. ”
“There was nothing else that sounded like them,” says Marlis, who now runs a public relations and consulting firm. “It was very different and the instrumentation was very unusual.”
Wood told the Times in 1992, “They kind of picked me out of the whole bunch and let me keep going.” A long time ago. ”
Wood’s lyrics capture the cat-and-mouse game of first love, a kind of infatuation that can make you laugh. He expressed the all-too-familiar longing to whisk away his lover and immerse himself in honeymoon paradise. But he also wrote about heartache, and the moments of triumph when the pain disappears.
“Latinos like to sing, and his songs are perfect for that,” radio veteran Art LaBoe told the Times in 1992. It’s songs like “Take a Chance” and “I Think You’ve Got Your Fools Mixed Up.” If a girl doesn’t get along with her boyfriend, she dedicates it to him. ”
The songwriter was born on July 26, 1941 in Shreveport, Louisiana, and moved west to San Pedro when he was three years old. He moved around inner-city LA, selling paper and fish and shining shoes, before carving out a career in the music industry.
When Wood was seven years old, he was fascinated by a pianist. Without a television at home, he spent hours watching and imitating performers in parks, tapping imaginary keys with two fingers until he got his own piano. When Brenton Wood was 10 years old, he wrote his first song about a man who wanted to be a bird. It was cheerful and rhymed, but lacked vigor.
He discovered his charm when he met his first girlfriend. Then, words poured out.
A graduate of Compton High School, he attended East Los Angeles College and sang with local R&B groups such as Little Freddy and the Rockets and The Quotations in the 1950s before going solo. He took his stage name, Brenton Wood, after the wealthy Los Angeles enclave of Brentwood, where his manager lived.
Wood’s “The Oogum Boogum Song” came about by pure chance. The melody came to me while I was working graveyard duty at Harvey Aluminum in Torrance.
“It took about six weeks because I had to change the verses about 100 times,” he told the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2000. – Huggers, high heel boots, different styles of clothes the girls wore, hot pants, etc. ”
The bouncy track was later featured on Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous” and Olivia Wilde’s “Don’t Worry Darling.”
“It was one of the best emotions,” Wood said on Cal State Fullerton’s Titan TV in 2014.
By 1970, he founded Mr. Wood Records and produced singles for other artists. Latin listeners had already accepted him as their own.
Chicano music historian Gene Aguilera was “glued” to a small transistor radio as a teenager and was listening to Wood’s “Gimme Little Sign” among the Beatles and Supremes on KRLA-AM 1110 within an hour. I’m reminiscing about what happened. As I walked around the neighborhood, I heard Wood’s voice coming from nearby parties and lowriders speeding down Whittier Boulevard, and Midnighter’s voice drifting in the background.
“Even though he wasn’t born here, he will forever be etched in our consciousness,” said Aguilera, who last saw the artist perform at a local park in Baldwin Park before the pandemic. said.
“His music has really caught on in East L.A. because his slow grooves are very soulful and people in East L.A. love him.”
Vega is a former Times staff writer.