Yarbrough and Peoples were an American

urban contemporary Urban contemporary music, also known as urban music, hip hop, urban pop, or just simply urban, is a music radio format. The term was coined by New York radio DJ Frankie Crocker in the early to mid-1970s as a synonym for Black music. Urban conte ...

duo from

Dallas Dallas () is the List of municipalities in Texas, third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of metropolitan statistical areas, fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 ...

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...

, United States. The duo’s biggest-selling release was " Don't Stop the Music," a US '' Billboard'' R&B chart topper in 1981.

Career

Cavin Leon Yarbrough (born January 22, 1954) and Alisa Delois Peoples (born June 29, 1957) both grew up in

, Texas, having known each other since they were young children, as they had met taking piano lessons, after which they remained friends throughout their childhoods. In the mid-1970s, Yarbrough was on tour with Leon Russell’s band and met the Wilson Brothers, who went on to form

the Gap Band The Gap Band was an American R&B and funk band that rose to fame during the 1970s and 1980s. The band consisted of three brothers: Charlie, Ronnie, and Robert Wilson, along with other members; it was named after streets (Greenwood, Archer, and ...

. Upon returning to Dallas, the twosome started the band Grand Theft, both as featured keyboardists as well as vocalists. In 1977, the Wilson Brothers had just joined Total Experience Records (which was at that point a production company) as the Gap Band and went down to Dallas to perform a concert. Later that night, trying to unwind after the show, the Wilsons caught the twosome's act, and as a result,

Lonnie Simmons Lonnie Simmons (December 12, 1944 - February 6, 2019) was an American record producer from Los Angeles, California. He was founder and president of the now-defunct Total Experience Records. As a composer, he co-wrote several #1 R&B songs for his ...

(President of Total Experience) invited the couple to Los Angeles where they began playing in clubs around Southern California. Two years later, they signed their own recording contract with Total Experience and recorded and released their debut album, ''

The Two of Us ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

'', which contained " Don't Stop the Music," topping the US '' Billboard'' R&B chart in early 1981, knocking their label-mate's song "

Burn Rubber on Me (Why You Wanna Hurt Me) "Burn Rubber on Me (Why You Wanna Hurt Me)" is a song originally performed by The Gap Band in 1980 and written by member Charlie Wilson, Rudy Taylor, and producer Lonnie Simmons. Background The song's lyrics refer to abandonment by a lover. The ...

" out of the top spot. The song went on to chart higher on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 than any of the other songs released on the label up to that time. In addition, the corresponding album went

Gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...

and peaked at #16 in the

Billboard Hot 200 The ''Billboard'' 200 is a record chart ranking the 200 most popular music albums and EPs in the United States. It is published weekly by ''Billboard'' magazine and is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artist ...

album chart. Across the pond in Europe, the UK release of the song reached #7 in the

UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart (currently titled Official Singles Chart, with the upper section more commonly known as the Official UK Top 40) is compiled by the Official Charts Company (OCC), on behalf of the British record industry, listing the top-s ...

and was certified Silver. The duo continued on with its R&B success throughout the 1980s, with four more top 10 R&B hits: "Heartbeats" (R&B #10 in 1983), " Don't Waste Your Time" (Pop #48, R&B #1 in 1984; #60 UK), "Guilty" (R&B #2 in 1986; #53 UK), and "I Wouldn't Lie" (R&B #6 in 1986; #61 UK), all of which brought the band success. After ''Guilty'', its final album for Total Experience/RCA, Yarbrough and Peoples left the label in 1986. They married in 1987, and returned to their hometown of Dallas and started their own music production company, Yarbrough & Peoples Productions. In 2009, they both appeared in the Off-Broadway musical ''Blind Lemon Blues'' at the York Theater in New York, where Cavin Yarbrough portrayed Lead Belly. The duo was featured on an episode of TV One's '' Unsung'' on September 2, 2015.

Discography

Studio albums

Compilation albums

*''The Best of Yarbrough & Peoples'' (1997,

Chronicles Chronicles may refer to: * ''Books of Chronicles'', in the Bible * Chronicle, chronological histories * ''The Chronicles of Narnia'', a novel series by C. S. Lewis * ''Holinshed's Chronicles'', the collected works of Raphael Holinshed * '' The Idh ...

/ Mercury/

PolyGram Records PolyGram N.V. was a multinational entertainment company and major music record label formerly based in the Netherlands. It was founded in 1962 as the Grammophon-Philips Group by Dutch corporation Philips and German corporation Siemens, to be a ...

)

Singles

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yarbrough and Peoples African-American musical groups American contemporary R&B musical groups American dance music groups American boogie musicians Mercury Records artists American musical duos People from Dallas Musicians from Dallas Musical groups from Dallas