The Song Written On A Bar Tab That Vanilla Ice Stole And Paid Half A Million For
Rob Parissi named Wild Cherry after a box of cough drops. He had disbanded the original lineup, managed a pair of steakhouses for a while, then reassembled a new version of the band in 1975 to face a club circuit that was rapidly going disco. At a gig at the 2001 Club on the north side of Pittsburgh — playing to a predominantly Black audience that had little interest in hard rock — a voice from the crowd cut through the break: “Are you white boys gonna play some funky music?” Parissi borrowed a pen from the bartender, scribbled on a drink order pad, and had the bones of a number one single in under five minutes.
Released in April 1976, “Play That Funky Music” spent three weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 — peaking on September 22, 1976 — and simultaneously topped the R&B chart, making Wild Cherry one of the very few acts that year to rule both. The single spent 25 weeks on the Hot 100 chart. It also hit number two in Canada. Rolling Stone would later place it at number 93 on its list of the greatest songs of all time. The debut album Wild Cherry peaked at number five on the Billboard 200 and went platinum alongside the single.
Getting the song past his own father proved harder than getting it on the radio. Parissi’s father heard an early version, lifted the needle off the record mid-play, and said flatly: “Oh no, you can’t do that.” Record labels were equally squeamish about the “white boy” lyric — every executive in Nashville and New York who heard the tape loved the song and refused to sign it on those grounds. Parissi refused to change a word. He eventually self-financed a session in Cleveland, where studio engineer Ken Hamann brought the recording to the attention of Sweet City Records — a subsidiary of Epic/CBS — whose executive happened to wander in looking for new acts. The deal was done on the spot.
The song was never intended to be a single at all. Parissi had planned it as the B-side to a cover of the Commodores’ “I Feel Sanctified.” Sweet City flipped the release. The recording itself drew from Parissi’s habit of reverse-engineering Billboard hits — he had subscribed to the chart magazine for years, picking songs to deconstruct and reassemble just differently enough to avoid a lawsuit. His acknowledged touchstone for “Play That Funky Music” was the Ohio Players’ “Fire,” particularly the bassline and vocal approach. The full-length album version modulates twice near the end — up from E to G, then up again to A — an arrangement trick that gave DJs a natural extended fade and dancers a reason to stay on the floor.
Wild Cherry were nominated for two Grammys — Best New Artist and Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Group — and won the American Music Award for Top R&B Single of the Year and Billboard’s Best New Band. None of their subsequent four singles came close to replicating the success, and the band dissolved in 1979. Then came Vanilla Ice. In 1989, he lifted the track wholesale for his own version without crediting Parissi, released it as a single, and watched it hit number four. Parissi sued. The settlement was reported at $500,000. “In 41 years since that song went gold,” Parissi told Harry Connick Jr. in 2017, “I’m still white.” Drummer Ron Beitle, the man who first heard the crowd shout from the stage, passed away in 2017. Parissi eventually moved to Florida and pivoted to smooth jazz. His hometown of Mingo Junction, Ohio renamed its longest street Rob Parissi Boulevard in 2013 and declared August 11 Rob Parissi Day.
There are songs that define a moment and songs that outlast every moment they were born into. “Play That Funky Music” — written on a bar tab, recorded in Cleveland for next to nothing, released as the wrong side of a single — has appeared in The Office, Scandal, The Big Bang Theory, and at what feels like every wedding reception since 1976. Parissi once described the song’s origin simply: “It was essentially written out of sheer desperation.” Desperation, a borrowed pen, and one very good heckler.
