War - Low Rider, The Cisco Kid & more

War was a band with an unusual early history. Football fans may remember a defensive end for the Los Angeles Rams named David "Deacon" Jones, but I doubt they recall his singing. Back around 1969, Jones was performing in nightclubs with a backup group known as Nite Shift. It was at one of those shows that Eric Burdon, an ex-Animal, and Danish harmonica player Lee Oskar caught their act and spent the evening jamming.

Although the band already contained a powerful array of voices (just listen to "All Day Music"), they realized that Burdon offered them a ticket to record company connections.

So, when Burdon asked Nite Shift and Oskar to join forces with Burdon at MGM, they decided to bill themselves as Eric Burdon and War. Soon after, they released the compellingly weird single "Spill the Wine."

The drug-induced lyrics were as opaque as mud, but the song's cross-pollination of hippie culture and African-based rhythms raised more than a few eyebrows and lifted the record to #3 on the pop charts.

War's late 1975 hit "Low Rider" was their tenth single of the Seventies to make the Top 40 in America. It was the second single from their #8 July 1975 album Why Can't We Be Friends?, which stayed on the Billboard Hot 200 album charts for 31 weeks.

Burdon remained with War for two albums (tell me if you can believe these titles: Eric Burdon Declares War and -- brace yourself -- The Black Man's Burdon) before leaving the band in mid-tour, allegedly because of physical exhaustion.

Facts about the Band War

• A low rider is a car, and also a culture. "Low Riders" are modified with hydraulic lifts that allow the driver to lower each wheel and make the car bounce. They are often customized with outrageous paint jobs, tiny steering wheels and swivel seats. The culture formed around these cars is big in the Southwestern US, and popular in Latino culture. Most of the band grew up in Southern California and were immersed in low rider culture.
• War's drummer Harold Brown, who was a founding member of the band, knows his way around cars and had his own business working on them for a while, which kept him from getting drafted during the Vietnam War. Says Brown: "The first time I knew about what we called Low Riders were my cousin Leon and a few more cruising up and down the coast in California.
• You also had Hot Rodders, which were a different breed racing around town. They were from the other side of the tracks. Leon left his 1953 yellow Mercury with black prime spots on it, tuck and roll seat covers from Tijuana Mexico, lowered in the front, parked on the side of the house. He eventually lowered it all the way around after returning from the Korean War.
• My brother KB and I had a 1953 Dodge. We'd chop our springs with torches - this would lower the car a few inches. It made for a hard ride up until homies started putting hydraulics on them. If you were driving a truck with lift gates on the rear, you'd better check to see if someone has stolen your hydraulics - it happened to me.
• We would drive from Pomona California to South Los Angeles taking side streets and main drags through El Monte, Whittier, Watts, and Compton, then eventually into Long Beach/San Pedro, California. When they finally built freeways in Southern California we would cruise in the slow lane just in case we had to pull over and do some repairs. There wasn't any AAA for us folks.