'All You Need Is a Loaded Gun': The Black Panther Party Had a Funk Band Called ‘The Lumpen’ - Listen To It

Band members L to R: James Mott, Bill Calhoun, Michael Torrance, Clark Bailey.
Ducho Dennnis/ It’s About Time Archives

By Studio360
The heyday of soul and classic R&B is full of socially conscious empowerment anthems: “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” “People Get Ready,” “Say it Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud.” But the stars didn’t get involved in radical politics. (James Brown, rather infamously, supported Richard Nixon and performed at his inaugural ball.) So when Emory Douglas, the Black Panther Party’s Minister of Culture, heard Bill Calhoun and his friends singing harmony, he had an idea: a revolutionary black power singing group, complete with dance routines and costumes.

The band was called the Lumpen, from Karl Marx’s lumpenproletariat. That may be the least funky band name ever, but Calhoun knew how to put on a show. As bandleader Billy King, he had been gigging up and down California. He had a regular show at a club in San Francisco when the Watts riots and smaller Bay Area uprisings broke out. "The reaction of the club owner," Calhoun recalled, "when he started talking about 'them niggers' — it hit me that, yes I am Billy King, yes I am the MC, but I’m also one of 'them niggers.' That changed things for me."

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