About Ohio Players
Ohio Players are an American funk band, most popular in the 1970s. They are best known for their songs "Fire" and "Love Rollercoaster", and for their erotic album covers that featured nude or nearly nude women. Many of the women were models featured in Playboy.
The singles "Funky Worm", "Skin Tight", "Fire", and "Love Rollercoaster", and their albums Skin Tight, Fire, and Honey, were awarded Gold certification.
On August 17, 2013, Ohio Players were inducted into the inaugural class of the Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame that took place at Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio.
The band formed in Dayton, Ohio, United States, in 1959 as the Ohio Untouchables and initially included members Robert Ward , Marshall "Rock" Jones , Clarence "Satch" Satchell , Cornelius Johnson , and Ralph "Pee Wee" Middlebrooks . They were best known at the time as a backing group for The Falcons.
Ward had proved to be an unreliable leader, who would sometimes walk off the stage during gigs, forcing the group to stop playing. Eventually, the group vowed to keep playing even after he left. Ward and Jones got into a fistfight in 1964, after which the group broke up.
Ward found new backups, and the group's core members returned to Dayton. They replaced Ward with 21-year-old Leroy "Sugarfoot" Bonner , who would become the group's frontman, and added Greg Webster . To accommodate Bonner's musical style preferences for the group and to avoid competing with Ward, the group changed their format. By 1965, the group had renamed themselves the Ohio Players, reflecting its members' self-perceptions as musicians and as ladies' men.
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