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YOUNGSTOWN -- Kool & the Gang will celebrate its 59th anniversary as a band with a homecoming.
The band, started by Youngstown natives Robert "Kool" and Ronald Bell, will play the Youngstown Foundation Amphitheatre on July 1. The family moved to New Jersey when Robert was 10 and Ronald was 9.
Kool & the Gang won two Grammy Awards and seven American Music Awards and had 25 top 10 R&B hits during its career. It also is one of the most sampled acts of all time, with the band's beats and riffs being featured on about 1,900 songs.
In an interview with the newspaper earlier this year, Robert Bell talked about how sampling introduced the band to a new generation of fans.
"It's a blessing, kind of," Bell said. "Some of our old fans (when someone said), 'That's the new Diddy song.' 'That ain't Diddy, that's Kool & the Gang.' The younger fans started to look into, 'Oh, who's this Kool & the Gang?' and thanks to social media, a lot of fans now know who we are 'cause they started exploring those groups."
Ronald Bell died in 2020, and another founding member, Dennis "Dee Tee" Thomas, died in 2021, but Robert Bell said in February he was looking forward to the 60th anniversary approaching in 2024 for the Jazziacs, the band that eventually evolved into Kool & the Gang in 1969.
Tickets for the 7:30 p.m. show range from $39.50 to $125.50 and will go on sale at 10 a.m. April 28 at the Covelli Centre's Southwoods Health box office and through Ticketmaster. An online-only presale runs from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Thursday with the password: KOOL.