It’s not hard to imagine why the Chicago soul outfit the Final Solution would have jumped at an offer to record the soundtrack for the blaxploitation film Brotherman in 1975. They’d worked the Chicago club circuit for years as a vocal group called the Kaldirons, recording a lone 45 but never attracting much attention outside the area, then relaunched shortly before the Brotherman project with a new, unfortunate name (apparently oblivious to its genocidal connotations). At the time the blaxploitation boom was helping make superstars of acts like Curtis Mayfield, Earth, Wind & Fire, and Isaac Hayes and tapping huge names like James Brown and Marvin Gaye, but the simple fact that someone was going to pay the Final Solution to record a full-length album must have been exciting in its own right.
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The key to the record is songwriter Carl Wolfolk, who’d supplied tunes for other Chicago acts, including “Can I Change My Mind” for Tyrone Davis. Since he didn’t have a script to work from, Brotherman lacks the strong narrative thread that held together more cohesive efforts like Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly. But he guessed at some stock elements of the genre—a love scene, some romantic frustration, several action sequences—so there’s enough happening on Brotherman to inspire listeners to create their own mental movie to accompany it. (That’s what Minneapolis design firm Burlesque of North America must have done to create the cover for the release.)
In 2007 Numero included the Kaldirons’ 1970 single, “To Love Someone” b/w “You and Me Baby,” on Eccentric Soul: Twinight’s Lunar Rotation, an anthology of Chicago’s Twinight label. Wondering if the band had recorded anything else, the Numero guys located a former manager, but he didn’t even remember any of the members’ names—until he happened to run into a brother of singer Darrow Kennedy on the street. Through him they eventually tracked down Kennedy, Wolfolk, and the tapes.
The band’s two-album big-league career was pretty unspectacular. Despite a respectable amount of radio play for their two biggest singles, opening slots on stadium tours, and a generous promotional push by their label, they never reached the critical mass an act needs to break out in the mainstream. Apparently the general public isn’t as into fey, gothy electro-glam as Atlantic’s A and R department had hoped.
“That’s completely familiar to us because that’s what we did with several EPs and albums before we got in the major-label game,” says Devine.
