Remembering soul music vocalist and retired lieutenant Stephen Odle – Indianapolis Recorder

Retired Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Division lieutenant and former soul music vocalist Stephen B. Odle was a lifelong Indianapolis resident. Odle died June 19; he was 70 years outdated.

Odle’s life was crammed with notable accomplishments, each as a musician and a legislation enforcement officer. However it’s Odle’s work in music that stored his title, and voice, within the public’s consciousness.

Odle’s group, Phrases of Knowledge, was a well-liked attraction in Indianapolis throughout the Nineteen Seventies. Although Phrases of Knowledge got here remarkably near attaining nationwide success, the group failed to supply a charting single.

However the music Odle recorded with Phrases of Knowledge has had an everlasting attraction with soul music followers throughout the globe. In 2019, the group’s 1973 debut single, “You Made Me The whole lot,” was reissued by California’s Now Once more Data on a compilation album titled “Lamp Data – It Glowed Like The Solar: The Story Of Naptown’s Motown.” The group’s second single, a 1976 disco observe titled “You’re A Good friend Of Mine,” has appeared on a number of compilation albums in each the UK and Japan.

Lately, the music of Phrases of Knowledge has been sampled in distinguished hip-hop tracks, together with the Nigerian-Canadian rapper TOBi’s “Made Me The whole lot,” and “S.A.D. Lil Intro” by the St. Louis-born rapper and singer Smino.

Odle was a scholar at North Central Excessive Faculty when he shaped his first vocal group with Herman “Butch” Slaughter in 1969. The group would finally grow to be often known as Phrases of Knowledge, a mixed-gender ensemble that paired Odle and Slaughter with a rotating forged of feminine voices. “We had been completely different,” Odle instructed me throughout a 2018 interview. “I believe we had the group Associates of Distinction behind our minds.”

The group’s distinctive male/feminine interaction impressed WTLC disc jockey Rickie Clark, who took on administration duties for Phrases of Knowledge. “No different group in Indy had the 2 guys and two women singing like Phrases of Knowledge,” Clark instructed me throughout a 2017 interview.

With Clark’s help, Phrases of Knowledge landed prime gigs in Indianapolis, together with a November 1972 date on the ​​Indiana State Fairgrounds’ Coliseum with soul music icon Curtis Mayfield. A younger Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds was in attendance that evening, and through a 2017 interview, Edmonds instructed me he was impressed by Phrases of Knowledge. ”They had been like superstars to us. We had been like, ‘Oh my god, Phrases of Knowledge!’ They’d already made it. They had been who we had been making an attempt to be.”

Along with their quite a few native performances, Phrases of Knowledge additionally toured throughout North America, together with a sequence of dates with James Brown in 1976. Throughout my 2018 dialog with Odle, he shared with delight that Brown fired Phrases of Knowledge from the tour.

“We had been in Selma, Alabama,” Odle stated. “We’d been touring with Brown for some time. We placed on one of many hardest exhibits we ever did that evening. We completed up with a sizzling tune, and the group was going loopy. We did two or three encores that evening, we simply stored coming again, and coming again.”

In response to Odle, the Godfather of Soul was not impressed. “James Brown fired us that evening. We realized that you simply don’t do extreme curtain calls, that’s saved for James Brown, or whoever the headliner is.”

Odle instructed me that Phrases of Knowledge by no means earned a lot cash for his or her work. “We had simply sufficient cash to purchase rice and Kool-Help,” he stated. However Odle’s love for the music sustained him throughout the lean instances. “My thoughts by no means strayed too removed from that microphone. After we had been gigging, I at all times thought if somebody might assure me $150 every week, I might do that for the remainder of my life.”

After the demise of Phrases of Knowledge within the late Nineteen Seventies, Odle devoted himself to his household and his profession with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Division. Odle joined the pressure in 1980 and was named “Rookie of the Yr” in 1981. Odle earned many extra honors throughout his 29 years of distinguished service with IMPD, together with the Ruthann Popcheff Memorial Award.

Odle leaves behind three youngsters, six grandchildren and his spouse of 48 years, Elizabeth.

Kyle Lengthy is a DJ and hosts two radio exhibits, “Cultural Manifesto” and “Echoes of Indiana Avenue,” on WFYI. Join with him on Twitter @djkylelong.