Chris Jasper, a Juilliard-trained keyboardist, singer and songwriter who brought an expansive musical vocabulary to the long-running R&B group the Isley Brothers, helping push them into a new hit-making era in the 1970s and ’80s with singles like “That Lady” and “Fight the Power,” died on Feb. 23. He was 73.
His death was announced in a statement on his Facebook account, which noted that he had been diagnosed with cancer in December. The statement did not say where he died.
Mr. Jasper, who was also a producer, started his decade-long run as an official member of the Isley Brothers in 1973. He added musical complexity to the long-running R&B group as it took on a richer, funkier style for a new decade.
Looking back on the Isley Brothers’ sound in a 2020 interview with Rockin’ Hot Radio, a Delaware-based station, he said, “It’s R&B, of course,” but added that he borrowed “voicings that were used in classical music, and in particular the Romantic period, with composers like Debussy, even 20th-century composers like Gershwin.”
During his tenure, the group lodged more than a dozen singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and more than a dozen albums on the Billboard 200 — six of them in the Top 10, including “The Heat Is On,” which reached No. 1 in 1975.
While not technically an Isley brother, Mr. Jasper might as well have been. His family grew up a few doors away from the Isley family in Lincoln Heights, Ohio, a Cincinnati suburb. He became family of sorts when his sister Elaine married Rudolph Isley, an original member of the group, in 1958.
The Isley Brothers first came together in the early 1950s as a teenage gospel quartet consisting of Rudolph, Ronald, O’Kelly and Vernon Isley. After Vernon died in a bicycle accident in 1955, they evolved into a spirited R&B vocal trio that cranked out party classics like the call-and-response raver “Shout!” and “Twist and Shout,” which hit No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1962 and later became famous as an anthem for the Beatles (not to mention Ferris Bueller).
Known for their wild stage antics — crawling on the floor, hopping up on pianos — the group added to their stage fireworks by bringing in the then-unknown Jimi Hendrix on guitar for a while in the mid-1960s. Other hits included “This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You),” released in 1966 during the group’s brief stint with the Motown subsidiary Tamla, and “It’s Your Thing,” which hit No. 2 in 1969.
The band entered new terrain when Mr. Jasper, along with the younger Isley brothers Ernie on guitar and drums and Marvin on bass, became official members, transforming the group into a sonically richer and more contemporary six-piece outfit.
“Our music is about so much more now,” Ernie Isley said in a 1976 interview. “We’ve got a lot more to say musically and lyrically. I-IV-V chord changes and three guys jumping up and down, screaming and shouting ‘wooo’ just isn’t where we’re at.”
“That’s right,” Mr. Jasper added. “We want our music to expand people’s consciousness and take them onto a different musical plane.”
Christopher Howard Jasper was born on Dec. 30, 1951, in Cincinnati, the youngest of seven children. By age 7, he was already plunking away on his mother’s piano, trying to figure out songs he had heard on the radio. He eventually began studying with a friend of the family from church who was a professor at the University of Cincinnati’s conservatory of music.
In the summer, he would visit his sister Elaine and her husband in Teaneck, N.J., where the Isley Brothers had relocated, and he started gigging at high schools and churches with Ernie and Marvin in a group called the Jazzmen Trio.
After graduating from high school in Cincinnati, Mr. Jasper settled in New York, where he studied music composition at the Juilliard School. Enticed by the opportunity to study with the noted jazz pianist and composer Billy Taylor, he transferred to the C.W. Post campus of Long Island University in Brookville, N.Y., where he received a bachelor’s degree in music.
Mr. Jasper, along with Ernie and Marvin, eventually began backing the Isley Brothers on records and in performance. “The better we got, the more they wanted us to play with them,” Mr. Jasper said.
After they joined officially, success came quickly. The expanded group’s album “3 + 3 ” (1973) rose to No. 8 on the Billboard chart, powered by “That Lady,” a sultry funk-rock update of the Isleys’ 1964 single “Who’s That Lady,” which hit No. 6.
During this golden era, the Isley Brothers became a touring juggernaut, with acts like Teddy Pendergrass, the Gap Band and the Brothers Johnson serving as opening acts. The Isley group continued to chart into the 1980s, but financial tensions between the older and younger members began to mount.
In 1984, the onetime Jazzmen Trio members peeled off to form their own trio, Isley Jasper Isley, which topped the R&B chart in 1985 with the shimmering “Caravan of Love,” a contemporary spiritual of sorts written by the group that called for togetherness and pride. A year later, a cover by the band the Housemartins reached No. 1 in Britain.
Embarking on a solo career, Mr. Jasper scored a hit in 1987 with “Superbad,” which despite its filthy, Stevie Wonderesque funk riffs was a wholesome call to the power of strong community values and education. While he never again scaled the heights he had reached with the Isley Brothers, he remained prolific, churning out solo albums for decades while also producing artists like the R&B singer Liz Hogue for his own label, Gold City. He released his final album, “It Started With a Kiss,” in 2023.
His survivors include his wife, Margie Jasper, and three sons, Michael, Nicholas and Christopher. He lived in South Salem, N.Y., in Westchester County.
In a 2020 interview with the blog West Coast Soul, Mr. Jasper discussed the impact of the harmonies he borrowed from jazz and classical music to make the Isley Brothers’ songs more sophisticated. “I wanted people to be able to recognize that sound as soon as they heard the song,” he said, “much like Motown had a particularly recognizable sound.”
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