Give It to Me

That groove does not sneak up on you. It walks in, settles down, and dares the room to stay still. This is The J. Geils Band, and the song is "Give It to Me," the closer on Bloodshot, the 1973 Atlantic album that finally put these Boston road dogs on the national chart map. Six minutes and thirty-two seconds on the album. A little over three minutes on the single. Either way, it is the sound of a bar band that had already learned how to own a room and was just starting to learn how to own a studio.

Bloodshot landed on April 12, 1973. It was the band's third studio record, cut at the Hit Factory in New York with producer Bill Szymczyk behind the board. Szymczyk was still a few years away from the Eagles records that would make his name a household one in rock circles, On the Border and Hotel California among them, but the ears were already there. Bloodshot climbed to number 10 on the Billboard 200, a peak the band would not beat until Freeze-Frame nearly a decade later. The single of "Give It to Me," backed with "Hold Your Loving," went to number 30 on the Hot 100 and number 15 on the Cash Box chart. Canada saw it reach number 39. For a group that had been living on encores and word of mouth since the end of the 1960s, that was the first real crack in the door.

Peter Wolf and Seth Justman wrote it. Wolf sang it the way he sang everything in those years, like a man who had spent too many hours on the air and too many hours on a club stage and had no intention of turning the energy down for a microphone. Justman answered on organ. J. Geils stepped out on guitar. Magic Dick, born Richard Salwitz, took the harmonica and made it the third lead voice in the room. Danny Klein held the bass. Stephen Jo Bladd kept the drums moving under a beat that leans reggae without ever leaving the R&B revue. The single edit chopped the jam. The album cut lets the whole band stretch. A lot of stations still reach for the live take on Blow Your Face Out when they want the full sweat of it, because that is the version that sounds like the floorboards giving way.

The band did not arrive fully formed out of a record-company meeting. John Geils, Magic Dick, and Danny Klein had been playing as the J. Geils Blues Band around Worcester, Massachusetts. Across town, Peter Wolf and Stephen Jo Bladd were in the Hallucinations, a Boston group with a reputation and a following. Wolf had come east from the Bronx, born Peter Walter Blankfield on March 7, 1946, and had already made a name on WBCN as the all-night jock known as the Woofa Goofa, spinning blues, soul, and the odd rock record and talking a streak between them. When the Hallucinations came apart, Wolf and Bladd found Geils, Magic Dick, and Klein. Geils was tied to a management contract. The manager would not let the new lineup play unless the group carried the guitarist's name. That is how The J. Geils Band got its handle. Seth Justman came in on keyboards in 1968, and the writing partnership that would carry the band was set.

They learned the obscure stuff out of Wolf's record collection, including a stretch of woodshed time up in Montreal, then came back and took over the Boston clubs. The Catacombs, a basement room under a string of pool parlors, became a home base. Atlantic signed them after a promotion man named Mario Medious caught the show and called Jerry Wexler. The debut arrived in 1970. Full House, the 1972 live album, proved what the Northeast already knew: this was a show band first. Bloodshot was the studio answer, originals by Wolf and Justman sitting next to covers, including a stomping pass at "(Ain't Nothin' but a) House Party." Some of the early originals were credited to Juke Joint Jimmy, a made-up six-headed Boston blues legend the band used when the whole group had a hand in the tune.

"Give It to Me" sits at the back of Bloodshot and does the job a closer is supposed to do. The lyric is plain about what it wants. Wolf does not dress it up. The groove carries the rest. Rock and Roll Globe, looking back at the album on its fiftieth year, called the track a song of lusty love that settles into a reggae-pop pocket and then refuses to stay there. After Justman's organ solo, the arrangement breaks into a rock-and-soul revue jam that runs past the three-minute mark. Glide Magazine noted that the reggae feel on the record showed up weeks before the Wailers' American debut Catch a Fire, and more than a year before Eric Clapton took "I Shot the Sheriff" into the Top 10. Geils and company were not chasing a trend. They were hearing a rhythm and bending it toward the revue they already knew how to play.

The song stayed in the set for years. It was a concert piece before it was a chart piece, and it stayed a concert piece after the single had done its work. In 2002 Heineken used it in a commercial, a late and slightly strange second life for a track that had always sounded better with a crowd in front of it than with a product beside it. The short radio version has its fans. The long album version has more of them. Cutting the solo section out of this one is like cutting the sermon out of a revival. The point was never the verse. The point was the band taking the song apart and putting it back together in front of you.

The later chapters are better known to casual listeners, and they are a different band in several ways. Love Stinks arrived in 1980. Freeze-Frame in 1981 brought "Centerfold" and the title track, MTV saturation, and stadium dates, including a run opening for the Rolling Stones on one tour and headlining dates of their own with a young U2 down the bill. Wolf left in 1983. He wanted the roots direction. The rest of the band wanted the pop lane that had just paid off. One more album followed, You're Gettin' Even While I'm Gettin' Odd, with Justman and Bladd up front, and the group folded in 1985. Reunions came in 1999, again in the middle of the 2000s, and on through 2015. John Geils died on April 11, 2017. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has nominated the band more than once and has not inducted them. Ask anyone who saw the 1970s shows and the answer is usually the same: the Hall is late, and the clubs were not.

Wolf kept going on his own. Lights Out in 1984, a long run of solo records after that, and a voice that never lost the disc-jockey cadence. Magic Dick took the harmonica into other projects, including Bluestime with Geils. Justman produced and arranged. Klein and Bladd remained the engine room in the memory of anyone who wore out a copy of Full House. The six of them, on a good date, were as good a live American rock and soul band as the 1970s produced. "Give It to Me" is the studio evidence from the year the rest of the country started to catch up.

Put the long version on. Let the organ in. Let Geils answer. Let Magic Dick take the last word. That is the J. Geils Band before the videos, before the arguments, before the Hall of Fame ballots. A Worcester guitarist's name on the poster, a Bronx singer who talked like a jock and sang like a preacher, and a song that asks for exactly what the title says.

The band's own site is still up at jgeilsband.com, a scrapbook of the years they got down to it. The verified Facebook page lives at facebook.com/thejgeilsband. Peter Wolf's official home is peterwolf.com. Songfacts keeps a clean file on the track at songfacts.com. And the station that still plays the long cut the way it was meant to be heard is The Zoo.