(AP) – Rudolph Isley, a founding member of the Isley Brothers
who helped perform such raw rhythm and blues classics as
“Shout" and “Twist and Shout” and the funky hits “That Lady”
and “It’s Your Thing,” has died at age 84.

There are no words to express my feelings and the love I have
for my brother. Our family will miss him. But I know he’s in a
better place," Ronald Isley said in a statement released
Thursday by an Isley Brothers publicist. Further details
were not immediately available.

A Cincinnati native, Rudolph Isley began singing in church with
brothers Ronald and O’Kelly (another sibling, Vernon, died at
age 13) and was still in his teens when they broke through in
the late 1950s with “Shout,” a secularized gospel rave that was
later immortalized during the toga party scene in “Animal House.”