D’Wayne Wiggins, co-founder, lead singer, and guitarist with the band Tony! Toni! Tone!, died Friday at the age of 64.
If you attend any local retro party such as Mello Vibes, Footloose, Yesterday or even Good Times, you are bound to hear a few songs from the catalogue of the American rhythm and blues band.
Wiggins’ bandmates confirmed his passing in a post on Instagram revealing that he much loved singer had been ailing for some time from bladder cancer.
Wiggins led the soul funk/R&B trio that also featured his half-brother, Raphael Saadiq, on bass and vocals and cousin Timothy Christian Riley on drums/keyboards. The band was formed in their native Oakland, California in 1986, releasing its debut single One Night Stand a year later.
After signing with Wing Records, the group released their debut album, Who?, in 1988, which featured the hit single, Little Walter, a prime example of the band’s signature mixture of funk, soul, R&B and gospel that rode the wave of the mid-1980s New Jack Swing revolution spearheaded by producers Teddy Riley and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and groups including Guy, Blackstreet and Keith Sweat.
The song peaked at #47 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart and hit #1 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, while the album hit #69 on the Billboard 200 album chart.
The band’s second, mostly self-produced studio album, The Revival, was released in 1990 and it featured their signature feel good dance funk anthem Feels Good, which rose to #9 on the Hot 100 singles chart. They followed with 1993’s classic R&B-leaning Sons of Soul LP — which contained their highest charting single, the Ice Cube-sampling New Jack Swinging classic If I Had No Loot. That song shot to # 7 on the Hot 100, with the album hitting their highest mark on the Billboard 200 at # 24.
Their final studio effort was 1996’s House of Music, which stalled at #32 on the Billboard 200 chart. In total, the group landed five chart-toppers on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hops songs charts, as well as seven other songs in the top 10 on that tally.
He was quiet for several years before reuniting in 2003 — without Saadiq — to appear on Grammy-nominated The Diary of Alicia Keys song Diary (#8 on the Hot 100) which was later certified gold in the United States.
In addition to his work with the group D’Wayne Wiggins was the bandleader for comedian D.L. Hughley’s short-lived Comedy Central series Weekends at the D.L.
He also released a solo album, Eyes Never Lie, in 2000, which charted at # 197 on the Billboard 200 album chart, with single What’s Really Going On (Strange Fruit) stalling at # 84 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart that year.
In the United States, the group landed five #1 singles on the Billboard R&B charts, while in the United Kingdom, they scored seven entries, with 1993’s Let’s Get Down (#33) and If I Had No Loot (#44) their biggest hits.
– By Kevin Jackson
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