Staying hardheaded and hungry has fueled Mother’s Finest since the ‘70s
Mother’s Finest rose to international prominence nearly a half-century ago. But the self-described “funk-rock” band has an incredible history that precedes the tumultuous ’70s.
The venerable Atlanta-based group has survived the Vietnam Era, the Nixon years, the ensuing Watergate scandal, ’70s acid rock and punk, ’80s new wave, ’90s grunge, the cultural mashup of the 2000s and the COVID-19 epidemic — and continues to rock on as the latest Trump administration changes unfold daily.
“I really do think our story is all about self-defense,” Mother’s Finest co-founder Glenn “Doc” Murdock said in a recent interview. “We keep puttin’ it out there, and we keep working because we want to and because we really have to! I think that’s what’s led us from one era to another for all these years.”
Murdock said Mother’s Finest thought the end was near on a few different occasions. “But pretty soon, it’s always like, ‘Well, let’s go ahead and do some new stuff anyway.’ I think we might be a glutton for it, because we just want to keep on playing. It puts food on the table, but I think the best part is, we still have fun doing it.”
While the band is mainly touring Europe through the end of 2025, it will close out the year with Atlanta concerts at Eddie’s Attic on Dec. 26 (two shows) and Buckhead Theatre on Dec. 27.
Along with co-founder Joyce “Baby Jean” Kennedy, Murdock has been a working musician since the late ’60s. They met in Chicago, Murdock’s hometown. The stage presence and powerhouse vocals of Mississippi-born Kennedy quickly became the focal point of their revue-style shows.
“We worked anywhere and everywhere we could,” Murdock explained. “USO shows, club gigs, it didn’t matter to us because we just wanted to play our music.” The duo traveled the show-band circuit, crisscrossing the Midwest and up and down the East Coast. “It was a lot of hard work, low pay and high mileage!”
By the time the musicians reached Miami in early 1970, pop culture and musical tastes were changing, while harder rock and soul bands such as Sly Stone and the Family Stone were gaining popularity. “By then, I think we were becoming what we’d been sort of dreaming about. But it sure took a long time.”
With the addition of Jerry “Wyzard” Seay and Gary “Moses Mo” Moore, the core of the band began to take shape. In 1972, Mother’s Finest recorded a self-titled debut LP for RCA. The result was a sonic disappointment for the band. “They’d added strings and stuff. It wasn’t anything we wanted — at all. But being gluttons, we didn’t stop, we just kept on playing and writing,” Murdock said.
The persistent band received another chance a few years later when producer Tom Werman (Blue Öyster Cult, Cheap Trick, Motley Crüe) saw the group play in an Atlanta club. Soon, they were signed to Epic, a major Columbia Records subsidiary. The band’s second self-titled LP was release in 1976.
“Oh man, when that album came out,” Murdock explained, “I think everything changed. We’d cut this really cool record; it was so organic, and it was just what we wanted. People were saying they thought we were gonna be bigger than Led Zeppelin at that point. But what got in the way was (the band) Boston. Our record got buried under Boston. But you know what? Like always, we just carried on anyway.”
One of the more controversial aspects of the first Mother’s Finest Epic release was the sarcastic “N---izz Can’t Sang Rock & Roll.” Murdock said it’s still one of his favorite songs.
“I like it because it has a lot of shock value,” he said. “I really went into a space to do that one. George Clinton and all those guys, they have a very special way to convey the meanings of that particular word. They can get away with it without being too graphic. But we did it and we were explicit. That’s from the streets of Chicago for me, you know? It was raw, it was asphalt, it was part of the world I came from. Plus, at that time, it was mostly therapy.”
Murdock said the song’s message weighed heavily on him as the ’70s progressed. “I was very apprehensive about moving south, especially when they said, ‘Let’s go to Atlanta.’ Things were so brutal then, but, by putting that song out, I think it was good for us and for our fans.
“I actually enjoyed when people would ask for it,” he said with a chuckle. “I mean, white guys would come up to me and say, ‘Hey, when you gonna sing that song, man?’ … It would establish a dialogue.”
By the time “Another Mother Further” arrived in 1977, Mother’s Finest was laying down the law that it was not an R&B band. “They tried to label us as that, and even [Epic labelmates] Earth, Wind and Fire were disappointed we didn’t fit into that mold. But we were very comfortable with the whole rock music thing. That’s where we came from, and we weren’t about to change at that point.”
To drive the point home, Murdock and company came up with one of the band’s biggest hits. “Piece of the Rock” became a staple of hard rock radio playlists, including at Atlanta’s 96 Rock.
Veteran Atlanta radio personality Kaedy Kiely, now on classic rock radio station 92.3 “The River,” is a self-described “massive Mother’s Finest fanatic.” In fact, the Atlanta native added, she was a fan long before her on-air tenure began at iconic 96 Rock in 1983.
“As a teenager, my friends and I lost our minds about them,” she recalled. “I guess it was because we heard them on 96 Rock, like everyone else who grew up around here in the ‘70s.”
Kiely’s dedication led to a when-there’s-a-will-there’s-a-way concert conquest at the venue that’s now the Buckhead Theatre. “They used to do these midnight New Year’s Eve shows there and around ’79 or ‘80, they had Mother’s Finest on the bill and the show was totally sold out.”
The fact that no tickets remained didn’t deter Kiely and her friends. The youthful miscreants climbed up the fire escape to slip into the building. “I told that story on the radio in the mid-‘80s,” she said with a laugh. “And someone called in and said, ‘We were following you up that fire escape!’ And then (the late Atlanta concert promoter) Alex Cooley weighed in and said, ‘You owe me some money!’”
Mother’s Finest was on a determined climb of its own.
“Back then, you were either rock or funk or R&B,” Murdock said. “We loved all those genres, and we’d played all those things. We actually … wanted to just be seen as ourselves.”
Even more mainstream songs such as the soulful track “Baby Love” carried on the band’s independent spirit.
“That was a song that people could sort of tolerate on both sides of the fence,” said Murdock. “But, again, it has elements of funk, R&B and rock, too. And I must say, 96 Rock were big supporters of us. They’d play the whole album, all the way through. Then those songs took us not just all over the States but to Europe and then all over the world.”
European audiences continue to be amenable to Mother’s Finest’s mindset. Before the end of the year, the band has dates in Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland before it returns to Atlanta for its final 2025 shows.
“The audiences there still get it,” Murdoch said. “They judge you by the music, and there’s no sort of racial thing. It’s just, is it good or is it bad? I think the real reason why we got popular over there in the first place is because they understood what real funk is about. It’s a total acceptance of what we’re doing.”
Murdock said that acceptance fuels the band. “The great thing about it all is, we still wouldn’t have changed our ways — and even now, we still won’t change the way we do things. I don’t know if it’s because we are just hardheaded or what.”
Kiely cheers the band for having “thumbed their nose at the traditional model of how a band operates and plays the game. And their live shows were amazing. Now I’m lucky enough to know them as friends — and they still rock just as hard, if not harder, than ever.”
In addition to co-founders Murdock and vocalist Kennedy and longtime members Seay (bass) and Moore (guitar), Mother’s Finest is completed by John “Red Devil” Hayes (guitar) and Murdock’s son Dion Derek Murdock (drums).
“He’s carrying it on, just like the rest of us,” “Doc” Murdock said of Red Devil. “He learned it all by being there — but then, so did we! We’re still here and we’re all more than ready to rock.”
IF YOU GO
Mother’s Finest
6 and 8:30 p.m. Dec. 26. Starting at $41.73. Eddie’s Attic, 515-B North McDonough St. Decatur. eddiesattic.com.
8 p.m. Dec. 27. Starting at $41.75. Buckhead Theatre, 3110 Roswell Road NW, Atlanta. livenation.com.
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