The Commodores was a highly successful soul/funk band in the 1970s. They met as freshmen at Tuskegee Institute, and signed to Motown having first caught the public eye supporting The Jackson Five on tour. Now they are perhaps best known for the ballad "Easy", which was not really representative of their output. More usually, they recorded funky, driven dance floor hits including "Brick House", "Fancy Dancer", and "Slippery when wet", amongst others. "Machine Gun", the instrumental title track from their debut album, has become a staple at American sporting events, and has been featured in many films, including Boogie Nights.
The Commodores' original lineup was: Lionel Richie (sax), Thomas McClary (guitar), Milan Williams (keyboards), William King (trumpet), Ronald LaPread (bass) and Walter Orange (drums). Band members typically traded lead vocal duties. After Lionel Richie left the band, former Heatwave singer J.D. Nicholas assumed his place in the group.
The band jumpstarted careers of Lionel Richie and Walter Orange. When Lionel Richie left the band in 1982, it has never recovered its early shine. It has also gradually abandoned funky roots to move into the more commercial disco arena.
Commodore's most popular model, the Commodore64, was the Model T Ford of the home computer movement.
Commodore compatible floppy drives made by other manufacturers also emerged, but they were independently developed (for the most part) due to the fact that the Commodore64 and 128 drives were "intelligent peripherals" possessing chips that Commodore had decided not to license or supply to its competitors.
Commodore even developed an incredible interactive stand-alone CD unit (based on the Amiga technology) called the CDTV which (along with Philips CDI) were the predecessors to many of the CD-based interactive game systems which followed.
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