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Formed in 1967, the group comprises Richard Dedeaux, Father Amde Hamilton (born Anthony Hamilton), and Otis O’ Solomon (also billed as Otis O’Solomon Smith). Anthony Amde Hamilton was the third American to be ordained as a priest of the ancient Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Hamilton, O’Solomon, and Dedeaux first met and collaborated at the Watts Writers Workshop, an organization created by Budd Schulberg in the wake of the Watts Riots, as the African-American civil rights movement was beginning to take a new cultural turn. Fusing music with jazz and funk roots with a rapid-fire, spoken word sound, they created a sound that gave them a considerable local following, but little commercial success.