"The Beatles were doing us," the Isleys remark in the telecast. "They wanted to be us." Like the Bach family in classical music, the Isley Brothers are a multigenerational parade of musical talent. It began in Cincinnati, where O'Kelly, Ronald, and Rudolph Isley were encouraged by their singing father, eventually getting the idea to move to New York, although their first records went nowhere. "Shout," a high-energy gospel-based workout, hit in 1959, and they haven't looked back since. "Twist and Shout," their 1962 chart-topper, was in any decent rock band's repertoire (including the Beatles'), and they even signed with Motown for "This Old Heart of Mine." The young Isley Brothers. But their greatest success came with their own material, developed on the road with a band that included then-unknown guitarist Jimi Hendrix, and with "It's Your Thing" in 1969, they hit on a funky but smooth style that's all Isleys. Their most recent hit was in 2003, unless they've had another between the time of writing and when you're reading this, which wouldn't be at all surprising.