James “Plunky” Branch is an educator. A label founder. A mentor to multiple generations of instrumentalists and a founding father of the Richmond Jazz Society. His early musical travels included formative stints in San Francisco and New York, but 2024 marks his 50th year of performing after returning to his native Richmond, and he’ll celebrate by staging a concert dubbed Plunky Day in RVA on Friday, July 19, at Kanawha Plaza. The event promises to tie together threads of the soon-to-be 77-year-old’s varied legacy.

“Everything we’re talking about combines both present and past – and future,” he said. “A half century is a momentous occasion for anything.”

The idea for the event came from, of all places, a funeral. Earlier this year, while gathering musicians for a memorial service for former bandmate Nathaniel “Nat” Lee, Plunky found himself looking back. “I probably have more performances behind me than in front,” he said. “I thought that maybe it’s the time to gather remembrances, and also pay homage to the people who [will] come after me.”

He’ll do it with a lineup that embodies his stylistic versatility. “I wanted to be sure that it touched on the various schools of thought and various genres that I have been associated with,” he said.

Rhythim, a young performer from Nigeria who now lives in Richmond, reflects Plunky’s Afrobeat past. Singer Corey El, son of guitarist and bandmate Carl Lester El, will carry the flag for Plunky’s R&B side and his commitment to mentorship. Veteran jazz singer Desirée Roots, “represents the jazz of my career and in this community,” Plunky notes.

Plunky’s ranging approach has reached listeners near and far over the last half century. With Oneness of Juju, a seminal formulation of his band leadership born out of the mid-1970s, he reached the Top 50 both domestically and internationally with the club -favorite hit, “Every Way But Loose.” Albums by that group, as well as the one that preceded it, Juju, have earned several vinyl reissues in recent years — as well as an era-spanning 2020 compilation, “African Rhythms 1970-1982,” via Strut Records.

 Plunky Branch
 Photo by Regina H. Boone  

Plunky himself hasn’t stopped moving forward. In December, he released a remix EP with deep house and drill-jazz remixes of his 2023 single, “I’ll Be There.” Other tracks of his have been sampled for use by the likes of J. Cole, J Dilla and Madlib, ensuring an ongoing presence in the world of hip-hop.

Plunky’s current band, Plunky & Oneness, will perform at Plunky Day in RVA, though top billing goes to EU featuring Sugar Bear. Years before they scored a hit with “Da Butt,” or partnered with rappers Salt N Pepa on “Shake Your Thang,” they were known as Experience Unlimited and signed to Black Fire Records, the label Plunky co-founded in 1975.

The show’s format is torn from this chapter in Plunky’s story, as well. “It’s a four-hour block that will flow,” Plunky said, calling to mind go-go’s continuous beat. Plunky was part of that genre’s beginnings, having shared festival stages and a booking agency with Chuck Brown, known as the Godfather of Go-Go.

“I was doing this wild, crazy African jazz,” Plunky said. “If we got the people moving, I tended not to stop the music… That’s sort of the heart and soul of go-go.”

Another groundbreaking instrumentalist who was in the mix at that time was keyboardist and cosmic sound pioneer Lonnie Liston Smith. Smith first met Plunky while playing keys for saxophone great Pharoah Sanders near the start of the 1970s, and Smith remembers Branch sitting in with Sanders’ group during gigs in San Francisco and New York. 

The two native Richmonders really got to know one another, however, when Smith moved back home in 1988. Smith notes that by starting a label and helping to found the Richmond Jazz Society, Branch was blazing a forward-thinking trail through the music industry.

“He established a lot of things,” Smith said. “He did a lot for the younger generation musically.”

In that sense, the site of Plunky Day has its own resonance. Kanawha Plaza was once home to the Fridays at Sunset concert series, and Plunky draws a through-line backward from those shows to the 1970s, when he helped organize some of the city’s first downtown music festivals, including June Jubilee. He’s hoping attendees will notice those echoes. “I want people to walk away with some sense of the longevity,” Plunky said. “Not just [my own] longevity in terms of years, but the arts in general and how we’ve continued to develop.”

He’s also hoping the event has its own sense of longevity. “I would like to think that this is simply the first annual Plunky Day,” he said.

Plunky Day in RVA takes place at Kanawha Plaza on Friday, July 19, beginning at 6 p.m. Tickets are $40-75. To purchase tickets, visit eventbrite.com.