Ronnie Wilson, who founded the iconic funk group the Gap Band with his younger brothers Charlie and Robert Wilson, has died. His wife Linda Boulware-Wilson confirmed the news to TMZ, saying that he died at his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma Tuesday morning after suffering a stroke last week. In a statement, she remembered him as a “genius with creating, producing and playing the flugelhorn, trumpet, keyboards and singing music.” He was 73.

Wilson and his brothers were born and raised in Tulsa. They formed the Gap Band in the early 1970s, naming themselves after Greenwood, Archer, and Pine, streets in the Black Tulsa neighborhood attacked by a white mob in the 1921 Tulsa race massacre.

The Gap Band got their first big break backing up Leon Russell on his 1974 album Stop All That Jazz. They recorded their first two albums, 1974’s Magicians Holiday and 1977’s The Gap Band, at Russell’s Church Studio and released them on his Shelter Records label.

The Wilsons attained more success after meeting Los Angeles producer Lonnie Simmons, who signed them to his Total Experience Productions company and got them a record deal with Mercury Records. Starting in 1980, they scored a string of hits on the R&B and dance charts like “Burn Rubber On Me” and “You Dropped Bomb On Me.”

The band continued to release albums throughout the ’80s and ’90s. Their sound influenced new jack song and they’ve been sampled by numerous rap and R&B artists, including Nas, Snoop Dogg, Mary J. Blige, and Ice Cube. Robert Wilson died of a heart attack in 2010; Charlie Wilson is now the only surviving member of the band.