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When Renee Scroggins formed a band called ESG with her three younger sisters in 1978, the notion of creating a ground-breaking mix of punk, funk and soul that would be sampled countless times by hip-hop artists, be played at cutting-edge danceclubs for decades and inspire everyone from the Clash to the Beastie Boys seemed pretty far-fetched.

“We started out playing cover songs – my favorite was (the Rolling Stones’) ‘Satisfaction,’ and Rufus’ ‘Once You Get Started’ – and we were horrible,” Scroggins says with a laugh. “You asking me about that, you’re taking me where I don’t want to go. I figured if I started writing my own songs, nobody could tell if we were messing up.”

Scroggins’ family was from the South Bronx, the home of hip-hop and also one of the most poverty-stricken areas in New York City, overrun by gangs and drugs, but also home to some of the most creative do-it-yourself artists in the world during the ‘70s. Some of Scroggins’ older siblings had already gotten in trouble with drugs, and to keep Renee and her younger sisters Valerie, Deborah and Marie out of trouble, their mother bought them instruments.

“Playing music was more my mother’s dream than mine initially,” Renee Scroggins says. “At first I didn’t appreciate what she did for us, but as years went on, I realized the key sacrifices she made. She was a cook making a meager salary but she scrimped and saved to get those instruments. She was trying to make sure what happened to my older sister and brothers didn’t turn out that way for the rest of us kids.”

Scroggins was already an avid watcher of late-night weekend television staples such as “Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert” and Wolfman Jack’s “The Midnight Special,” which featured performances by rock, soul and pop artists that fired up her imagination. “I can do that,” she thought. When her mother presented her and her sisters with a guitar, bass and tambourine and a set of drums, Scroggins took it upon herself to learn how to play all of them and then teach her sisters.

“It was like my mission, and I learned by doing,” she says. “We were making a sound on instruments that we could afford. All the percussion we had, the claves, congas, cowbells, tambourines made it easy to incorporate a Latin feel into the funk because it wasn’t expensive. I used to love when James Brown would ‘take it to the bridge,’ and he’d take away the horns and it would be just bass and drums. I thought what if we made a whole song that sounded like that bridge?”

The band began getting bookings at New York clubs because their raw, sparse sound fit right in with the burgeoning post-punk and no-wave scenes. After opening for A Certain Ratio, a British band signed to Factory Records, ESG was approached by Factory label head Tony Wilson to cut a record. The resulting session, with famed Joy Division producer Martin Hannett, yielded three songs that built the ESG legacy: “You’re No Good,” “Moody” and “UFO.”

The latter was an afterthought, an instrumental the band pulled out to fill the final minutes on the session tape. Yet its sparse beat and distinctive siren sound produced by Scroggins’ guitar was later sampled on hundreds of hip-hop tracks.

“My mother used to come and listen to us play and when she heard that sound effect on my guitar she’d say, ‘Renee, can you find another note besides that one?’ ” Scroggins says. “I had to explain that I had just seen (Steven Spielberg’s movie) ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind,’ and this was the sound of a spaceship landing.”

ESG became an international touring act and its records became staples at punk and dance clubs alike. The band played the opening night of the Hacienda in Manchester, England in 1982 and the closing nights at the Paradise Garage in New York in 1987. It opened shows for the Clash and Public Image Ltd., which Scroggins played while pregnant with her daughter Nicole.

ESG’s latest incarnation includes Nicole; her husband, Nicholas Nicholas; and a cousin, Anthony Alieso. Renee Scroggins remains the sole founding member, and continues to write and record music. The band’s latest album, “What More Can You Take?,” was recorded in the family’s home studio outside Atlanta and self-released. The title refers to the litigation that has surrounded the band since its infancy, as it fought to be compensated for the countless times its music has been sampled.

“I would go to different clubs and hear ‘UFO’ in the background on different records and think someone was stealing from me,” Renee says. “Coming from the Bronx in the ‘70s where you had all the drugs and gangs, you took that as a personal insult – somebody is stealing my stuff. You deal with it as best you can, but you can’t let it get you down, because otherwise you’d never make music again.”

Scroggins says she’s now brought all the band’s operations in-house and controls everything from the recording of her music to the distribution and publishing. It’s a hard lesson learned after four decades.

“I would tell my younger self to be more educated in the music business, business law, and learn more about publishing copyright and the importance of owning your masters,” she says. “We love to be artists, but we have to function in a business, and that’s the way we run things now.”

Scroggins says she’s cutting back on performing to focus on running the family business and writing and producing songs – her first love. She’s self-effacing about the group’s ground-breaking music and the notion of four African-American women as feminist pioneers in the ‘70s and ‘80s, even with a rare show coming up Saturday at the Promontory in Chicago to celebrate the band’s 40th anniversary.

“If I had younger brothers instead of younger sisters, we still would’ve started the band,” she says. “People say we were different and ask if it was hard. My thought was this is what we always liked to do, and sometimes things that are considered historical happen by accident. It’s not like we were trying to make history. It just happened to come out that way.”

Greg Kot co-hosts “Sound Opinions” at 8 p.m. Friday, 7 p.m. Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday on WBEZ-FM 91.5.

Greg Kot is a Tribune critic.

greg@gregkot.com

Twitter @gregkot