Some
people claims the Disco scene had already started in the early 70's.
Like in '71-'73. But I guess that really depends on what you think is DISCO?!
The Discotheque scene really started back then, with clubs playing music on records to the audience. In these clubs, the
Disc-Jockey [the DJ] was formed as this guy putting the records on the
turntables and often talking to the crowd in a radio show kind of way.Other people say the Disco days started in the mid 70's
One of the first "Disco Hits" was Gloria
Gaynor's "Never can say goodbye", which
was on top of the charts already back in 1974.
Most of the first Disco hits from the mid 70's often had a little
slower tempo, like some 90-110 bpm [Beats Per Minute]. But as the years
passed by the Disco music became faster [110-140 bpm] and most of all -
the songs became longer... Much thanks to this guy by the name Tom
Moulton, who thought the "standard" 3 minute
songs were just too short and he came up with an idea; "There's
got to be a way to make it longer where you don't loose that feeling.
Where you can take them to another level.".
He sat in his home and mixed together a tape on which he mixed the same
song with itself to make a longer version before mixing it into another
track. That's how he invented the Disco-mix. This break-through made him
one of the hottest and most credited mixers of all times. Everyone
wanted him to make "A Tom Moulton Mix" of
their songs.
He had a hard time trying to get these longer versions put on vinyl, the
problem was that the 7" single couldn't hold more than some maximum
4-5 minutes with good quality. That's why he often was made to make 2
versions of the song - a album version, the full-length version, and
a single version with the best parts of the long version. But he really
wanted people to get to hear the longer version, specially on the
dancefloors, so Tom and his mastering guy, José Rodriguez,
pressed one single on 10" instead of 7". The next
"single" they choose to cut on 12", same format as a
album, this was how they come to invent the 12" single - which fast
became all DJ's tool and format.
But the inventor of the 12" single and the Disco Mix, Tom Moulton,
says this about his own work; "I didn't make a dance record, I
made a record you could dance TO".
With the new format and the huge Disco explosion, special and exclusive
mix versions were released on 12" DJ promotion copies only. One of
the most sought for (and hard to find) 12" promos, is the
"Saturday Night Fever" 5-track promo, which include Yvonne
Elliman's "If I can't have you" and 4 Bee Gees
tracks; "Stayin' alive", "Night fever",
"More than a woman" and "You should be
dancing".
The Yvonne Elliman song isn't available on any other 12", nor is
the exclusive mix of "Stayin' alive" which is also only
available on this white label promo.
Just as Tom says above; "I made a record you could dance
TO", this was the whole idea behind this whole new genre. The
Disco music should be happy and danceable. It was designed for making
people move and have fun to, on the dancefloor and everywhere else. With
its driving beats, it almost has a hypnotic feel that makes you wanna
dance or at least stomp your feet to the beat. It's really hard to sit
still when you hear a good Disco tune, and you get happy when listening
to Disco.
Not surprisingly, many Disco songs lyrics are about dancing; "Dance,
dance, dance" & "Everybody Dance" (Chic),
"Come on Dance, Dance" (Saturday Night Band), "Dance
across the floor" (Jimmy "Bo" Horne) and "Dance
yourself dizzy" (Liquid Gold).
The lyrics are mostly happy and about dancing, loving and having a good
time, but another important ingredient in this pre-AIDS time was, of
course, SEX!
Just listen to the probably most known sexy hits of the era, Donna
Summer's almost 17 minutes long Disco orgy; "Love
to love you baby". This was literally like having an orgasm on
the dancefloor.
Sexual undertones are also very common in Disco tunes, just look at
titles like "Body to body boogie" (O.R.S), "Keep
in touch (Body to body)" (Shades of Love) and others.
The sex appeal of Disco music also found it's way to the big screen,
if yet in a little different way. For example in the Dudley Moore
movie 10, a Disco version by Thijs Van Leer of the
classical Ravel tune "Bolero" played a central role
when our hero are trying to have sex with the sexy Bo Derek.
But it wasn't just in this movie the classical tunes returned in Disco
versions. Actually many classical melodies where "Discofied",
both off and on the screen. Both "Night on Disco Mountain"
(based on "Night on Bald Mountain") and "A fifth of
Beethoven" (based on Beethoven's Fifth Symphony) were featured
in the movie that would break Disco out of the clubs and into the homes
and radio stations all over the world - Saturday Night Fever!
But it wasn't just Disco that inspired movies, Disco was just as much
influenced by other media's as they were of Disco. You'll find Disco
tunes based on different cartoon characters, like the Donald Duck
voice in Rick Dees' "Disco Duck", or all the
songs released about Superman when that movie hit the silver
screen.
Another movie that inspired Disco tunes were the Star Wars
trilogy, which scored big hits for Meco, who also made a Disco
version of "Aus spracht Zarathustra" - the main theme
from the Superman movie.
Legendary writer/producer Kenton
Nix also wrote a song inspired by the Star Wars movies.
Kenton, recalls how he wrote Ednah Holt's "Serious,
Sirius space party"; "Larry [Levan] and I were
Trekkies and Star Wars freaks. Larry said to me, why don't you write a
song about a party in outer space and talk about the characters like
they are at the Garage [the legendary club - the Paradise Garage] and
the Garage is in space and everyone has a membership: you know, Darth,
Kirk, Luke, OB1 and everybody. And they're just rocking, just up there
dancing. So I did it."
The Paradise Garage (as mentioned above) was mainly a gay club,
and the gay crowd have always been very fast and open to pick up new
types of music and styles. The same goes for Disco - it first became
popular in the gay clubs, before it reached the broad masses through the
Saturday Night Fever movie.
The gay scene also early got it's own icons in the Village People,
who with their hit song "Y.M.C.A.", got people running
to YMCA's all over the world. That massive success for the YMCA made the
U.S. Navy ask the guys if they couldn't do a song about the navy, which
resulted in the hit "In the Navy". That song made the
same impact on people and the Navy got a lots of new recruits.
But one really have to say that the Saturday Night Fever movie was
the big break-through for Disco music. From having been the music for
the people in the Clubs, the Discotheques, everything exploded like
overnight. The Bee Gees became the Disco icons and all the music
from the soundtrack became hits.
All of a sudden EVERYONE wanted to be a part of the growing Disco scene.
Even "unlikely" people/groups like Kiss ("I was
made for lovin' you"), Cher ("Take Me Home"),
Rod Stewart ("Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?") and the Rolling
Stones ("Miss You") wanted their part of the
action.
Actually even Brian Adams' first hit was a Top 5 club hit and
Disco smacker called "Let Me Take You Dancing".
The Saturday Night Fever movie also set a "standard" for
the look of a clubber. Most of the guys were all Tony Manero [John
Travolta] look-a-likes, in polyester shirts and suits, doing
"the Hustle" in their platform shoes.
The ladies where all dressed up in [preferably] designer made dresses
and working out the dancefloors in their high heels. Some of the most
popular designers back then can be heard in the classic song - "He's
the greatest dancer", in which the Sister Sledge
counts - "Halston, Gucci, Fiorucci".
But if Saturday Night Fever was the thing that really got the Disco ball
rolling, it was really the labels and the clubs that had set the ground
for it. Because some years before the Bee Gees shouted "O-o-o-oh
Stayin' alive, stayin' alive", labels like WestEnd, Prelude
and SalSoul
had ruled the dance scene - specially in New York. These were all small
independent labels, who were fast to pick up the trends and really saw
what was coming.
The larger companies didn't really get on the train until the Disco era
had already started. But other labels that released good Disco music
were, the Miami based T.K.
Disco, and also Atlantic, Casablanca
and Columbia.
The domination of New York based companies lasted until around 1980 when
most of the bigger companies relocated to the west coast and Los
Angeles.
But just as there were so many Disco records released - there were
almost as many different labels. Many labels just released a few records
- mainly 12" singles - before they folded. But that's also part of
the charm with Disco. You can still today find "new" great
Disco records that you didn't knew of before and labels you had never
heard of before. Some of these labels "Discoholics" like
myself keep looking for is P&P, Sound of New York, RSO,
BC, De-Lite, Fantasy and Red Greg.
What's also fascinating about these labels, is that they many times had
their own unique sound. So you can often hear on a tune what label it
might have been released on.
It's maybe hard to understand today what an impact Disco music had
back during those days. Most hit songs fast became worldwide hits and no
matter where you were - people could still sing "Good
times", "Upside down" or any of the other hits
that ruled the charts either in New York or Hong Kong.
One fascinating thing was when the group Lipps Inc. released
their "Funkytown"... Then there were thousand and
thousands towns all over the world that got another sign saying Funkytown
as well as its "real" town name.
The Disco era was also (unfairly) known for "One hit
wonders"... And Lipps Inc. could be one of them, but with the right
song unknown people or groups could get a huge worldwide hit, but then
they were never heard from again. But actually I think the music
business always have been working like this, so this was nothing special
for the Disco scene. It's just the same now with artists/groups having a
worldwide smash and then never gets heard of again. But we all should
keep in mind that it is very hard to write a hit...
Some of the so called "One hit wonders" of the Disco era was; Patrick
Hernandez with his "Born to be alive", Penny
McLean's "Lady bump", "I love the
nightlife" by Alicia Bridges, "Can't live
without your love" by Tamiko Jones, Melba Moore's
"This is it", Jacki Moore with her "This
time baby" and Anita
Ward's "Ring my bell".
I think it's quite unfair to call some of these "One hit
wonders", because some of them really did some great songs after
their huge hit, but this other singles would always be compared to their
worldwide smash. Anita Ward did for example release a great dance track
called "Don't drop my love" and Melba Moore sang "You
stepped into my life".
When talking about Anita Ward, her song "Ring my bell" was
written and produced by a guy named Frederik Knight. He did one
of the first, what I would call, "reply to" songs, when he in
1981 recorded his "Let me ring your bell again" as a
"reply" to his 1979 Anita Ward hit "Ring my bell".
This kind of "reply to" hits boomed in 1983 when Michael
Jackson ruled the charts all over with his "Billie
Jean". There were numerous of either reply's to or medleys
using this song - trying to get their share of the fame. The most known
reply to "Billie Jean" is Lydia Murdock, who in her
song "Superstar" claims to be Billie Jean. Other songs using
Michael's song is the ClubHouse and Pink Project medleys; "Do
it again" and "B-Project".
Also already back in the late 70's/early 80's the first
"sampling" started by the rap artists like for example Grandmaster
Flash and Sugarhill Gang who was scratching and rapping over
other peoples records. G.M. Flash was for example rapping over the
legendary WestEnd Records first release, "Sessamatto".
the Sugarhill Gang got the first big worldwide rap hit with their "Rapper's
delight", which is based on the instrumental version of Chic's
"Good times". It's told that the first time Nile
Rodgers [of Chic] heard "Rapper's delight" was in a New
York club. He first thought it was the DJ who was rapping over his and Bernard
Edwards' "Good times". He thought it was quite cool and
went up to the DJ and came to find out that this was actually another
group using "his" song in their record without having got the
permission in any way to use the song.
The next thing before sampling was a phenomenon that started during
the 80's. At this time many records was released with accapella [vocals
only] versions of the song. DJ's fast found these accapellas very
useful, 'cause with the vocals added on top of other songs they could
create their "own" anthem/song. This can actually be very
cool, when people dancing to this popular track and in the break or on
top of the instrumental you add another popular vocal. If this is done
in a professional way the effect on the dancefloor is just like - WOW!
So I guess you can say this kind of technique was a kind of sampling
before sampling really got in fashion during the late 80's.
But everything that's good and funny has to end... And so did Disco, as
some people would say - but not me!!! But around '80 the "Disco
sucks" campaign started. People was even burning Disco records at
stakes, just like the old times witch hunting. All of a sudden, you
couldn't listen to, or dance to, Disco any longer. Or as Marvin
Schlachter, the owner of Prelude Records said about the
"death" of Disco in a 1980 Billboard interview; "The
problem started with the companies which were late getting into the
Disco scene. When they woke up, they cut lots of Disco records and
flooded the market."
So, what happened was that the Disco scene returned to the clubs where
it once started and with the new technical equipment's like drum
machines, synths and other things, the music transformed - from Disco -
to Disco! Well, people preferred not to call this "new" music
Disco any longer. Even though I still think you could call it Disco, it
was called things like Garage - from the legendary N.Y.C. club Paradise
Garage where (the late) Larry
Levan ruled, or House - from Chicago's Warehouse
where Frankie Knuckles were spinning the wheels of steel.
The more uptempo tunes were called Hi Energy (Hi-NRG)
or Euro, since this kind of music was very popular over in Europe
at this time.
But the best name for all of these genres of previously called Disco
music, is Dance music. It still had the same meaning as it had when
Disco started - It was designed for making people move and have fun to!
But - Disco would return. Specially during the late 1990's it came
back in many ways. In sampling and covers and lots of other ways...
It's hard to say if the Disco-House scene came out of the new remixes of
classic Disco tracks that hit us in the late 80's or if it came out of
sampling Disco tunes to go with new House tunes. I guess there could
have been a combination of both.
One of the first big hits using sampling was the Black Box's 1989
worldwide hit - "Ride on time" - which was sampling the
Salsoul Records diva Loleatta
Holloway's magnificent song "Love sensation"
(this song was also sampled by Marky Mark in his 1991 "Good
vibrations").
But the Black Box track was more of a House song than an Disco-House
tune. But I guess the use of sampling like this definitely opened up the
eyes (and ears) for this new way of "recycle" music. And today
more or less all dance music tunes are using samples or else they
are covers of classic Disco tunes.
Most of the Disco-House tunes uses samples, either instrumental parts,
hooks or vocals, from classics and often hard-to-find obscure Disco
tracks. Other Disco-House tracks are just all brand new tracks created
and inspired to sound like a Disco classic.
A perfect example of the later is the Pet Shop Boys' brilliant "New
York city boy" with it's clear Village People
influences. The 'Boys have also admitted that they wanted to create a
song that sounded like a Village People hit/Disco classic and the video
is shot as if took place inside the legendary Studio
54.