The highly eclectic list of tracks included in this volume of Disco Fever, contains songs from all over the Seventies and early Eighties dance music spectrum. Although they were included here because of their dance-friendliness, and their power to invoke memories of a magical era of glitter and glamour, the facts and figures behind some of these big hits and connoisseur favorites are almost as interesting as the music itself.

By the late Seventies, the list of actors from films and popular television shows trying their hands at a recording career was fairly long. Their degrees of chart success varied a great deal, from the fairly noteworthy, such as Richard Chamberlain, to the not so fortunate. On this disc you will find an example of a one-hit wonder in that popular music sub-genre. In 1979, actor David Naughton was starring in a television series entitled Makin’ It, a sort of television spin-off of the ultimate disco movie: Saturday Night Fever. Naturally, given the nature of the show and the times in which it was created, the title song was a disco number. Although the show itself was not a very big hit with the viewers, lasting less than two months, David Naughton scored a highly respectable #5 pop hit with ‘Makin’ It’, achieving chart success on a level that has not always been afforded actors with song-bird ambitions. In his endeavors, no doubt Naughton was helped by collaborating with a song writing team with excellent credentials, namely Dino Fekaris and Freddie Perren. Fekaris and Perren were the men behind disco-era classics such as Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I Will Survive’ and Peaches & Herb’s ‘Shake Your Groove Thing’, both of which are featured on other discs in the Disco Fever collection. ‘Makin’ It’ remained David Naughton’s only hit, although he went on to star in the 1981 hit movie An American Werewolf In London and maintains his acting career to this day.

A hit maker with a considerably longer recording career is Carl Carlton. Hailing from Detroit, he was still only a teenager when his remarkable voice caught the attention of one of his neighbors, subsequently leading to a recording contract and his first entry on the R&B chart in 1968. Scoring a number of hits throughout the Seventies, Carlton’s peak achievement came with his featured track on this collection: the super-infectious ‘She’s A Bad Mama Jama (She’s Built, She’s Stacked)’, which spent eight weeks at number two on the R&B chart. No doubt it would have reached the top position if it hadn’t been up against one of those steam-roller mega-hits that come along every now and then: ‘Endless Love’ by Diana Ross & Lionel Richie. ‘She’s A Bad Mama Jama (She’s Built, She’s Stacked)’ was written and produced by Leon Haywood, a brilliant recording artist in his own right, himself scoring a #2 R&B hit the previous year with ‘Don’t Push It, Don’t Force It’.

The very biggest hit on this disc comes courtesy of soul legend Johnny Taylor. Although he first recorded as part of the vocal group the Five Echoes in 1954 – he was only 16 at the time – his first solo recordings came when he signed with Sam Cooke’s SAR label in 1961. He first hit the charts two years later, and after moving to the Stax label he scored a #5 pop and #1 R&B hit with ‘Who’s Making Love’ in 1968. Following Stax’ bankruptcy in 1975, Taylor changed labels yet again, this time to Columbia. It was during his tenure with this label that he scored his biggest-ever hit, ‘Disco Lady’, which topped both the pop and the R&B charts, for four and six weeks, respectively. The actual song, however, was not meant to be a dance record, but rather a celebration of disco culture in general and a certain female dance floor aficionado in particular. “A lot of people got ‘Disco Lady’ mixed up,” Johnnie Taylor told author Fred Bronson. “They thought it was disco. It was not a disco tune. We were just talking about disco.” Despite these objections on the part of the artist, no doubt a lot of people found a way to move to the song, not least due to its funky backing, supplied by celebrated P-Funk band members such as Bootsy Collins on bass, Bernie Worrell on keyboards and Glenn Goines on guitar. Originally titled ‘Disco Baby’ and then rewritten by producer Don Davis, who thought it would be suitable for Johnnie Taylor, ‘Disco Lady’ was one of the biggest hits of 1976, whether you felt you could dance to it or not. With more than 2 million copies sold, it was the very first single to be awarded with the then newly created platinum record certification.

Among the other truly big and very funky chart hits on this volume of Disco Fever is Let It Whip by the Dazz Band. Formed in the late Seventies by Bobby Harris through the merger of two funk bands operating in Cleveland – Bell Telefunk and Mother Braintree – Dazz band eventually settled into an eight-piece line-up. The name of the band was a shortened label for the “danceable jazz” that was Harris’ original vision for the group. After a couple of minor R&B hits – at this time the group was known as Kinsman Dazz – the group signed with Motown in 1980, changing the name to Dazz Band in the process. Their second album, Keep It Live, spawned the group’s biggest hit in the synthesizer-laden and exceptionally dance-friendly ‘Let It Whip’. Released in February 1982, the single eventually entered the R&B chart, hitting number one on May 29 and spending a total of five weeks at the top. The performance on the pop chart was almost as impressive, as the song peaked at number five.

Dazz Band were just one of the many successful acts the Motown label produced during the disco era. Two female representatives are featured on this volume of Disco Fever. Bonnie Pointer was a founding member of the formidable Pointer Sisters, singing with the group for most of the Seventies. In 1978 she left for a solo career at Motown. Under the guidance of her husband and producer, Jeffrey Bowen, she recorded quite a few disco remakes of Sixties Motown hits. This approach lead to a #11 pop hit with the inspired reworking of ‘Heaven Must Have Sent You’, where Bonnie not only contributed the lead but also the intricate harmony backing, showcasing the vocal virtuosity that is the hallmark of the Pointer family. Originally recorded by The Elgins in 1966, Bonnie Pointer much improved on the chart performance of the first recording of ‘Heaven Must Have Sent You’ – excellent as it was, The Elgins’ version only reached #50 pop.

Teena Marie – the other female Motown recording artist on this disc – was born Mary Christine Brockert and began her tenure at the label in the late Seventies, although at first it seemed they didn’t know exactly how to best make use of her talents. Help came in the shape of another up-and-coming Motown signing. “I was walking around the Motown office and I heard this girl singing her ass off,” funk-meister Rick James recalled many years later. “I walked in and here’s this little short munchkin white girl. I said, ‘Wow, you’re really great. Are you on Motown?’” Once it had been established that she was indeed under contract with the label, Rick James took her under his wing and wrote and produced her entire debut album, Wild And Peaceful, in 1979. For her second album, Lady T, released the following year, the producer was Richard Rudolph; Teena Marie herself also took a greater part in the creative aspects. The album’s opening track, the sizzling ‘Behind The Groove’, was a co-write between the singer and the producer, and also its most successful single, peaking at #21 R&B.

With additional contributions from disco queens such as Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor, tounge-in-cheek bubblegum disco providers like the Village People and sophisticated class acts such as Chic, along with bitter-sweet soul masterworks like ‘Street Life’ by The Crusaders featuring Randy Crawford, this volume of Disco Fever will certainly keep the dance party going. Just follow the rhythms!

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