Are you ready for another volume of dance-floor explosions and celebrations of Seventies and early Eighties club culture? Of course you are – as the proud owner of the Disco Fever collection you already know that dance music was never better than during that era of captivating rhythm concoctions, tongue-in-cheek lyrical concepts and pure, unadulterated fun. For although there was often more than a hint of melancholy in many of the most famous disco hits, there certainly was a lot of fun and frivolity going around at the time.

Once disco had emerged from early Seventies club land to become the dominating musical force of the decade, inevitably players from all corners of show business wanted to jump on the disco bandwagon and be a part of the excitement. Take Grace Jones, for instance. Born in Jamaica and then moving with her family to New York, her striking statuesque looks led to a modeling career. Based in Paris, she was soon featured on covers of fashion magazines and found herself invited to glitzy openings and glamorous parties. Legend has it that she jumped up on a table at one of those functions and started singing along to The Three Degrees’ ‘Dirty Ol’ Man’. No-one was more surprised than Grace Jones herself when this “performance” led to an offer of a recording contract.

The ultra-cool Warhol-esque cover of her 1977 debut album, Portfolio, coupled with the sound of the album’s most famous single, ‘I Need A Man’ – and Jones’ subsequent status as a permanent fixture at the Studio 54 discotheque – made her arrival on the scene a seminal moment for the most fashionable disco culture participants. The album was produced by one of disco music’s true pioneers, mixer Tom Moulton, and recorded in Philadelphia at the equally disco-pioneering Sigma Sound Studios, so all the right credentials were certainly there. “They gave me a tape of this song,” Tom Moulton recalled in an interview with author Tim Lawrence, “and when I heard it I said, ‘Oh boy, could I make this an anthem!’” Although ‘I Need A Man’ was not a major chart success in America, it certainly became the club anthem Moulton had envisioned. For Grace Jones, the song meant the kick-start of a recording career that led to global notoriety for well over a decade.

Someone who truly explored the visual, eventful side of the disco years was producer Jacques Morali, the brains behind the Village People, whose major hits are present and correct on other volumes of Disco Fever. Morali was also heavily involved with a girl trio consisting of singers Cheryl Jacks, Cassandra Wooten and Gwen Oliver, calling themselves The Ritchie Family. The group was named after their creator, producer Ritchie Rome, who collaborated with Morali on the production of the group’s first albums. In fact, Jacks, Wooten and Oliver were not a part of the first Ritchie Family recordings, but were only auditioned and selected after the single and title track of their debut album, ‘Brazil’, had become a hit, necessitating actual physical persons who could represent this studio project in the flesh.

Reaching #11 pop and R&B #13 in 1975, The Ritchie Family’s version of ‘Brazil’ was only the latest in a long string of versions of a song that dated back to 1942. First introduced in the United States by Eddy Duchin And His Orchestra, it hit the Top 20 the same year in a version by Jimmy Dorsey And His Orchestra, subsequently bettered by Xavier Cugat And His Orchestra, who scored a number two hit with ‘Brazil’ in 1943. But after that it would take more than three decades before The Ritchie Family’s discofied interpretation took the song into the pop charts again. The group went on to score a handful of other hits – notably familiar disco celebrations such as ‘The Best Disco In Town’ – before a number of line-up changes eventually ended in The Ritchie Family’s demise in the mid-Eighties.

There is at least one other song on this volume of Disco Fever that dates back even farther than ‘Brazil’ – much farther, in fact, at least in terms of origins. Polish composer Frédéric Chopin wrote his ‘Prelude In C Minor’ towards the end of the 1830s. Almost 135 years later, Barry Manilow let Chopin’s piano piece form the basis when he and lyricist Adrienne Anderson wrote the dramatic ballad ‘Could It Be Magic’. The song was originally recorded by Manilow’s group Featherbed in 1971 and then featured on his eponymous debut solo album two years later. In 1975, a reworked single version of the song hit #6 pop. Then, the following year, producer Giorgio Moroder married ‘Could It Be Magic’ to a disco beat to form Donna Summer’s second hit on the US charts, reaching #21 R&B and #52 pop. It was one of many examples of how disco’s most innovative producers were willing to experiment with anyone and anything, taking risks to achieve unexpected results. In this case, the outcome was an acknowledged disco classic. One can only wonder what Chopin would have said if he had known!

After further hits had established Donna Summer as a major star, she got the chance to appear in the notorious 1978 disco movie Thank God It’s Friday. Although the film itself was hardly a cinematic masterpiece, but rather an expression of the mindless party-party-party atmosphere of the times, its soundtrack album contains many highlights. Donna Summer’s Oscar-winning ‘Last Dance’ is featured on another volume in the Disco Fever collection, while the present disc includes the title song. ‘Thank God It’s Friday’ was credited to the group Love And Kisses, although that name was really a front for Egypt-born writer/producer Alec R. Costandinos. Springing to disco fame as the co-writer of Cerrone’s ‘Love In C Minor’, he then went on to create what is widely regarded as the first disco concept album, Romeo & Juliet, credited to Alec R. Costandinos & The Syncophonic Orchestra. That album was released on Casablanca Records, whose film production company instigated the creation of Thank God It’s Friday, which in turn led to Constandinos writing and producing its theme song. ‘Last Dance’ was obviously the most successful song to emerge from the movie, but ‘Thank God It’s Friday’ also fared quite respectably in the charts, reaching #23 R&B and #22 pop.

An act that one imagines would have felt right at home in the whimsical Thank God It’s Friday was the super-camp Disco Tex & The Sex-O-Lettes, although by the time the film was produced the group’s brief period in the limelight had already been and gone. Disco Tex & The Sex-O-Lettes were formed by producer and song writer Bob Crewe – previously mainly known for his work with The 4 Seasons and songs such as ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ – and a gentleman with the unlikely name of Sir Monti Rock III (born as Joseph Montanez). The group’s first hit, ‘Get Dancin’’, was also their biggest, reaching #10 pop and #32 R&B. Released in 1974, just as disco was about to take its definitive leap into the mainstream, today many dance music purists scoff at its lightweight qualities, but those with a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor will certainly be charmed by the shamelessly overblown party atmosphere of the recording – pop-disco tracks certainly don’t come much catchier than this.

So leave the scoffers to their scoffing and let Disco Tex & The Sex-O-Lettes define the appropriate mood for your dance-a-thon. And be especially careful to take heed of their instructions: “It’s time to get dancin’!”

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