Diana Ross, Donna Summer, Cher, Village People, Thelma Houston, Gloria Gaynor - the artists who generated the disco hits included in this volume of Disco Fever are well known. But how many listeners take the time to consider the record labels that released these confections - caught up as they are in the excitement and urgency of the throbbing beats and catchy tunes, and busy coordinating the movement of various body parts on the dance floor? The fact of the matter is that the disco era produced its fair share of legendary record labels, which in some respects were just as important to the development of the genre as the artists and the creative teams behind the records. In fact, two labels - Casablanca and Motown - are responsible for more than half of the tracks included on this volume.

In many ways, Casablanca Records was the archetypal disco label, at least the part of disco culture that had to do with 1970s hedonism, grand schemes, explosive hits and general madness and extravagance. It was certainly the most commercially successful of the disco labels. Formed by Neil Bogart in 1973, Casablanca operated on a vision that was grandiose from the word go. Bogart and everybody else involved with the label were determined to enjoy the party atmosphere to the fullest. For example, the offices were decorated to replicate Rick's Café Américain from the movie that had inspired the label name (naturally, that idea was born out of the shared surname of Casablanca star Humphrey Bogart and the young record company owner - who in reality had been born Bogatz).

One of Casablanca's first signings, the rock group Kiss, had very little to do with disco. However, when the Germany-based writing and producing team of Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte sent Bogart a copy of a song entitled Love to Love You Baby, the record company owner pricked up his ears. The featured artist on the recording was a fairly unknown singer, Donna Summer, but the American release of the single kick-started an extremely successful run of hits, which turned the singer into the undisputed Queen of Disco. As she stated herself at one point: "God had to create disco music so that I could be born and be successful."

Born in Boston as LaDonna Andre Gaines, Donna Summer began her career in Germany, where she appeared in the musical Hair, and moved on to Porgy and Bess with the Vienna Folk Opera. Her marriage to Austrian actor Helmut Sommer gave her a new surname, anglicized to Summer when she became a recording artist. Teaming up with Moroder and Bellotte in 1974, Donna Summer was an immediate hit in Europe, and her success soon translated across the Atlantic.

Without a doubt, one of the most pioneering recordings in the Summer-Moroder-Bellotte partnership was I Feel Love, a No. 6 pop and No. 9 R&B track (and found on the Disco Fever volume Turn the Beat Around). This groundbreaking record, released in 1977, was the first synthesizer-based dance recording to become a big pop hit. With its relentless electronic pulse it paved the way for the sounds that would dominate dance music in the coming decades.

Donna's next major hit came with Last Dance (No. 3 pop, No. 5 R&B) in 1978. The song featured in the Casablanca-produced disco movie Thank God It's Friday, and went on to win an Oscar for Best Original Song. Then, in 1979, Summer reached her commercial zenith with the double album Bad Girls, which spent six weeks at the top of the charts and spawned two pop No. 1 hits - Hot Stuff and Bad Girls (also an R&B No. 1) - as well as the No. 2 smash Dim All the Lights.

Hot Stuff, which featured a scorching guitar solo by Doobie Brothers member Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, also went on to win a Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. Originally, Neil Bogart had actually suggested that Summer pass on the song. He felt it was better suited for another Casablanca recording artist, Cher, who had just enjoyed her first major hit in five years, Take Me Home (No. 8 pop, No. 21 R&B).

Apart from Donna Summer, Casablanca's most successful disco act was the Village People. The brainchild of French producer Jacques Morali and his song-writing partner Henri Belolo, the Village People were dreamed up by Morali as a group of gay macho stereotypes: the construction worker, the cowboy, the leather-clad biker, and so on. However, although there was plenty of innuendo in the group's two major hits - Y.M.C.A. (No. 2 pop No. 32 R&B) and In the Navy (No. 3 pop, No. 30 R&B) - the group, featuring heterosexual lead singer Victor Willis, hadn't risen through gay clubs. Instead, they achieved mainstream success via their upbeat, sing-along-friendly songs and fun, colorful image, for which they are still fondly remembered.

Among the other Casablanca recordings on this volume are classics such as Alicia Bridges' I Love the Nightlife (Disco 'Round) (No. 5 pop, No. 31 R&B), Parliament's Fash Light (16 pop, No. 1 R&B) and Funkytown (No. 1 pop, No. 2 R&B) by Lipps, Inc. - a last No. 1 hit for the label before it was sold by Bogart to PolyGram Records in 1980.

About a decade later, PolyGram (today Universal Music) also bought the other label whose output is prominently featured on this volume: Motown Records. Founded by Berry Gordy Jr. in the late 1950s, the label emerged as the most consistently successful hit factory of the '60s: only the Beatles could compete with Motown's Detroit-based roster of writers, producers and artists for the top positions on the singles charts.

Although the popular belief is that the 70s meant a creative slump for Motown, the fact is that plenty of worthwhile music was released by the label, not least a string of first-rate disco hits. The main difference was that artistic control now rested more firmly with the creators, rather than the label itself. On this volume alone are no fewer than seven No. 1 Motown hits (pop and/or R&B) - or eight in spirit, counting Rose Royce's 1977 smash, Car Wash, which was written and produced by Norman Whitfield, formerly one of the label's most successful writer-producers.

Two of the bona fide Motown No. 1 hits on this volume are performed by Diana Ross, who first achieved fame as lead singer of the Supremes in the '60s. Leaving the group for a solo career at the end of the decade, she scored some of her biggest triumphs with disco recordings. Indeed, with its long, slow intro and sudden jump into an irresistible dance mode, Love Hangover (pop and R&B No. 1 in 1976) is often held up as a milestone in the history of disco music. The recording session seems to have been touched by a bit of good-time magic, as Diana Ross recalled: "It was a spontaneous thing that we captured on record and if I had to go back in and do it again, I couldn't have. The music was me and I was the music." Four years later Ms. Ross teamed up with Chic's Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards and achieved yet another disco classic with Upside Down (pop and R&B No. 1 in 1980). (Her other major collaboration with Rodgers and Edwards, I'm Coming Out, can be found along with another Ross triumph, The Boss, on the Get Up and Boogie volume of Disco Fever.)

Like Diana Ross, several of the most successful artists at Motown during the disco era had been with the label since the '60s. Among the No. 1 hits on this collection, this was true of Dancing Machine by the Jackson 5, former Temptations singer Eddie Kendricks' Keep On Truckin' (Part 1), Love Machine (Part 1) by the Miracles and Marvin Gaye's Got to Give It Up (Pt. 1). The only newcomer was Thelma Houston, whose cover version of Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes' Don't Leave Me This Way resulted in an instant disco classic. Motown may not have been born out of the disco era, but those years simply delivered a different kind of wonderful than their '60s output did.

Forgetting record company history for a moment, this volume offers no shortage of dance classics from other labels, for those who simply want to boogie and not concern themselves with the hard facts. Whether No. 1 hits like Gloria Gaynor's anthemic I Will Survive, Amii Stewart's Eurodisco smash Knock on Wood, Kool & the Gang's jubilant Celebration, Yvonne Elliman's tear-drenched If I Can't Have You and KC and the Sunshine Band's rhythmic I'm Your Boogie Man, or simply great songs that created magic on the dance floor, they all have one thing in common: they make life brighter for a few minutes and make everyone want to move to the rhythm. Now, what could be nicer than that?

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