This volume of Disco Fever offers an intriguing selection of major hits that everybody and his brother will recognize in an instant, along with a number of tracks that may almost be forgotten, but which are just as worthy of the “classic” tag as those that topped the charts way back when.

Take Chic, for instance. Their second album, C’est Chic from 1978, contained major hits such as ‘Le Freak’ and ‘I Want Your Love’, but also a number of hidden gems that were never released as singles. However, when we’re discussing a group of Chic’s caliber it goes without saying that almost every track on the albums recorded at their prime could have been hit singles. ‘Chic Cheer’ certainly belongs in that category, and indirectly it did eventually become a hit, when Faith Evans sampled the tune for her 1998 single ‘Love Like This’, which reached #7 pop and #2 R&B.

Another example of the “catchy album track by famous artist” phenomenon is ‘Casanova Brown’ by Gloria Gaynor. Although never a major hit, the recording – originally featured as the opening track on Gloria’s 1975 album Experience Gloria Gaynor – is keenly appreciated by disco connoisseurs. Born as Gloria Fowles, Gaynor debuted as a recording artist in the mid-Sixties, but it wasn’t until a decade later that she signed with MGM Records and began achieving hits. ‘Casanova Brown’ certainly deserves to be heard by those who only know Ms Gaynor from famous singles such as ‘Never Can Say Goodbye’ and ‘I Will Survive’.

The late Vicki Sue Robinson was mostly famous for her amazing ‘Turn The Beat Around’, but also charted with ‘Hold Tight’ in 1977. Her professional career began in earnest when she acted in the Broadway production of the musical Hair in 1968. After further acting work in films and a singing career in Japan, Vicki returned to Broadway in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, before signing to RCA Records and achieving her breakthrough with ‘Turn The Beat Around’. Although ‘Hold Tight’ didn’t duplicate the spectacular crossover success of the earlier hit, it certainly was popular in the clubs.

Incidentally, when Vicki Sue Robinson appeared in Hair, one of the other singers in the production was Melba Moore, whose jubilant 1976 Top 20 R&B hit ‘This Is It’ can also be found on this disc. Moore’s stint in Hair was followed by a role in another musical, Purlie, which won her a Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress In A Musical. By the mid-Seventies she began achieving success as a recording artist, primarily in the R&B charts. In fact, ‘This Is It’, which just barely scraped into the pop chart in the US, was a much bigger hit on the other side of the Atlantic, reaching the UK Top Ten. In her native country, Melba Moore would achieve more impressive chart positions in the Eighties, but out of her Seventies output ‘This Is It’ certainly remains a disco classic of the highest order.

While we’re on the subject of surprising chart statistics, do you know which was the biggest hit enjoyed by Earth Wind & Fire on the R&B chart? One of their Seventies classics such as ‘Shining Star’, ‘Getaway’ or ‘Boogie Wonderland’, right? Wrong! Big as those hits were, none of them could match the eight weeks at number one achieved by their 1981 international smash, ‘Let’s Groove’. The song was also their third biggest hit on the pop chart, where it peaked at number three. Indeed, in pure chart terms, no other track on this particular volume of Disco Fever can match ‘Let’s Groove’ for impressive performance.

The runner-up in that contest is of course ‘Back Stabbers’ by The O’Jays. Reaching number one on the R&B chart and number three on the pop chart in 1972, the track also represents the earliest period of disco, when the genre was just being invented in Philadelphia by writers and producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. For more of those pioneering Philly Soul sounds, look no further than the 1974 hit ‘Love Is The Message’ by MFSB, the band made up of the session musicians who otherwise provided the backing on all the recordings produced by the Gamble & Huff team. Incidentally, MFSB stands for “Mother, Father, Sister, Brother”.

Gamble & Huff weren’t the only ones in Philadelphia who knew how to write and produce a good disco track. The girl group First Choice were masterminded by songwriter and producer Norman Harris, who co-wrote the group’s first hit, ‘Armed And Extremely Dangerous’ in 1973, together with Allan Felder. The result was a #11 peak position on the R&B chart and a Top 30 pop hit. Although it probably helped that the musical backing was provided by many of the same musicians that played on the Gamble & Huff productions, perhaps most of the credit for the song’s success should go to the amazing energy output of lead singer Rochelle Fleming. Just listen to her knock-out performance on this cautionary tale of the dangers of getting involved with the wrong man.

Tulsa , Oklahoma , was the origins of the band that made the third recording on this disc to become a number one R&B hit (the other two bands of course being Earth Wind & Fire and The O’Jays). The Greenwood , Archer and Pine Streets Band consisted of the brothers Ronnie, Charlie and Robert Wilson. When they realized that the band name was too long, they shortened it to the G.A.P. Street Band, which then became simply The Gap Band. Debuting on the R&B chart in 1977, they achieved a number of major hits before scoring their biggest success with ‘Early In The Morning’ in 1982. And deservedly so – this funkiest of disco tracks proved that there was still plenty of life and joie de vivre in the dance music genre even when its detractors tried to pronounce it dead and buried. And The Gap Band has continued as a highly visible entity even in the present century.

Although they didn’t even hail from America, the birthplace of disco and funk, there was quite a lot of funk in the Average White Band as well. This band of Scottish members scored their biggest hit in 1974 with the instrumental ‘Pick Up The Pieces’. It might very well have ended there, as tragedy struck the same year when the band’s original drummer, Robbie McIntosh, died. However, the remaining members picked up the pieces and decided to soldier on, recruiting their new drummer Steve Ferrone from the soul outfit Bloodstone. Several single hits and albums followed, and the group was still going strong by the start of the following decade. ‘Let’s Go ‘Round Again’ gave the group a Top 40 R&B hit in 1980 – it turned out to be their final chart success on the pop chart, however, for just a few years later the Average White Band decided to call it quits.

It almost feels like no disco collection would be complete without at least one contribution from one of the many artists who had already enjoyed long careers in other genres, but made a foray into disco during the genre’s peak popularity years at the end of the Seventies. Johnny Mathis had been recording since the Fifties, enjoying his first pop number one single in 1957. After innumerable chart entries, he then returned to the number one spot more than two decades later, in 1978, with his Deniece Williams duet ‘Too Much, Too Little, Too Late’. Johnny Mathis disco contribution on this CD, ‘Gone, Gone, Gone’ was featured on his 1979 album The Best Days Of My Life. Although the song didn’t chart in America, it was a successful Top 20 single in the UK.

So there you have it – a collection of major hits and hidden gems, all of them with one thing in common: they are pure disco and pure joy.

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