If you were around during the second half of the Seventies, you will be certain to remember a very special kind of life-affirming music that dominated the world at the time. The forces of disco commanded you onto the dance floor in the nighttime, and gave you a spiritual kick to make life seem more fun and effortless in the daytime. Its influence spread far outside club land into all kinds of pop music, becoming a global phenomenon of unfathomable magnitude. Just a quick glance at the song titles included in this collection is guaranteed to bring you back to a period when it seemed the beat of a bass drum was constantly calling your attention.

Some of the most fondly remembered disco records were the ones released by Casablanca Records, founded by Neil Bogart in 1973. Indeed, this was the label that brought us the biggest disco star of them all. When the German-based writer/producer 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 Andrea Gaines, Donna Summer’s career started in Germany, where she appeared in stagings of the musicals Hair and Porgy & Bess. Her marriage to Austrian actor Helmut Sommer gave her a new surname, although it was changed 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 the success soon translated across the Atlantic. This collection features one of her biggest hits: ‘Last Dance’ (pop #3, R&B #5 in 1978). The song originally featured in the Casablanca-produced disco movie Thank God It’s Friday, and went on to win an Oscar for Best Original Song.

Apart from Donna Summer, Casablanca’s most successful disco act was the Village People. The brainchild of French producer Jacques Morali and his songwriting 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 biggest hit, ‘Y.M.C.A.’ (pop #2, R&B #32), the group, featuring heterosexual lead singer Victor Willis (“the cop”), was never a big hit in gay clubs. Instead, they achieved mainstream success through their upbeat, sing-along-friendly songs and fun, colorful image, for which they are still fondly remembered.

Among the other Casablanca recordings on this collection are classics such as Alicia Bridges’ ‘I Love The Nightlife (Disco ‘Round)’ (pop #5, R&B #31) and Cher’s ‘Take Me Home’ (pop #8, R&B #21); the label provided Cher with her first major hit in five years, which was also her last before she came back with full force in the late Eighties. ‘Funkytown’ (pop #1, R&B #2) by Lipps Inc. was Casablanca’s final number one hit before Neil Bogart sold the label to Polygram Records in 1980.

One of the other labels to score great triumphs during the disco era is usually associated with the previous decade. Motown Records was founded by Berry Gordy in the late 1950s, emerging as the most consistently successful hit factory of the Sixties: 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 received wisdom would sometimes have us believe that the Seventies meant a creative slump for Motown, the fact of the matter 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 the artistic control now rested more firmly with the creators, rather than the label itself. On this disc, you are treated to three pop and/or R&B number one Motown hits. Make that four chart-toppers “in spirit” if you count 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.

One of the bona fide Motown number one hits on this collection is performed by Diana Ross, who first achieved fame as the lead singer of The Supremes back in the Sixties. Leaving the group for a solo career at the end of the decade, she scored some of her biggest triumphs with disco recordings, challenging Donna Summer’s reign as the ultimate Disco Diva. Indeed, with its long, slow intro and then sudden jump into an irresistible dance mode, ‘Love Hangover’ (pop and R&B #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.”

Although several of the most successful artists on the Motown label during the disco era had been with the label since the Sixties, there were “newcomers” as well. One example is Thelma Houston, whose cover version of Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes’ ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ (pop and R&B #1 in 1977) resulted in an instant disco classic. Motown may not have been born out of the disco era, but let it hereby be known that those years simply delivered a different kind of wonderful than their Sixties output had done.

The Jackson 5 – one of the Motown acts hailing from the Sixties – scored an R&B #1 with ‘Dancing Machine’ in 1974. However, only a couple of years later they left the label, and their young lead singer, Michael, went on to achieve unimaginable commercial and artistic triumphs. In these endeavors he was actually aided by the brains behind one of the other disco classics on this volume.

The band Heatwave was formed by two brothers, the German-based American servicemen Johnnie and Keith Wilder; this truly international band also contained members from Spain and Czechoslovakia. In the mid-Seventies, Heatwave relocated to Great Britain and recruited Englishman and keyboard player Rod Temperton. He quickly emerged as the band’s artistic leader, writing virtually all the songs for the first few years of their career. Heatwave struck gold with their very first entry on the US charts, ‘Boogie Nights’, which peaked at #2 pop and #5 R&B in 1977. ‘Boogie Nights’ was a song that perfectly captured the spiritual excitement of disco – “get that groove, let it take you higher”, as the lyrics phrased it.

The success Temperton achieved with Heatwave would be enough to secure him a prominent position in the story of modern dance music. However, by the end of the Seventies his focus had already shifted to a career behind the scenes, leading him to the kind of rewards most song writers can only dream of. Over the next few years Rod Temperton would write several songs for Michael Jackson’s incredibly successful Off The Wall and Thriller albums, including the title tracks for both – as most music fans know, Thriller rapidly became the world’s biggest-selling album of all time.

Disregarding record company history, or the stories of those who created the music behind the scenes, this collection certainly offers no shortage of dance classics for those who simply want to boogie and not concern themselves with the hard facts. Whether they were number one hits like Gloria Gaynor’s anthemic ‘I Will Survive’, Kool & The Gang’s jubilant ‘Celebration’, Yvonne Elliman’s tear-drenched ‘If I Can’t Have You’ and The Sylvers’ infectious ‘Boogie Fever’, or simply great songs that created magic on the dance-floor, there’s no shortage of disco classics to get your body moving. So pop this CD in your player, press the play button and start the party – you know you want to!

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