We had the same record, and it's where I spun both this and "Rock The Boat" and "The Hustle" from many, many, many times as a kid. A truly odd collection of songs. There just wasn't much disco around in '75 when this hit the market to coincide with the disco craze kicked off by "The Hustle", so it chucks in obvious non-disco like "You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet" and "Lady", along with funk like "Tell Me Something Good" and smooth soul like "Have You Seen Her?". But I loved a lot of it so what the heck? One amusing thing about this is the cover art - it's so on-point 1975 that it almost looks like a subsequent recreation from the '90s or even post-2000. But nope - that's actually how we got our disco groove on back in the day.
I've heard that before. While ABBA is I think largely considered a disco act in America, and their stuff certainly got played in discos from a fairly early point, they didn't really cut a straight up disco record until "Dancing Queen", which was a hit over two years down the road. They were so late to the disco party they almost missed it, but they certainly made up for lost time once they arrived.
I just mentioned Stax up above too, having grown up on it, and yeah I think with its demise you opened the door to the rise of these other alternative soul sounds that weren't coming out of Motown or Philly. Miami just happened to be the next bit alternative flashpoint with KC and also the Bee Gees, who relocated there in early '75 to record their disco breakthru Main Course. People have asserted over the years that the Bee Gees were disco bandwagon jumpers, but they were already on their way to Miami when Gloria Gaynor's discofied cover of "Never Can Say Goodbye" was racing up the charts, and the whole album was in the can before "The Hustle" was recorded. So there wasn't much of a bandwagon to jump on when they showed up and indeed the Bee Gees were as much responsible for building it as KC or anybody else.
The summer of '74 also saw Rufus featuring Chaka Khan achieve the first and biggest Top 10 Pop hit of their career with the Stevie Wonder penned funk classic Tell Me Something Good (#3). Love this music. Surprisingly, they only achieved the T10 three times though, of course, there were many others that shoulda been contendahs.
1974 was my first year working in radio. I recall that "Tell Me Something Good" had been a big hit and then RUFUSIZED was released and "Once You Get Started" was the next big hit. I was working for an also-ran station in Philly at the time, looking for its identity and place in the city's pecking order of radio stations. It had been a soft-rock station from its start, but that seemed to be going nowhere in 1974. So a new program director began looking for harder-edged stuff to play that might get the station some attention. Rufus fit this sound to a "T". A new morning guy was given the task by the program director to scour through RUFUSIZED looking for what should be the next single in order to get a jump on other stations in town. On a break from my office duties, I went into the production room and listened to the whole album in search of the next big single. The two of us instantly agreed that "Please Pardon Me (You Look Like A Friend)" was it and the station began playing it the next day. I don't think the record went very far on the singles chart, but it's always been a favorite of mine - one of those records that you just cannot play loud enough.
I cannot imagine The Night Chicago Died ever being played at a disco. Who could dance to that? You probably would have been more likely to hear Bachman-Turner Overdrive than The Night Chicago Died.
There doesn't appear to be a proper TK/Glades box set out there, just a couple of anthologies. I found a 60-CD collection online, but it doesn't look very legit and the site is in Italian.
Even on 1974's Mr. Natural, you can hear the Gibb brothers taking some tentative steps toward r&b. "Down The Road" in particular has a proto-disco vibe to it reminiscent of M.F.S.B.'s "T.S.OP.". "Heavy Breathing" is quite funky as well.
Yup. Criteria Studios, also known as Atlantic South, or even 461 Ocean Boulevard. The Brothers Gibb state that they were doing R&B, not disco. My favorite from that "Main Course" album is "Fanny (Be Tender With My Love)". BTW, every Brit knows what "fanny" means in their country, which makes the song title a very naughty joke. A fine choice! You have good ears! It happens to be one of my top five favorite songs by Rufus/Chaka Khan. It did much better on the Billboard Soul chart.
KC, George McCrae and a lot of TK Records artists are of course going to start popping up and we delve further into the controversy around here that’s called disco. I posted up thread how I’m really interested in how certain companies were run, and how things were recorded. And since all the KC albums had a very unique sound, I was interested in reading more about it. If you love reading books about how things were done back then (well, and still are in some ways), I stumbled on a fantastic book since Grant kinda made me feel better about being geeky about all this. It is on Amazon for all of $2.99 if you have a Kindle enable device. It was written by Henry Stone himself, literally himself, when he was 92 (and quite clearly he didn’t have an editor, but I find that’s a nice component to the authenticity of the book...all of his slang, and that he couldn’t even spell Booty right when that song probably made him more money than most of the other hits he had). I’m not far enough in to comment too much, but plenty far in to know I am going to really enjoy it. It’s called The Stone Cold Truth On Payola. He seems to leave no stone unturned, and clearly the statutes of limitations had long expired when he wrote it. The thing that’s sad is he sold some of the masters (I’m guessing since Rhino started, finally, putting out good sounding CD’s of KC’s songs around the time he sold the masters, he sold the cherry one’s and what he had left, and what he lost in the warehouse fire, were the C grade masters) for a paltry $250K. Can you believe that?? Publishing rights too! Man it makes me mad when labels take advantage of people like that. Just like what happened to Stax when Columbia had a provision that allowed them to keep the masters to their hits just for distributing the recordings, and the owner didn’t notice it. Now, there was a time in the mid 80’s where one would think they could be worthless, but he sold them in the early 90’s when CD’s were flying out the doors, so I just don’t get it. He said he would be worth 50-100 million had he not done that. Anyway, recommended book for fans of this thread!
I’m going to be one of the obssesive defenders of the Bee Gees whenever someone puts the disco label on them. I never considered them as such, and neither do they, but I get it: what do you expect if you are on the cover of SNF and wearing what they were wearing. It’s understandable. But it also destroyed their career for the most part after 1979, and that to me is pretty unfair because they still put out very good, high quality music. I’m looking forward to seeing them a lot here later on, I just hope we don’t see a bunch of you jump ship!
I agree. TK was in the right place at the right time, and Henry Stone took advantage of it. It's sad what happened to that label. I read it was almost the southern version of Casablanca with a lot of drugs and payola to get hits. But the longtime local artists that got the label going stopped scoring hits by the late 70's, and the newer artists they signed like Peter Brown, Anita Ward and Foxy only scored a few hits. And then the floor dropped out when disco fell out of fashion. And I wish someone would compile TK records box set, most of the catalog is owned by Rhino in the USA now. I think some of the early Alston recordings are owned by Atlantic. But it might be a real mess to do because Henry Stone would distribute any label if he thought he could get a hit.
I know we’re not supposed to jump ahead (the song charted in ‘78) but since it’s already being brought up...Walsh has said in interviews he had second thoughts about including the song in his album But Seriously Folks. He was concerned about sounding like a self-important jerk even though his intent was to be humorous. His producer Bill Szymczyk managed to convince him that people would get the joke. I know the lyrics are kind of silly but I love the intro with that opening guitar riff.
Meanwhile, on the country charts the same week, this novelty song by Bobby Bare was #1. It still gets played on some country stations around Halloween.
For some reason, I don't get notices about activity in this thread like I do others that I'm watching (and yes, I have it activated). So, quickly catching up: "Sundown" was my least favorite of Gordon Lightfoot's four top ten singles in the USA. I bought "If You Can Read My Mind" and "Wreck...", but "Sundown" was one I got enough of on the radio. I heard it a couple of months ago on XM's 70's station, and sat through it all; I may not do that next time it comes on. "Rock The Boat" and "Rock Your Baby" are joined in my mind where I can't think of one without the other. Both out at the same time, both with "rock" in the title, and both I liked but not enough to buy. These days, I prefer "Rock Your Baby" when I hear them on the radio, but I still enjoy "Rock The Boat" now and then. JcS
This happens to me all the time. Unwatch the thread and then reactivate your notifications. I believe there's a bug in the forum software that hasn't been fixed yet.
You can hear Gibb taking steps toward R&B a lot sooner than that - I think "To Love Somebody" is one of the greatest R&B songs ever written.
Why? I don't see anything wrong with the "label" disco. Some of the best if not the best big hits of the '70s and '80s were either proto-disco, disco or post-disco. It's not disco's fault it was so damn popular it attracted a horde of talent-challenged parasites.
We're getting closer to the re-invigoration of the Gibbs but for me, they never went away and this gorgeous failed single from the Mr. Natural LP remains one of their very best. Kudos to Arif Mardin's gossamer-light production. So get your loved one, grab a bottle of wine and turn down the lights - "You are welcome to my Charahd!"
Actually, where I was going with respect to "Rock Your Baby" not being on disco compilations is that it could be a licensing issue, but that's just a guess. I don't have any idea where you're going with your statement (and it's not a big deal to me). I can also see the scenario where enough time has passed that I imagine some DJs don't even know all the songs we are discussing, especially if they aren't on said compilations (see my first paragraph).
True enough. I guess for the same reason Barry Gibb does. It was a huge but very short lived phenomena that really tanked their career, so I understand why he’s very defensive. It’s just the negative connotation of the term I think, and a very polarizing group that either loved or hated it. I thought it was great, fun music and a fun era. But the general public put that tag on them, disregarding everything before 1975 and after 1979 (even their follow up to their huge “disco” album Spirits Having Flown was devoid of dance songs). Guess I’ll stop there so things don’t stray too far...plenty of opportunity to discuss them later.
Same thing here...a forum member gave me a great tip: click on the Watched Threads button on top and you will get a complete listing. In particular, this thread is bad about notifying me and I can get five pages behind easily.
