Madonna toured with Patrick Hernandez when he
played gigs to follow up his one-hit wonder monster hit "Born
to be alive"
Patrick was born April 6, 1952.
When talking birthdays... Here are some (unfortunatly) dead
Disco stars;
Van McCoy (cancer - July 6, 1979)
Dennis Parker (suicide 1985)
Sylvester (AIDS related complications - December 16, 1988)
Karen Young (bleeding ulcer - January 26, 1991)
Larry Levan (heart failure - November 8, 1992)
Jim Burgess (AIDS related brain tumor - January 18, 1993)
Dan Hartman (March 22, 1994)
Tee Scott (colon cancer - December 12, 1995)
Bernard Edwards (Chic, pneumonia - April 18, 1996)
Gwen Guthrie (uterine cancer - February 3, 1999)
Johnny Taylor (May 31, 2000)
Vicki Sue Robinson (cancer - April 27, 2000)
Glenn Huges (Original Biker, Village People - March 4, 2001)
Maurice Gibb (Bee Gees, cardiac arrest - January 11, 2003)
Barry White (health problems - July 4, 2003)
Tony Thompson (Drummer of Chic - November 12, 2003)
John Whitehead (McFadden & Whitehead, shot - May 11, 2004)
Richie Puente (of FOXY - July 18, 2004)
Rick James (pulmonary and cardiac failure - August 6, 2004)
Laura Branigan (brain aneurysm - August 26, 2004)
Izora Rhodes Armstead (Two Ton O'Fun & Weather Girls, heart failure - September 16, 2004)
Luther Vandross (complications after stroke - July 1, 2005)
June Pointer (Pointer Sisters, cancer - April 11, 2006)
Mel Cheren (WestEnd Records - December 7, 2007)
Sam Weiss (Sam Records - March 19, 2008)
Viola Wills (cancer - May 6, 2009)
Michael Jackson (June 25, 2009)
Teddy Pendergrass (cancer - January 13, 2010)
Dick Griffey (SOLAR Records - September 24, 2010)
Teena Marie (December 26, 2010)
Loleatta Holloway (March 21, 2011)
Nicholas Ashford (Ashford & Simpson, throat cancer - August 22, 2011)
Jimmy Castor (heart failure - January 16, 2012)
Whitney Houston (drowning - February 11, 2012)
Donna Summer (lung cancer - May 17, 2012)
Robin Gibb (Bee Gees, liver and kidney failure - May 20, 2012)
Writer Nik Cohn wrote a piece called Tribal rights
of the new Saturday Night after have visited the Brooklyn club
2001 Odyssey in 1976. A copy of the piece reached Robert
Stigwood of RSO Records who just loved it...
He put in the money and the greatest Disco movie of all times hit
the cinemas in 1977 - Saturday Night Fever !
The club 2001 Odyssey was also THE place in the movie...
The SoundTrack for Saturday Night Fever reached the # 1 spot of
the Billboard albums list in Jan. 21, 1978 and it held that spot for 24 weeks.
In the movie, Tony (John Travolta) orders a Seven & Seven;
1,5 oz. Seagram's no. 7 - filled up with 7-Up
served in a highball glass, topped with a cherry.
When into Saturday Night Fever...
Get inspired to Disco Dance by Cherie Blair
In the TV-show Ally McBeal, episode "Cro-Magnon" (the
one in which Ally's biological clock keeps ticking), she keeps
seeing the famous dancing baby ("Baby Cha-Cha") from the InterNet
along with hearing this famous intro of "Hooked on a feeling"
by the Swedish Bjorn Skifs.
This Swedish guy got this song to the # 1 spot in the
US Billboard Chart in April 1974 as Blue Swede.
He was the first Swedish act to reach # 1 in the US charts. Since
then ABBA, Roxette and Ace of Base have been
there too.
Other Disco stars featured in Ally McBeal is
Gloria Gaynor, Barry White and others.
When talking Billboard Charts...
Since Billboard have been around for some 40 years by now, they have
compiled a special HOT 100 of the HOT 100 - the 100 Top songs
of four decades. You find quite many Disco Hits within the list;
| # 12 | "Physical" | Olivia Newton-John
| | # 34 | "Night Fever" | Bee Gees
| | # 37 | "Le Freak" | Chic
| | # 43 | "Shadow dancing" | Andy Gibb
| | # 52 | "Call me" | Blondie
| | # 71 | "Stayin' alive" | Bee Gees
| | # 81 | "Another one bites the dust" | Queen
| | # 83 | "Hot Stuff" | Donna Summer
| | # 89 | "Best of my love" | the Emotions
| | # 93 | "Upside down" | Diana Ross
| | # 99 | "Bad Girls" | Donna Summer |
Olivia Newton-John's - "Physical" is also in the # 10
of the songs with most weeks in the # 1 spot.
"Physical" held that spot for 10 weeks !!!
Another TV person - Paul Schafer, the orchestra
leader of the Dave Letterman - Late Show, wrote the Weather
Girls' hit "It's raining men" with another Paul -
Paul Jabara.
Paul Jabara also wrote hits for Donna Summer among others.
Remember Silver Convention ???
One of the three girls in the band was a lady called Gertrude Muenzer,
but she's more known as...
Penny McLean !!!
The lady who had a world wide hit with "Lady Bump" in the
mid 70'ies.
Did you know that McFadden & Whitehead,
who had a huge hit with "Ain't no stoppin' us now"
was ogiginally members of Harold Melvin's
the Blue Notes.
One of the Divas of West End Records,
Ednah Holt - singer of the classic hard-to-find
"Serious, Sirius, Space Party"
was once a member of the hit R&B/disco group, The Ritchie Family.
Village People's original lead singer Victor Willis,
was married to Phylicia Allen...
who is more known as Phylicia Rashad
and for her role as Bill Cosby's wife in
"the Cosby Show".
Kraftwerk's "Trans-Europe Express" and "Numbers"
were used and sampled by many different NYC disco and funk artists.
Most notably, Afrika Bambaataa and the SoulSonic Force's
"Planet Rock" uses a reference to "Numbers" when they start
counting in chinese.
"Planet Rock" also uses a variation on the instrumental melody of
"Trans-Europe Express".
MFSB's "TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)" originally
was supposed to have lyrics to go with its purpose as being the theme to the TV show
- Soul Train.
Producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff added the Three Degrees'
end vocals to the song because they wanted a song that would break the Three Degrees
in America
(who were always more popular in the UK than in the USA).
Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" was only recorded
by one member of the rap group - Melle Mel (the other voice is Duke
Bootee, who was not a member of the group).
Flash and the rest of the band have a cameo at the end of the 12"version of
"The Message," as they are arrested by police and thrown into a squad car.
Bryan Adams' first hit was actually a disco song,
"Let Me Take You Dancing".
DJ and Remixer, John Luongo, took Adams' original
track, sped up his vocals, and added a disco background and made it a Top 5 club hit.
To this day, it has not appeared on any Bryan Adams greatest hits or retrospective collection.
Herb Alpert's "Rise" became a much faster song in the UK
than in the USA...
UK DJ's, who were used to playing 12" at 45RPM, started playing copies of "Rise"
imported from the US at that speed. Many DJ's simply chose to play it at the faster
speed because they liked it better that way.
You could see charts at the time where DJ's would list the track as "Rise" (45rpm).
The 'real' "Disco Inferno" was when the N.Y. club Infinity burnt down.
Trivia info I got directly from Meco Monardo...
"I lived in the same building as Nile Rogers of Chic, and I was the trombone player
playing the jazz solo on 'I'm Coming Out'"
[The Nile & Bernard written Diana Ross hit.]
Luther Vandross appeared on the children show SESAME STREET in 1968
as part of an ensemble of singers called "LISTEN MY BROTHER", who had performed a
musical show at the Apollo Theatre in New York.
Luther sang the lead vocals to a song called "YOU'VE GOT TO LEARN SOMETHING".
The song was written by Patrick Adams and
was used on Sesame Street from time to time for over 20 years.
Who sang the lead vocals of Gregg Diamond's "Hot Butterfly"?
Luther Vandross!
Geraldine Hunt, the lady who never
"Can't fake the feeling" is actually the mother of Rosalind "Roz" Hunt"
- who was one half of the popular duo - Cheri, which scored high in 1982 with their "Murphy's Law".
A song written by Geraldine and produced by her and her son - Freddie James.
Freddie also had some Disco hits, like the 1979 "Get up and boogie".
In the elections for the Swedish entry for song to send to the Eurovision
Song Contest 2004 - the instrumental intro to Dan Hartman's
"Relight my fire" (in it's original version) was used as the signature...
In the third [out of 4] semifinals of these elections, held in March 6, the pause performance
was a 10+ minutes long Disco medley...
The Medley was performed by some of Sweden's most popular artists; Pernilla Wahlgren,
Kayo, Charlotte Nilsson-Perrelli, Richard Hager
and Cotton Club.
It started out with one of the presenters wanting drums, adding bass, getting a Discoball, a 3
headed choir with afros and finally horns to build into the medley... Starting out with...
"Disco Inferno" [Kayo]
"Blame it on the boogie" [Pernilla]
"September" [Richard]
"I will survive" [Charlotte]
"Bad girls" [Kayo, Pernilla & Charlotte]
"Stayin' alive" [All]
"You should be dancing" [All]
"Ain't no stopping us now" [All]
"That's the way..." [All]
The medley brought down more applause than the contesting songs...
In the second semifinal a classic Disco act competed with one song... The group was no less
than Baccara, who we remember for their hits - "Yes Sir, I can boogie"
and "Sorry I'm a Lady". It's only one of the two original members still
in the group, but they sang about "A little Disco, a little salsa" in their characteristic
english with a spanish accent in the song "Soy tu Venus".
The ladies ripped off more and more of their dresses to end up with mini-skirts with the
Swedish flag in the end of the song.
In a cermony in September 20, 2004 in New York, Donna Summer,
Giorgio Moroder, Bee Gees
and Barry White were the first ones voted into the new Dance Music Hall of Fame!
The SalSoul Orchestra was fronted - in some of their album covers - by a knock-out
gorgeous looking, girl - Ellen Michaels.
She was the Playboy Playmate of the Month in March 1972.
She's the girl in the legendary "Dance your ass off..." T-shirt in the cover of the Original SalSoul Classics album.
She is also to be seen in the covers of the Nice N Naasty, SalSoul Classics 2
and SalSoul Christmas Jollies albums.
Ellen her self told me the following memory from back in the days; "The year that Nice N Naasty
came out, probably 1976, I went to the Billboard Magazine music awards with the Cayre Bros. and
Vince Montana Jr., and Billboard Magazine called me up to the stage for an honorary music award
for the best album cover of the year. My speech included 'From the bottom [get it?] of my heart,
I thank you all.'"
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