← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade: The Queen of Disco Edition
01:12:46
Donna Summer set chart benchmarks and managed to stay relevant on the radio and in clubs for more than three decades. Why didn’t she get more respect from the rock establishment?
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- [00:00]
Chris Melanfi
You're listening ad free on Amazon Music. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate and panoply about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfi, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One Series on today's show. If I asked you to name the first artist to top the Billboard album chart with three consecutive double albums, who would you guess? Probably Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd, right? Try again. Maybe the Beatles. They had just one double album when they were together and several chart topping double LP compilations after they split up, but they weren't first. Or maybe all those rappers who released two CD sets in the 90s. Tupac has had several top the charts, but never three in a row and never while he was alive. So which badass dude pulled off this trifecta of double album chart crushers? Actually, it wasn't a dude at all, but she was a badass.
- [01:18]
Donna Summer (singing)
Sad girls, sad girls Talking about bad hair girls.
- [01:30]
Chris Melanfi
Donna Summer has been called the Queen of Disco, and that name is both totally correct and somewhat limiting. It's correct because no female recording artist commanded the charts during disco's late 70s height than Donna Summer. Among solo acts, she might well be the king of disco too. And there's no longer any shame in being attached to disco. Four decades after the music's peak, disco has proved its resiliency as a musical form. The term queen of disco is limiting, however, because Summer's roots are in rock, soul and Europop and her hit making career outlasted, however fitfully, disco's infamous implosion in the early 80s. But even accounting for the cultural beating disco took in the Reagan era, Donna was a survivor. Even if the arbiters of classic rock prestige waited until after her death to fully acknowledge the vital role she played in the evolution of rock and roll. Today on Hit Parade, we'll consider the one of a kind career of Donna Summer. From her popularization of new recording formats to her co creation of entire genres, her attempts to find common ground between the rockers and the dancers, and her years of chart hits. The woman born ladonna Adrian Gaines in Boston, Massachusetts, solidified her Queen of Disco honorific when the second of those three chart topping double albums, Bad Girls, dominated the radio in the final year of the 1970s. And that's where your hit Parade marches today, the week ending July 14, 1979, when the song Bad Girls rose to number one. While the former number one Hot Stuff was just a couple of notches below. Donna Summer had two of the top three singles in America. All of this success was a long way from Donna's roots in the Boston neighborhood of Mission Hill, where she was born on New Year's Eve 1948 and sang in her church choir, soloing on hymns as young as eight years old. But summer's 1979 peak was also quite a ways away from where she'd been just 10 years earlier. An era when hedonism didn't mean disco, when a disco was a place and not a genre, and when 20 year old Donna Gaines had nothing to do with dance music at all.
- [04:47]
Donna Summer (singing)
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius. The Age of Aquarius. Aquarium.
- [05:00]
Chris Melanfi
That's Aquarius from the musical Hair, the smash theatrical hit whose album was the last Broadway cast recording to top the Billboard album chart. And that show played a vital role in the career of young Donna Gaines. When she arrived in New York City in 1967 at the age of 18, Donna's first performing experience was with a blues rock combo called the Crowd. When that band splintered, Gaines tried her luck auditioning for Broadway. The Broadway cast of Hair was full up, but the producers offered Donna a different opportunity. That's American Donna Gaines singing Wassermann, the German version of Aquarius, playing the role of Schiele in the Munich production of Hair. The musical opened in Germany in October 1968. More important to Donna than the show was Germany itself. Relocating there did for the future Donna Summer what gigs in Hamburg to had done for the young Beatles at the turn of the 60s, or what Berlin would do for David bowie in the 1970s. What began as a break onto the stage for Donna changed the course of her life, both professionally and personally. Hair was not Donna Gaines last German show. Developing quick fluency in the language, she took part in Teutonic productions of Godspell, Showboat and the rock musical the me nobody knows, known in Germany as Ich bin ich. When she moved to Vienna in 1971, Donna even sang for the Viennese folk opera. Alongside all of this theatrical activity, Donna's powerful voice attracted the notice of the European music industry and she began releasing singles for various labels. At least one track was given a badly translated title by German label Phillips. The 1969 Northern Soul single if you Walkin Alone, a phrase Donna never actually sings in the song, although her young voice is potent. Even more interesting was Donna's one off single for MCA Records, recorded in 1971 for its UK subsidiary in London. Sally Go Round the Roses had been a top 10 pop and R&B hit in 1963 for the J Nets, a one hit wonder act from the Bronx, New York. Donna's cover of the hit in 1971amped up the soul and pumped up the funk.
- [08:02]
Donna Summer (singing)
Know the roses won't tell you secrets.
- [08:19]
Chris Melanfi
None of these singles won Donna Gaines a long term recording contract or an invitation to record an album. Before that would happen, Donna would marry for the first time in 1973. While in Vienna, she tied the knot with a co star from Godspell, the Austrian actor Helmuth Stone Sommer. S O M M E R the marriage only lasted three years, but it produced a child, Donna's first daughter Mimi, and of course her stage name, which actually was yet another accident. When the newly married Donna Sommer recorded a track for German label lark Records in 1974, the single was pressed and labeled as Donna Summer S U M M E R. The name with that spelling not only stuck, it outlasted Donna's first marriage. That single, Denver Dream in 1974 was pivotal, and not just because the single cover read Donna Summer for the first time. It was also her first collaboration with a pair of producers who, like her, had relocated to Munich from other countries. An Italian producer, Giorgio Moroder, and a Brit, Pete Bilotti. The three of them met at a German recording session for American band Three Dog Night in 1973 and they formed a creative partnership that, without exaggeration, would change the sound of dance music in the 1970s. Among the pioneers of electronic and dance music, few artists cast as long a shadow as Giovanni. Giorgio Moroder, born in the German bordering northern Italian province South Tyrol speaking, a polyglot mix of Italian, German and Ladin. Even if you are more familiar with the music of the 21st century, you have felt his influence. Moroder took home a grammy less than four years ago for his contribution to the 2013 album RA Random Access Memories by Daft Punk, a chart topping electrorobotic duo that owes vast swaths of its sound to Maroder.
- [10:41]
Giorgio Moroder
My name is Giovanni Giorgio, but everybody calls me Giorgio.
- [10:52]
Chris Melanfi
Moroder began as a recording artist himself, issuing tracks under the single name Giorgio as early as the mid-1960s and scoring his first trans European hit in 1969 with Looky Lookie. The single, which made the top 40 in several countries and sold a million copies, read as sugary pop, but it included synthesizer effects that were innovative for the period. Three years later, Moroder, now teamed with lyricist Pete Bellotti, wound up writing a UK number one hit, Son of My Father, a glam pop song Moroder wrote on synthesizer was covered by British rock band Chicory Tip. Their version sported a fat bottomed Moog synthesizer and it topped the UK chart and even scraped the bottom rungs of the American Hot 100 in the winter of 1972. Thus, by the time Moroder and Bellotti met Donna Summer in 1973, all three of them had already explored an enormous range of American and European pop styles. Proto electro, show tunes, girl group, glam rock, Europop, funk and soul. Literally all of these styles would find their way into the chart. Conquering pop music. Sommer the artist and Moroder and Bellotti the producers and craftsmen would generate over the next decade as disco began to take over the global hit parade. Denver Dream was Summer's first recording with Moroder and Bellotti. And soon they were working on an album and finally scoring their first chart hits in Europe.
- [12:57]
Donna Summer (singing)
The lady of the Night She's a.
- [13:06]
Chris Melanfi
Woman of the World lady of the Night was the title track of Donna Summers debut album in 1974. All of the songs were produced and written by Moroder and Bellotti. The album was a pastiche of styles showcasing the breadth of Summer's pop influences. Its title track was an homage to 60s girl group pop and the album's first single, the Hostage, was a story song with melodramatic spoken word segments. And the music was a hybrid of R and B and symphonic rock. The Hostage was a number two hit in the Netherlands and Lady of the Night's title track was a number four Dutch hit and a minor top 40 hit in Germany. Not a bad start for the Summer. Maroter Bilotti team up, but not enough to guarantee the trio's days as session musicians were over. It would take one more single, a track Donna conceived but at first regarded as a lark and almost gave away to finally bring about Summer's global breakthrough. And it all started with a Dutch hit that sounded like this. The song that began its life as Love to Love youe was unprecedented in more ways than one. For one thing, it was the smallest Donna Summer's voice had sounded on any recording to date. Gone was her powerful, rangy mezzo soprano. And in favor of a whispery sex kitten vocal, it showed off Donna's versatility. But to some extent she meant that voice as a joke. She came up with the lyrical hook Love to Love youe Baby. And when she brought it to Maroder, thinking it might make a good demo for another artist, Giorgio convinced her she should keep it and record it. As they laid down her vocals, they deliberately camped it up and including Summer's overdubbing of orgasmic moans. For years afterward, Summer would roll her eyes at panting journalists, wondering if she had been pleasuring herself while recording that vocal. She usually quipped that she hadn't been touching anything more than her knee. But the fact was, Love to Love youe was unironically sexy. As the single reached number 13 on the charts in the Netherlands in early 1975, Moroder decided to seek distribution for the track in the United States. Donna Summer was still unknown in her home country. Giorgio sent the track to Neil Bogart, the legendary hard living founder of Casablanca Records, the label that would come to dominate the music business in the late 70s. A few days after receiving the recording, legend has it, Bogart played it for a party at his home. The crowd not only loved it, they asked to hear the orgasmic record over and over again. Bursting with excitement, Bogart called back Moroder in the middle of the night, Germany time to tell him not only that he wanted to distribute the track, but that he and Sommer should make Love to Love youe Longer. Many times longer than a three minute single. Long enough to fill the entire side of an LP record. Long enough to soundtrack a hedonistic party or or a lovemaking session. Now retitled Love to Love youe Baby at Neil Bogart's suggestion, the new version, fully re recorded by Sommer, Maroder and Bellotti with a string section and additional backup singers, was 17 minutes long, five to six times the length of the original Dutch single. It did indeed fill a whole side of a vinyl album also titled Love to Love youe Baby, Summer's first American album release, issued jointly by Maroder's Oasis label and Casablanca Records in the late summer of 1975. And as explicit as the song seemed at the time, Bogart's team managed to get it on the radio, promoting a five minute edit of the new, more lush recording. That new single peaked at number two on the Hot 100 in February 1976. Do it to me again and again, Donna Summers global hit was not only her breakthrough, it was a watershed for popular music. Love to Love youe Baby is now enshrined in the Rock and Roll hall of Fame as one of its songs. That shape shaped rock and roll in both music and format. The song was the culmination of several trends. Musically, it signaled that disco had come of age. By 1974 and 75, Lush Club Music was just starting to break on the charts. One year earlier, a pair of singles had topped Billboard's Hot 100 that signaled the music's early breakthrough. First a Philly soul instrumental with proto disco strings by Barry White and his Love Unlimited Orchestra called Love's Theme, Followed not long after by a very memorable single from a short lived vocal trio the Hughes Corporation called Rock the Boat. The smash is widely considered the first full on disco number one hit. In addition to these feathery proto disco hits, radio stations and discotheques had already embraced more raw and ribbled funk and R and B singles such as Sylvia Robinson's Pillow Talk and Chakacha's Jungle Fever. So the market was primed for Donna's sensual disco fantasia. But Love to Love youe Baby, both the single and the album went a step further, reimagining disco as album length music and helping to popularize the concept of the extended mix. In 1975 the extended club mix was in its infancy. Legendary DJ Tom Moulton is credited with inventing the form in 1973 when he began spinning his own acetates of favorite club tracks with the instrumental passages prolonged. It took another two years for the so called 12 inch single, which we talked about in our fifth episode of Hit Parade to emerge as a radio promotional tool. 12 inch singles for consumers didn't hit record shops until 1976. Although love to Love youe Baby wasn't issued as a 12 inch in 1975 because the format was still too new, Summer's hit helped prime the consumer market for the very idea of the tantric epic length club track. Of course, the full length Love To Love youe Baby could only be purchased in 1975 on the album of the same name. The 17 minute title track took up all of side A. That made it not unlike so called album oriented rock. AOR which dominated FM radio in the first half of the 70s, was famed for its 15 to 20 minute suites of music performed by elaborate rock combos with multiple guitar and keyboard solos, jazzy instrumental breakdowns, string arrangements, even nature sounds. In the early to mid-70s a whole LP side would be filled by these uber songs, but composed of movements by such bands as Pink Floyd, Genesis, Jethro Tull and yes, In effect Donna Summer. Her producers and record executive Neil Bogart were bringing concepts from album oriented rock to dance music. The Love to Love youe Baby album was the first of its genre to feature a full side suite. The album sold unusually well for a disco LP, going gold and peaking at an impressive number 11 on the Billboard album chart alongside LPs by the electric Light Orchestra and Peter Frampton. The full LP side Disco Cut could have been a one off but but Sommer, Maroder and Bellotti committed to the concept not just to extended length dance suites, but to the idea that Sommer was an album artist and they moved quickly. The next two Donna Summer LPs were both issued in 1976. Each featured extended length tracks and actually did better on the album chart than they did on the radio. A Love trilogy released in March 1976 while the Love To Love youe album was still in the top 40 led off with the 18 minute track try Me, I Know We Can make it taking up all of side A. And just seven months later, Four Seasons of Love was a full blown concept album composed of a suite of six to eight minute tracks named for the seasons from Winter Melody to Spring affair. On Billboard's Club Play, a chart that tracked the songs New York DJs reported as their most played in the city's top discotheques. Tracks from both A Love Trilogy and Four Seasons of Love reached number one, cementing Summer's status as disco's emerging queen. Both of Summer's 1976 albums went gold within weeks of their release. However, neither A Love trilogy nor Four Seasons of Love generated a top 40 pop hit and it began to look like the chart climbing success of Love to Love youe Baby the year before had been a fluke. Donna was perhaps destined to be a queen of the clubs, but not the Hot 100. What finally cemented Donna Summer as both a pop force and with Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bilotti, an all time innovator gift came with her next album, a concept Bellotti came up with called I Remember Yesterday. Side A would consist of tracks recalling the 1940s, 50s and 60s. Side B would feature current sounding tracks and close with a song that represented the future. That futuristic track, almost an afterthought to the album, would feature no string section, no funk breakdown, no four on the floor drumming. Indeed, it featured no traditional instruments at all. It wasn't even all that long. Its radio edit was under four minutes, the album version less than six. But in that time frame, this single quite literally changed everything. That's I Feel Love, the final track and lead off single to I Remember Yesterday. The chart stats on the song were fairly impressive. It reached number six on the Hot 100. It was her first top 10 hit and first gold single since Love to Love youe Baby, and it was her first number one hit in England. But the shadow I Feel Love casts on popular music can scarcely be overstated. The brainchild Of Bellotti and Maroder, I Feel Love is generally agreed to have single handedly invented electronic dance music. While it took inspiration from contemporaneous electro rock bands like Kraftwerk, I Feel Love was the first ever hit single with an entirely synthesized backing track. The only organic thing on it was Donna Summer's voice. Summer helped Moroder and Bellotti arrange the song's complex vocal melody because, as Moroder told veteran music critic Simon Reynolds, I Feel Love is a difficult song to sing. In an appreciation. In appreciation of I Feel Love, Reynolds wrote for Pitchfork magazine on the occasion of its 40th anniversary this year. Bellotti revealed that Summer co wrote the mantra like lyric of I feel love the night she met her future husband Bruce Sudano of the band Brooklyn Dreams. Her fluttery vocals on such lines as fallen free, fallen free, fallen free. You and me, you and me, you and me were romantic and full of reverie. The contrast of her ecstatic vocals with Maroder and Bellotti's driving, mechanistic backing track proved an irresistible combination. The record was a smash in discos particularly, Reynolds notes gay clubs and artists from Blondie to the Human League to David Bowie. And Brian Eno took inspiration from it.
- [29:33]
Giorgio Moroder
I remember Brian Eno running into my ha ha. Running into my room with a single in his hand. He said, I've heard the future. And I said are you serious? And he said yes, listen, that teutonic drumming, that black voice. This is fantastic. As it happens, he was right.
- [29:57]
Chris Melanfi
Simon Reynolds writes, quote. Its impact reached far beyond the disco scene. Post punk and new wave groups admired and appropriated its innovative sound. The maniacal precision of its grid like groove of sequenced synth pulses within club culture. I Feel Love pointed the way forward and blazed the path for genres such as high energy, italo house, techno and trance. If any one song can be pinpointed as where the 1980s began, it's I feel Love. Unquote. By the time I Feel Love reached its peak on the Hot 100 in November 1977, disco was taking over the charts in both America and Europe. Saturday Night Fever would open in movie theaters the next month and Summer became a more consistent hitmaker on both sides of the Atlantic. In England, she reached number three with the ABBA esque Love's Unkind. And in America, summer's sixth album, Once Upon a Time generated another top four, sporting pop and number one club hit with the lush track I love you. The fairy tale, like Once Upon a Time was was Summer's first double album. Its lyrics retold the rags to Riches story of Cinderella in disco form. It was an idea driven by Donna herself. Unlike the previous string of single album concepts, which were largely conceived by Pete Bilotti. But record buyers didn't resist either the length or the ambition. Once Upon a Time was Summer's fifth consecutive gold album, and although it only peaked at number 26 on the album chart, it. It arguably kicked off the start of Donna's imperial phase. In several prior episodes of Hit Parade, we've talked about this period in a music superstar's career, the moment when any project they take on is met with success. ELTON John in 1975, Prince in 1984, George Michael in 1988. Because Donna Summer's imperial period in the years 1978 and 79 coincided with a musical movement such as people never liked and some would prefer to forget, her stature in music history has been somewhat diminished.
- [33:19]
Giorgio Moroder
Where do you feel you stand now?
- [33:22]
Donna Summer (interview)
Well, I just. I really couldn't even tell you. I hope I stand in a light of legitimacy. I think in a place where people will respect what I do and understand that any songs that I make, I do because I change to and not because that is my limitation. And I think that before that was the problem, they thought that that was my limitation, as opposed to it being something that I desired to do.
- [33:49]
Chris Melanfi
Well, initially, everybody thought that that first song was going to be it. It was Flash and attack.
- [33:53]
Donna Summer (interview)
Exactly. And it was probably because of the way it was sung and the fact that there weren't. I won't say any great philosophical words to be found, but it was whatever it was and indicative of a particular time and movement in music. And it played an important part in.
- [34:12]
Chris Melanfi
My life, even if you are a hater of all things late 70s, however, Donna Summer's Imperial period showcases two her talent and her instincts. What makes the apex of her reign as Queen of Disco fascinating is how much culture she brought under the umbrella of that moniker. She didn't try to escape disco, she sought to expand it. For example, listen to the opening of Summer's first hit of 1978, probably her most iconic single.
- [35:02]
Donna Summer (singing)
Last Dance, Last Chance for Love.
- [35:10]
Chris Melanfi
If you've heard Last Dance at a wedding or a public event recently, you probably think of it as a quintessential disco record. This despite the fact that its structure was highly unusual, even for the period. The song is a ballad for more than a third of its running time. Co producer Bob Estey proposed the unusual structure, which he modeled after Diana Ross's Ain't no Mountain High Enough, largely because he knew Summer could handle it. The song only picks up the tempo after nearly a minute and a half has gone by. Last Dance was featured in the musical film thank God It's Friday. Summer actually appears in the movie, her only film acting experience alongside young stars Jeff Goldblum and Debra Winger. The film takes place in a Los Angeles disco, effectively an LA answer to the New York based Saturday Night Fever. Unlike that movie, Smash Thank God It's Friday did modest box office business, was panned by critics and is largely forgotten today, but Last Dance is a standard. It reached number three on the Hot 100 in the summer of 1978 and the following year was won an Oscar for its primary writer, Paul Jabarra. What makes the song remarkable, what ultimately won jbarra his Oscar, is Sommer's performance. From her dramatic reading of the opening balladry to the potent high note she hits in the final minute, the song is a vocalist's showcase. Last Dance paved the way for Summer's most ambitious project to date, an album capturing her eclectic live show. Summer was known for concerts that would run the gamut from disco to jazz to show tunes, and she finally had the clout to capture it all on a double live album. As its title suggested, 1978's Live and More was a two record set, but with only three vinyl sides filled with concert material. The fourth side was reserved for a studio recording. Given their history of filling LP sides with lengthy tracks, it's unsurprising that Sommer, Maroder and Bilotti decided to record another symphonic suite. What is surprising is is the song they picked as its centerpiece.
- [38:42]
Donna Summer (singing)
Again. Oh no.
- [38:52]
Chris Melanfi
That is the Original version of MacArthur park recorded by the Irish actor Richard Harris, a famed stage and screen actor who played King Arthur in Camelot and three decades later would portray Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films. Harris was only intermittently a recording artist and MacArthur park was his only top 40 hit, peaking at number two in 1968. The song was written by Jimmy Webb, the famed American songwriter responsible for such classics as Glen Campbell's Wichita Lineman and the Fifth Dimension's Up, up and Away. The florid, overly lyrical MacArthur park, the song about the cake with the green icing left out in the rain, was perhaps Webb's strangest composition. Originally intended for a cantata that he never recorded, Harris, with his classical actors training, had managed to make the song a campy novelty hit at a moment in the late 60s when Baroque songs were doing well on the charts. Ten years later, Giorgio Moroder reckoned the ungainly song could be made into something else entirely.
- [40:09]
Donna Summer (singing)
I don't think that I can take it cause it took so long to make it and I'll never have that recipe again.
- [40:27]
Chris Melanfi
With a propulsive brass arrangement, ghostly synthesizers, screaming guitars, melodramatic power vocals and even a witchy cackle, Donna Summers MacArthur park was Disco's own thriller, a mini movie that even in its four minute radio edit went through several movements. The craziest thing of all MacArthur park became Donna Summers first ever number one hit, topping the Hot 100 in November 1978, the same week MacArthur park topped the Hot 100 live and more became Donna's first number one album. It even spawned a second hit when the midsection of the MacArthur Park Suite, a soaringly catchy song by Sommer, Maroder and Bellotti called Heaven Knows, was issued as a standalone single co credited to Brooklyn Dreams, the group whose leader, Bruce Sudano, would later marry Summer. Heaven knows was a no. 4 hit in early 1970.
- [41:30]
Donna Summer (singing)
Not the way it should be in heaven, no, not the way it could be without you now there's no need to leave.
- [41:42]
Chris Melanfi
Live and More wound up spending nearly a year and a half on the album chart, and it became Donna Summer's first platinum album in just over a year. Summer had succeeded with a string of projects that, while all broadly in the disco idiom, were crazily wide, ranging from a Cinderella concept album to an Oscar winning torch song to a rococo 60s remake. While Summer was hitting her stride, the rest of the rock world was moving her way. The disco explosion was bringing rock bands into the fold, from 60s stalwarts like the Rolling. To a new wave of post punk groups like Blondie. If the rockers were going to move onto Donna's disco turf, she was within her rights moving onto theirs. And she did it on her terms. Hot Stuff was the ultimate hybrid single, the crunch of a rock song, the thunder thump of a disco song. Written by Pete Bilotti with future Billy Idol collaborator Keith Forsey and future Axl F keyboardist Harold Faltermeier, Hot Stuff would go on to win the very first Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. Over songs by Bonnie Raitt, Carly Simon and Ricky Lee Jones, Summer sang Hot Stuff with a snarl more Pat Benatar than Gloria Gaynor, and the track even sported a guitar solo by Jeff Skunk Baxter, the former guitarist for Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers. Hot Stuff was the lead single to Donna's brand new album Bad Girls, released in May 1979. It was her third consecutive double album and her second in a row to top the album chart. Team Donna didn't even wait for Hot Stuff to reach the top of the Hot 100 before issuing the follow up single, a song she co wrote with future husband Bruce Sudano. The album's chugging, chanting title track Bad Girls. Hot Stuff and Bad Girls scaled the Hot 100 together. The former topped the chart in June 1979, two weeks after Hot Stuff exited the top slot, the Bad Girls replaced it and also became her first ever number one on the R and B chart. Heretofore, Summer had scored several black radio hits but had often been more popular with white pop audiences than black audiences, but the Bad Girls album made her the top crossover act of the year. Meanwhile, on the Hot 100 that summer, for the better part of two months, Donna was blockading the top of the chart. Casey Kasem counted them down.
- [45:31]
Casey Kasem
Talk about a hot record. Thirteen weeks on American top 40 and 11 of those weeks in the top three, including three weeks at number one. Donna Summer and Hot Stuff Four out of the past seven weeks, Donna Summer has held down the number one spot. This week she makes it five out of the past eight weeks. And here's the song that does it at number one across the nation for its second straight week, here's Bad Girls.
- [46:00]
Chris Melanfi
By Donna Summer Bad Girls was not only Summer's longest studio album ever, it was her bestseller going double platinum and her most acclaimed and sonically diverse work. Rock critics who betrayed no love for disco lined up to praise it. Even Rolling Stone grumbled that it quote, ranks as the only great disco album other than Saturday night fever. Its 15 songs, about half written by Sommer herself, ranged from the balladry of There Will Always Be a you to the electro dance of Our Love. Sometimes the sonic variety took place within the space of a single song. Dim all the Lights, the album's third single, and for your information, the all time favorite Donna Summer track of your humble hit parade host is Multiple songs in one.
- [47:11]
Donna Summer (singing)
Dim all the Light, Sweet darling, Cause tonight it's all the way Turn up the old victor Gonna dance the night away.
- [47:29]
Chris Melanfi
The song starts off as rock balladry with a saloon like almost country twang before transforming to a Latin flavored dance record. Sommer, who wrote the song herself, later told music historian Christian John Wycaine that she conceived Dim all the Lights for Rod Stewart. For the song's first 30 seconds, you can absolutely hear the raspy rocker crooning it. That is, before Donna's voice explodes with one of the Longest sustained notes in pop music history. Before the song is through, there's an electro funk breakdown and even a section where disco dancers can do the bump. Dim all the Lights is to Donna Summer what Over the Hills and Far Away is to Led Zeppelin. All of the artists modes in a single song in under five minutes. Dim all the Lights reached number two in the fall of 1979, stuck at first behind the Eagles Heartache Tonight. But summer's hit was not only competing with the likes of Glenn Frey and Don Henley, it was also going toe to toe with another single by Donna herself. A duet with a new friend, Barbra Streisand, ratifying Summer's status as the premier vocalist on the charts, invited Donna to duet with her on the feminist anthem no More Tears in the late summer of 1979. Released in the fall, the single, subtitled Enough Is Enough, topped the chart in less than two months, giving Summer her third number one hit of 1979 and actually preventing her own Dim all the Lights from reaching the top. Of course, these chart battles weren't the only musical happenings in the second half of 1979. Disco Demolition Night was an ugly publicity stunt, a bonfire of disco records that took place in Chicago's Comiskey park during a White Sox doubleheader in July 1979. It turned so violent and damaging that the second game of the Sox doubleheader had to be canceled. I needn't spend much time discussing this now infamous event in which a crowd of largely straight white men publicly expressed their frustration with a musical culture composed largely of women, gay men and people of color. Thank heaven such rallies don't happen anymore. In 2017, Disco Demolition Night makes an appearance in virtually every documentary about the so called death of disco. And to be sure, it was a leading indicator of Americans pushback against the now omnipresent music. Within a year, disco sales would plummet, pulling the recording industry into a slump. For artists who thrived during the disco years, the charts at the start of the 1980s would become more treacherous. By that measure, Donna Summers glass was more than half full.
- [51:17]
Donna Summer (singing)
If I chance you heard it for yourself.
- [51:22]
Chris Melanfi
Summer kicked off 1980 atop the charts one more time with one last double album, this time a greatest hits compilation entitled on the Radio. The collection spanned Donna's entire Casablanca oeuvre and featured two new songs, the Barbra Streisand duet and the album's title track. The on the Radio album topped the chart in January, and the on the Radio single, another of Donna's patented blends of Torch song and Dance jam reached number five on the Hot 100 by March, Having set a record as the only active recording artist to score three straight no. 1 double albums. Summer's imperial high point was over. But entering the 80s, she sought to diversify her musical palette. A song she co wrote with her husband Bruce Sudano became a number one country hit in May 1980 for superstar Dolly Parton.
- [52:33]
Donna Summer (singing)
Starting over again where should they begin? Cause they've never been out on their own Starting over again where do you begin?
- [52:55]
Chris Melanfi
Not long after, Summer became the first signing on Geffen Records, the then new label founded by legendary music impresario David Geffen. Signing Donna Summer in the year 1980 might appear to be like entering the buggy whip business in 1910. Other frontline disco acts like the Bee Gees and the Village People fell off rapidly in 1980. Fortunately for Geffen, Sommer and her producers showed they could adapt to the 80s the same way they had adapted to rock. The Wanderer was the title track of Summer's first Geffen album and more significantly, Summer's first full on attempt at new wave. Summer's staccato vocals on the track were a radical shift from the lush, full throated singing she'd employed at her disco high point. Several 70s superstars attempted this makeover in 1980 to varying degrees of success. For example, pop vocalist Linda Ronstadt attempted the Sound and scored a moderate hit. And Piano man Billy Joel actually topped the charts with his sly, snarky commentary on new wave trend hopping.
- [54:41]
Donna Summer (singing)
There's a New Page.
- [54:44]
Chris Melanfi
But Donna Summer was more closely tied to disco specifically than either of these artists, making her transition to new wave that much harder. When the Wanderer soared into the top 10 in the fall of 1980, ultimately peaking at number three, it had to be regarded as a modest triumph. The Wanderer album, produced once again by Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotti. One was not timid about Summers remodeling. Cold Love, a number 33 hit in early 1981, was written by the same team, led by Bellotti, who penned the prior year's Hot Stuff, and it sounded even more like rock and even less like disco. Despite the relative success of the Wanderer, it would turn out to be the swan song of the Summer Marauder Bilotti team. The trio did work on one last album together, 1981's Ill Fated I'm a Rainbow. Geffen, unsatisfied with the album's commercial prospects, decided I'm A Rainbow was unfit for the marketplace and shelved the album Only a couple of tracks saw release, including the synth pop Romeo, which wound up on the chart topping Flashdance soundtrack. Pete Bellotti went on to record with numerous artists including Tina Turner and Janet Jackson, and Giorgio Moroder kept on topping the charts while still recording with Summer. He scored a number one smash with Blondie, And after their parting he racked up two more 80s chart toppers and two Oscars for his work on Berlin's smash Take My Breath Away from Top Gun and Irene Cara's Flashdance. What a Feeling A song that could just as easily have been sung by Donna. Summer entered the wilderness of her post Maroder years, working with a string of new collaborators to varying degrees of success. In 1982, Geffen teamed her with legendary producer Quincy Jones, who manned the boards for an album simply titled Donna Summer. While the Quincy album was not the smash Geffen was hoping for, the self titled disc did go gold and produce one solid top 10 hit, the on trend synth funk track Love Is in Control. With hindsight, the album could be regarded as a near miss for Donna as it echoed the sound Quincy would produce to much, much greater success just months later on Michael Jackson's Thriller Alb. To date, Summer had proven she could adapt to the sound of new wave, but not necessarily the era of MTV. The video channel, which launched in 1981, was scarcely even playing black artists by 1983, but many of the white rock acts of the period were directly borrowing the rhythmic approach of vintage dance and disco acts. But Summer finally got her ticket punched at MTV with a 1983 single and video that almost never existed. A one off project Donna did outside of her deal with Geffen. When she left Casablanca for Geffen in 1980, Sommer still owed the label one more album and legally had to fulfill the obligation by producing that one album for Mercury Records, the label that had absorbed Casablanca. For the Mercury project, Donna worked with producer and songwriter Michael Omardian, and the title track they wrote together wound up being Summer's biggest pop hit amongst the decade and her biggest R B hit ever. Inspired by an encounter Summer had with an exhausted attendant cleaning a Los Angeles ladies room, she Works Hard for the Money was a no. 3 pop, no. 1 R&B smash in the summer of 1983, a season dominated by the Police, Eurythmics, Duran Duran and other MTV titans, in the elaborate music video, Donna wore wayfarer sunglasses and and a geometric dress and appeared alongside a cast of dozens of choreographed dancers prancing in the middle of a city street, a cross between a feminist march an aerobics workout and the movie fame. The video was not only played by mtv, Summer became the first African American female to be placed in heavy rotation just months after the channel embraced Michael Jackson and Prince. Unfortunately, the monster success of she Works Hard for the Money did not really transfer to any of Summer's other mid-80s projects, either with Mercury or Geffen. She continued to show her versatility through the middle of the decade, scoring minor hits with the reggae song Unconditional Love, a duet with musical youth, and a synth pop cover of the Drifter's There Goes My Baby, the latter a no. 21 hit in in 1984. But it seemed trends had finally moved away from Donna Summer. It wasn't until the late 1980s that the pendulum swung back, when a new production team with a hot sound began sweeping pop radio. Now brace yourselves, because the sound of these producers was rather edgy. I've always wanted to Rickroll a podcast audience. That, of course, is British crooner Rick astley, with his 1988 chart topper Never Gonna Give youe Up. It was Astley's first number one hit, but not the first his signature producers, the British trio of Mike Stock, Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman. For roughly three years, Stock, Aitken Waterman, the production team whose name sounded like a brokerage firm, had been producing hits for acts ranging from Dead or Alive to Banana Rama to Kylie Minogue. What was perhaps most notable about Rick Astley's success in particular was the production's obvious debt to vintage 70s clubbers. The synthesized string arrangement on Never Gonna Give youe Up was unabashedly indebted to classic disco. For seven years, dance and pop music, especially on American Top 40 radio, and had tried to hide its connections to disco. After the music's 1980 implosion, string effects would crop up on such hits as Michael Jackson's Billie Jean or Billy Ocean's Caribbean Queen, but they were subsumed into more current post new wave production elements. Rick Astley, and by extension the Stock, Aitken Waterman production sound, were proudly square, populist and indebted to disco. The time was finally ripe for one last Donna Summer comeback on the pop charts. This Time I Know it's for real. The lead single from Summer's 1989 album Another Place in Time was a savvy amalgamation of the Stock Aiken Waterman Europop style and Summer's vintage disco sound. And Donna's voice, just as she was turning 40, appeared to have lost little of its power. The single reached number seven on the Hot 100, summer's last US top 10 hit and went gold in the UK, where the saw sound had been incubated. This time reached number three on the charts and the album went gold and generated two more top 20 hits in Donna Summer's homeland. Even as she no longer scaled the Billboard Hot 100, she continued to grace other Billboard charts, including the R and B chart and especially the dance charts. Deep into the 90s and 2000s, summer scored chart toppers regularly on the club play chart and was, after Madonna, one of the most consistent club DJ favorites of the turn of the century. One of the most successful was her 1999 house cover of the Andrea Bocelli hit Conte Partiro, I Will Go with youh. It was one of the five biggest club hits of 1999 and sold a quarter million copies in the U.S. al. Summer remains the only artist to score a number one hit on Billboard's club play chart in five different decades. The 1970s, 80s, 90s, 2000s and yes, 2010s. Her last club club number one, to Paris with Love, reached the top of that list in November 2010. If you're looking for love then you got to go. In the final quarter century of her life, Summer's reputation waxed and waned. A controversial and persistent rumor in the gay community alleged that Summer, at a meet and greet with fans after a 1983 concert, had made disparaging remarks about gay people. Summer had come out as a born again Christian at the turn of the 1980s and at the height of the AIDS crisis in the 80s and early 90s. The the gay community, which had supported Summer unwaveringly in her 70s heyday, took the 1983 allegation very seriously. Several credible witnesses to the event claimed that Summer had been misrepresented, that the disparaging remarks were made by fans, not Donna herself, and Summer spent years of interviews attempting to correct the record and express devotion to her gay fan base. Donna's revived popularity in dance clubs in the 90s and aughts indicated that the rumor, however unrelenting, was not a permanent blight on her character. The other tough crowd was the rock community. Summer had earned respect from music critics for her groundbreaking work with Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotti, but old prejudices about disco and its relationship to rock and roll die hard. Sommer first became eligible for induction to the Rock and Roll hall of Fame in the year 2000, 25 years after her first American release, Love to Love youe Baby. She was nominated four times during her lifetime from 2007 to 2012 and passed over by the voters each time. Her non induction grew more controversial, especially after Madonna, an artist whose legendary dance pop culture career was indebted to Summers, got voted into the hall in 2008 on her first ballot. Privately, Rock hall nominating committee members grumbled about the voters snubbing of Summer, whom the insiders regarded as a pioneer not just in disco but in the shape of rock, especially electronic music. Summer would not live to see her induction. On May 17, 2012, the woman born Ladonna Adrian Gaines died at 63 years of age. Summer died of lung cancer despite being a non smoker all her life. A cruel irony. For years before her death, Donna had theorized privately to friends that she had inhaled toxic fumes after 911 while living in New York City. Tributes to Donna poured in from the music community. Everyone from Quincy Jones, Barbra Streisand and Aretha Franklin to Kylie Minogue and Moby. Among the luminaries praising Summer's career in the press was the ever effusive and unfiltered Elton John, who told the London Daily Telegraph that she has never been inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of Fame is a total disgrace. Her records sound as good today as they ever did, unquote. The following year, on her fifth nomination, Donna Summer was finally inducted into the Rock hall posthumously. At the ceremony in Los Angeles, Summer's widow Bruce Sudano and her three daughters took to the podium to accept the honor and Sudano said a few gracious words.
- [69:38]
Bruce Sudano
This is obviously a bittersweet moment, but as a family we kind of determined that tonight we would lean on the sweet side of the occasion because.
- [69:52]
Chris Melanfi
If.
- [69:53]
Bruce Sudano
Donna was here tonight, she would be very excited. You know, she was somebody who was about what comes next. She was somebody who wanted to push the envelope. She wanted to create something new at all times.
- [70:07]
Chris Melanfi
As the crowd at the Nokia Theater rose to its feet to honor Donna Summers legacy, a video screen showed her performing live on stage in her 1978 prime. And the song she was singing. You can probably guess that one.
- [70:48]
Donna Summer (singing)
Yes, it's my last chance.
- [70:52]
Chris Melanfi
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Hit Parade. Special thanks to critic, historian and R and B and dance music expert Christian John Wycaine, whose research and extensive writings on Donna Summer were invaluable to me in putting this episode together. Also, this episode is dedicated to to my late cousin Rosemary Dispenza Iacampo, who played Donna's records for me non stop in Brooklyn in the late 70s and made me a lifelong fan. Rest in peace, Roro. My Hit Parade producer is Chris Barube. The executive producer of Slate Podcasts is Steve Lichti. Panoply's Chief Content officer is Andy Bowers. Check out their entire roster of podcasts at Panoply fm. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture Gabfest feed. If you're subscribing to Hit Parade on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening, and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Maloney, Sa.