← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
The Queen of Disco Edition Part 1 (Encore)
00:31:18
Donna Summer set chart benchmarks and managed to stay relevant for more than three decades. Why didn’t she get more respect from the rock establishment?
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- [00:01]
Alex Abnos
Immersing yourself in all things soccer ahead of this summer's World Cup. I'm Alex Abnos, Senior Sports Editor from the Guardian. Whether you're a soccer beginner or you know the game inside and out, we've got you covered from one of the fastest growing soccer newsrooms. The Guardian brings you in depth World cup coverage that gets into the winners and losers on and off the pitch. Read, watch and listen as our journalists connect the dots between the games, the cultures and this political moment. We'll have daily newsletters throughout the tournament, a global perspective and a squad of Americans, including me, on the ground with the U.S. national team. Plus, if you want to test your soccer knowledge, try on the Ball. It's a game in the Guardian app and it's really, really fun. And if you're into stuff like this,
- [00:40]
Football Commentator
well, I think the problem is if you give footballers an inch, they will take a mile. Is it too much when it's this close?
- [00:46]
Co-Host/Analyst
It's a bit much. It's a bit too real. Maybe you could just talk with a slight delay.
- [00:50]
Alex Abnos
Be sure to listen to our Football Weekly podcast for on the Move expert analysis the Guardian bringing you the whole picture on soccer. Search Guardian Soccer for more the longer
- [00:59]
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- [01:41]
Chris Melanphy
Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate and Panoply about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanfy, 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. 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 and ending July 14, 1979, when the song Bad Girls rose to number one.
- [05:17]
Boost Mobile Advertiser
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- [05:33]
Alex Abnos
Immersing yourself in all things soccer ahead of this summer's World Cup. I'm Alex Abnos, senior sports editor from the Guardian, and whether you're a soccer beginner or you know the game inside and out, we've got you covered. Read, watch and listen as our journalists connect the dots between the games, the cultures and this political moment. We'll have daily newsletters throughout the tournament, reporters on the ground with all the big teams and the legendary football weekly podcast the Guardian, bringing you the whole picture on soccer. Search Guardian Soccer for more.
- [06:01]
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- [06:35]
Chris Melanphy
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.
- [07:35]
Co-Host/Analyst
This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius The Age of Aquarius Aquarius.
- [07:48]
Chris Melanphy
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 Crow. 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 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 youf 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. 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 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 marri. 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 Bellotti. 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 Random Access. Memories by Daft Punk. A chart topping electrorobotic duo that owes vast swaths of its sound to Maroder. My name is Giovanni Giorgio, but everybody calls me Giorgio. Moroder began as a recording artist himself, issuing tracks under the single name Giorgio as early as the middle 1960s and scoring his first trans European hit in 1969 with Looky Looky. 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.
- [15:45]
Co-Host/Analyst
The lady of the Light She's a woman of the world.
- [15:57]
Chris Melanphy
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 words, word segments and the music was a hybrid of R B and symphonic rock. The Hostage was a number two hit in the Netherlands and Lady of the Night's title track was a no. 4 Dutch hit and a minor top 40 hit in Germany. Not a bad start for the summer. Maroder, 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 Summers voice had sounded on any recording to date. Gone was her powerful, rangy mezzo soprano 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, 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 no. 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 Maroder in the middle of the night, Germany. Time to tell him not only that he wanted to distribute the track, but that he and Summer 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 a lovemaking session. Now retitled Love to Love youe Baby. At Neil Bogart's suggestion, the new version, fully re recorded by Sommer, Moroder 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, 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 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 Chacacha'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.
- [24:16]
Alex Abnos
Immersing yourself in all things soccer ahead of this summer's World Cup. I'm Alex Abnos, Senior Sports Editor from the Guardian. Whether you're a soccer beginner or you know the game inside and out, we've got you covered from one of the fastest growing soccer newsrooms, the Guardian brings you in depth World cup coverage that gets into the winners and losers on and off the pitch. Read, watch and listen as our journalists connect the dots between the games, the cultures and this political moment. We'll have daily newsletters throughout the tournament, a global perspective and a squad of Americans, including me on the Ground ground with the U.S. national team. Plus, if you want to test your soccer knowledge, try on the Ball. It's a game in the Guardian app and it's really, really fun. And if you're into stuff like this,
- [24:55]
Football Commentator
well, I think the problem is if you give footballers an inch they will take a mile. Is it too much when it's this close?
- [25:01]
Co-Host/Analyst
It's a bit much. It's a bit too real. Maybe you could just talk with a slight delay.
- [25:05]
Alex Abnos
Be sure to listen to our Football Weekly podcast for on the Move expert analysis the Guardian bringing you the whole picture on soccer. Search Guardian Soccer for more.
- [25:14]
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- [25:47]
Chris Melanphy
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 were 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 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 Sommer, Maroder and Bilotti committed to the concept not just to extended length dance suites, but to the idea that Summer 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.
- [29:35]
Co-Host/Analyst
Baby I Want you Now.
- [29:52]
Chris Melanphy
Both of Summer's 1976 albums went gold within weeks of their release. However, neither A Love trilogy nor 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 Bellotti an all time innovator came with her next album, a concept Bilotti 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 church 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 seen 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 apartment. 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.
- [33:56]
Co-Host/Analyst
I remember Brian Eno running into my
- [33:58]
Chris Melanphy
ha ha, running into my room with a single in his hand. He said, I've heard the future.
- [34:06]
Co-Host/Analyst
And I said, are you serious?
- [34:09]
Chris Melanphy
And he said, yes. Listen, that Teutonic drumming, that black voice, this is fantastic. As it happens, he was right, 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 of the Atlantic,
- [35:46]
Alex Abnos
immersing yourself in all things soccer ahead of this summer's World Cup. I'm Alex Abnos, senior sports editor from the Guardian. Whether you're a soccer beginner or you know the game inside and out, we've got you covered. From one of the fastest growing soccer newsrooms, the Guardian brings you in depth World cup coverage that gets into the winners and losers on and off the pitch. Read, watch and listen as our journalists connect the dots between the games, the cultures and this political moment. We'll have daily newsletters throughout the tournament, a global perspective and a squad of Americans, including me on the ground with the U.S. national team. Plus, if you want to test your soccer knowledge, try on the Ball. It's a game in the Guardian app and it's really, really fun. And if you're into stuff like this,
- [36:26]
Football Commentator
well, I think the problem is if you give footballers an inch, they will take a mile. Is it too much when it's this close?
- [36:31]
Co-Host/Analyst
It's a bit much. It's a bit too real. Maybe you could just talk with the slight delay.
- [36:35]
Alex Abnos
Be sure to listen to our Football Weekly podcast for on the Move expert analysis the Guardian bringing you the whole picture on soccer. Search Guardian Soccer for more
- [36:47]
Football Commentator
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