← Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
These Are the Good Times, Part 1
00:52:21
How the sleek disco group Chic spawned hip-hop and new wave and shaped acts from Diana Ross to Duran Duran.
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- [00:00]
Chris Melanphy
You're listening ad free on Amazon Music.
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Narrator/Host
Hey there Hit Parade listeners. What you're about to hear is Part one of this episode. Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops? Sign up for Slate Plus. It's just $35 for the first year and it supports not only this show, but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go slate.com hitparade plus you'll get to hear every Hit Parade episode in full the day it arrives. Plus Hit Parade the Bridge our bonus episodes with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics and pop chart trivia. Once again to join, that's slate.com hitparadeplus thanks and now please enjoy part one of the of this Hit Parade episode. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine 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 42 years ago this month in January 1979, there was unrest in Iran, gas prices reaching new highs, both US unemployment and interest rates spiking, and the number one song in America sounded like a hedonistic party that would never end. At first, this appears to be an instructional disco record with lines like have you heard about the new dance craze? Allow us, we'll show you the way and find your spot out on the floor. It invites you to freak out and even name checks Storied New York nightclub Studio 54. But this hit, Le Freak by Chic was equal parts party and protest. It was a danceable lamentation against a nightclub. Yep, that club that had denied entry to the song's two writers that denied duo were Bernard Edwards and Nile Rogers. They co wrote Le Freak, they co produced it and it was powered by Edwards popping bass line and Rogers infectious scratching guitar underpinning the commanding female vocals of Alpha Anderson and Diva Gray. Chic specialized in this club ready music. The majority of their songs were danceable, several even had the word dance right in the title repeated like a mantra. However simple and plain spoken these lyrics, Chic's arrangements were complex, detailed, cutting edge and their name was Truth in Advertising. In an era of bell bottom jeans and polyester leisure wear, Chic were just that stylish, natty, elegant with Rogers, Edwards and drummer Tony Thompson in sharp suits and their array of singers led by Alpha Anderson in reinvented jazz age outfits. Chic looked like a very classy throwback. But their music sounded like the future.
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Chris Melanphy
I want your love, I want your love.
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Narrator/Host
However unwittingly, Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards of CHIC were helping to invent the sound of the next decade. There were bands that formed specifically to emulate elements of their style.
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Chris Melanphy
Reunion I, Snake is on the Cloud.
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Narrator/Host
There were also records produced by the Chic masterminds that gave pop legends some of their biggest hits.
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Chris Melanphy
Upside Down, Boy, you Turn me inside out and Round and Round.
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Narrator/Host
Nile Rogers would turn certain rock icons into pop stars. From the dawn of mtv.
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Chris Melanphy
Put on your red shoes and dance the blues.
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Narrator/Host
To the dawn of the 1990s. And Chic's sound was pilfered by chart topping bands that Rogers and Edwards had no hand in producing.
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Chris Melanphy
Another one bites the dust, Another one bites the dust.
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Narrator/Host
And they even accidentally launched the most important musical shift of the last 40 years. I said the hip hop, the hip it, the hip hip hop. Jump the boogie to the rhythm of the boogity beat. Today on Hit Parade, we will chronicle the chart history of what group co founder Nile Rogers calls the Chic organization. It's like a marvel cinematic universe of pop. Not just a band, but a universe of acts indebted to, produced and shepherded up the charts by the alumni of Chic from the late 70s right through the first two decades of the 21st century. You'd think a band with this much influence on rock's trajectory would have been shoe ins for the Rock and Roll hall of Fame. Yeah, funny story. Well, maybe not so funny. I'll get to that. Perhaps Sheik's fate with rock fans was sealed the week they scored their final chart topping hit. And that's where your hit parade marches today. The week ending August 18, 1979, when Chic topped the Billboard Hot 100 with Good Times. Not only their last number one hit, but their last top 40 hit. One week later, Good Times would be ejected by a new number one that rock fans in 1979 regarded as a blow against bands like Chic. But as we'll discuss, Bernard Edwards and Nile Rogers scarcely disappeared from the top of the charts. They kept the good times coming for decades, Enjoying this rock song, Hungry like the Wolf. Duran Duran's breakthrough hit in America topped Billboard's rock tracks chart in early 1983, indicating strong airplay on album oriented rock stations. It topped the rock chart months before peaking at number three on the Hot 100. The members of Chic had nothing to do with this Duran Duran classic, but in a way, Chic had everything to do with it. One common and misbegotten notion about popular music is the idea that a new style or genre will eradicate a previous one. The emerging musical format might become more popular, might even make the older style uncool. But the older style typically doesn't just drop off the charts. For example, the US breakthrough of the Beatles in 1964, which spawned the British invasion in America, did make it harder for easy listening, crooners, girl groups and doo wop. But none of that music went away. In fact, several of the acts that were hitmakers before the Beatles, like Frankie valli and the Four Seasons, continued to be hitmakers into the late 60s and beyond. You're just too good to be true.
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Chris Melanphy
Can'T take my eyes off me the.
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Narrator/Host
Same went for the 1991 breakthrough of Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. 90s grunge and its offshore shoots did make hair metal far less successful commercially. But alternative rock didn't actually kill metal. Metal just retooled its sound for the era of grunch. It adapted to survive. Probably one of the best biggest myths about rock history, however, was that disco, quote unquote, died at the start of the 1980s. Let's be clear, disco didn't actually die. Just a couple of years into the 1980s, Michael Jackson and Madonna were retooling disco as new wave dance music. Certainly by the end of the 70s, the word disco started to become commercial poison. In previous Hit Parade episodes, we've dissected what the so called death of disco actually meant. I've talked about how the Bee Gees stopped topping the charts after 1979, But then Barry Gibb and his brothers became potent songwriters and producers on a variety of 80s hits. For other artists, I've also discussed how Donna Summer was both elevated and then dragged down by her status as the 70s queen of disco.
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Chris Melanphy
Him all the lights we got.
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Narrator/Host
But summer found ways to adapt to the 80s and still score big hits. However, no disco associated act arguably adapted better to the 1980s and beyond than the members of Chic. The work of Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards, both with Chicago and with other acts they collaborated with not only contradicts the notion that disco was a short lived phenomenon, it also makes a mockery of the very idea that rock killed disco. If anything, rock in the 80s absorbed and co opted the sleekness, the instrumental polish and even the rhythms of disco.
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Chris Melanphy
Some flight is hot and some sweat when the heat is on.
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Narrator/Host
Disco was always part of rock and roll and it continued to inform rock long after the 70s, rockers from the 80s and beyond emulated the rhythmic suppleness of bands like Chic. Still, the story of the chic universe of hits right through the 2010s is one of both adaptation and underestimation. Their family tree branched out in many unpredictable directions. Perhaps the mutability of the chic sound grew out of the members cross cultural backgrounds. In fact, early on, the band's founders, especially surviving member Nile Rogers, weren't really trying to play dance music at all.
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Chris Melanphy
I read the news today oh boy.
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Narrator/Host
Around 1968 in the Bronx, New York, 15 year old Nile Rogers was trying to teach himself to play this Beatles song. The precocious teenager couldn't understand why A day in the life sounded so terrible on the guitar he'd gotten for Christmas. In his autobiography Le Freak, Rogers recalls the day when his mother's live in boyfriend came home from work and taught him to tune his guitar properly so that the chords in young Niles Beatles songbook would sound right.
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Chris Melanphy
A crowd of people stood and stood.
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Narrator/Host
This impromptu guitar lesson was one of the happier moments in Nile's tumultuous childhood. Born in 1952 to a 13 year old Beverly Goodman, young Nile only saw his biological father, a traveling musician named Nile Rogers Sr. On occasion and then usually when his dad was inebriated. His mother and his white stepfather, both heroin addicts, largely raised young Nile. But for the first 16 years of his life, Nile shuttled back and forth between New York and LA and a series of homes belonging to relatives or his mom's boyfriends. Still, young Nile possessed a great deal of his father's innate skill and he grew up surrounded by music, learning both the flute and the clarinet in school before trying to transpose clarinet chords onto his first guitar. Rogers later said that his ability to read music, thanks to his years with wind instruments, set him apart from other guitarists and got him gigs in his late teens and twenties. Indeed, once the teenager moved out on his own and settled in Manhattan in the late 60s, he discovered he'd stumbled onto a an ideal scene for a budding musician. Nile Rogers began hanging out at legendary Manhattan club Max's Kansas City, the home venture venue for the Velvet Underground, whom Rogers saw multiple times. By his own admission, Rogers was not a soul man but a hippie and he was more into the avant garde and jazz music his stepfather loved. Rogers actually played at Max's himself and in his book he compares his first band called New World Rising, a quote jazz, blues, rock, fusion, electrified band that was unfortunately never Recorded to such groovy jazz inflected acts of the time as Blood, Sweat and Tears and Elephant's Memory.
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Chris Melanphy
You're an animal.
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Narrator/Host
Max's Kansas City was to Nile Rogers what the Kaiser Keller in Hamburg was to the Beatles. The club where he honed his chops. He began studying with jazz and classical guitarists. And by the early 70s, Rogers was professional enough to score an audition for a touring gig. This gig, which Nile calls the moment he turned pro, was with, well, again, not the most predictable project.
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Chris Melanphy
Can you tell me how to get how to get to Sesame Street?
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Narrator/Host
The hit PBS children's program Sesame street hired Nile Rogers as a guitarist for its live road show. He toured the country and met the show's cast. One Sesame street cast member, Loretta Long, who played Susan on the show, got Rogers his next gig. The house band at Harlem's famed Apollo Theater.
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Nile Rogers
I put a spell on.
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Narrator/Host
On Roger's very first night at the Apollo, he backed up the madcap, legendarily theatrical screamin Jay Hawkins, who hazed the new guitarist by chasing Nile around the stage in skeleton makeup. More seriously, the old timers in the Apollo band finally taught Niall how to really play funk and soul with R and B notation. To that point, Rogers was a straight classical and jazz trained player. The Apollo gave Nile his groove, which he then poured into more club and session work. One night at a gig in the Bronx by the journeyman hack Bartholomew, Nile jumped on stage to join the band and he met a natalie dressed bassist named Bernard Edwards. Raised in Brooklyn, Edwards was the same age as Rogers. They were born just weeks apart. But Edwards was a more traditional R B player. What set him apart was his distinctive fleet fingered chucking approach on the base. That night in the Bronx. As Nile Rogers recalls in his autobiography, Bernard Edwards was dressed in a polished outfit of silk slacks and a patterned shirt. He was not terribly impressed with Nile Rogers hippie threads and groovy vibe. But Bernard, or Nard as Nile came to call him, had to admit that this hippie dude on the guitar could play. When the band shifted into the meter syncopated funk classic Sissy Strut, Nile turned on a dime and played along. The two men became, Rogers says, inseparable. By 1973, Edwards landed a gig that would prove pivotal for the both of them. He became the musical director for an R B vocal troupe calling itself New York City and New York City. The group had an actual hit on the charts. I'm Doing Fine now was a number 17 hit on the Hot 1100 in June of 73. Contrary to their name, New York City's sound was Philadelphia soul, the R B style that was in vogue at the time, made famous by Philly producers like Kenny Gamble, Leon Huffman and Tom Bell. As the backing band for New York City, Bernard Edwards and his guitarist friend Nile Rogers would need to play in these contemporary R B styles. So they assembled an independent band to back up New York City and potentially other singers. Edwards and Rogers called their troupe the Big Apple Band. This Bee Gees cover is by the Big Apple Band, Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards, fronted by a singer named Bobby Cotter. Even before the formation of Chic, you can hear their playing styles establishing themselves. Edwards patented chucking bass style is now complemented by Roger's equally rhythmic danceable funkin beat guitar, an irresistibly syncopated style that Edwards encouraged Rogers to play to complement his bass line. The band also attracted several other talented players. Their drummer was Tony Thompson, an ace session player who had backed such bands as Hitmakers labelle of Lady Marmaleade Fate. On several gigs. The Big Apple Band was also joined by young vocalist Luther Vandross. Like Nile Rogers, Vandross had gotten an early break on no Kidding Sesame street in the show's first season.
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Chris Melanphy
We're only halfway so here we go.
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Narrator/Host
By 1974, Vandross was rapidly emerging as a go to session vocalist. He sang on and arranged the backing vocals for the album Young Americans, David Bowie's smash foray into R B. Vandross in turn would introduce Rogers and Edwards to a potent female vocalist who toured with the Spinners and would one day be a soloist in her own right, Ms. Norma Jean Wright, dancing to the.
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Chris Melanphy
Music played by the dj.
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Narrator/Host
Gradually, the Big Apple Band developed a following of their own, independent of New York City. And for a hot second it looked like they would become a standalone R B funk act. They even recorded a single in 1976 credited to the Big Apple Band called Party and get on Down.
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Chris Melanphy
Just party and get on Down.
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Narrator/Host
But then fate intervened. This 1976 smash, a fifth of Beethoven, a disco arrangement of the classical composer's Fifth Symphony, was recorded by New York based composer Walter Murphy. Needing a band name for his new single, Murphy, coincidentally and much to the chagrin of Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards, dubbed his backing players the Big Apple Band. So once A Fifth of Beethoven, now credited to Walter Murphy and the Big Apple band, reach number one on the Hot 100 in the fall of 1976, Rogers and Edwards realized their unrelated band needed a new name. And the ever sophisticated Bernard Edwards proposed The name Chic. Nile Rogers wasn't so sure about his partner's idea. Chic sounded funny to him, a bit pretentious, but he couldn't come up with anything better. And Niall did have some heady ideas of his own about how the band could maintain its chic mystique. He took cues from a pair of rock bands he admired.
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Chris Melanphy
Like you're losing your mind Rain.
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Narrator/Host
While visiting London in the early 70s, Rogers caught a club gig by the British art rockers Roxy Music. Nile was wowed not only by their intricate musicianship, but by their glam style, especially debonair lead singer Brian Ferry. Then when Nile went to a record store to buy some Roxy Music albums, he realized none of the band members appeared on the LP jackets, only glamorous models, like for your Pleasure's covergirl Amanda Lear or Playboy model Marilyn Cole, who appeared on the COVID of Roxy's LP Stranded. That gave Nile Rogers one piece of the puzzle. His other inspiration, though broadly in the rock category, couldn't have been more different from Roxy Music. American glam metal band Kiss were dominating arenas in the mid-70s, and Rogers got a kick out of their onstage gimmick, most notably the fact that the band only ever performed in full makeup, never revealing their faces. Nile wanted to invert what Kiss had done, writing in his memoir, what if we played the faceless backup band professionally? In other words, Rogers conceived of a band with the anonymous armor of Kiss combined with the suave sophistication of Roxy Music. But he also wanted to play with the intricacy of the jazz acts he loved. It was a good time for that too, because by the mid-70s, leading jazz players whom Nile admired were branching out into funk and R and B, including Herbie Hancock. And roy ayers. By 1976, even Niles beloved Roxy Music while recording rock with an R and B rhythm like their first American hit, the disco rock hybrid Love Is the Drug. I'm Thinking of Chic would combine all of these influences. Urbane mystique, theatrical blankness, jazzy intricacy. But the secret weapon would be the band's skill. They had a killer bassist, lead guitarist and drummer, plus access to top shelf vocalists. And their first recording showed off all of that. Nile Rogers wrote Everybody Dance as essentially a flex, a showcase for Chic. It was a real workout, a bass part Rogers knew nobody but Edwards could play a relentless four on the floor beat that Tony Thompson nailed and the chicken scratch guitar that had become Nile's own signature. Plus their vocal arranger, Luther Vandross, brought in Class A vocalists Diva Gray, Robin Clark and himself together on background vocals and on lead vocal, Norma Jean Wright. The song would set a template for Chic simplicity masking complexity. The lyrics seemed dopey and decadent. Its chorus was just a an ultra basic Everybody dance, clap your hands punctuated by a scatting do, do, do, do. But that seemingly mindless surface sat atop intricate vocal arrangements and instrumental chops. The record was so catchy, even though Chic were not yet signed to a label, local New York club the Night Owl began spinning a lacquer test pressing. The song wasn't even on vinyl yet and the crowd yelled for the DJ to play it over and over. When Nile Rogers visited the Night Owl and told them he did Everybody Dance, they treated him like a king. Everybody Dance was Chic's first recording, but it would not be their eventual first single. Having found their formula, the band recorded another dance floor directed jam. This time Nile Rogers wrote the song with Bernard Edwards. He was no nonsense and had a knack for simplifying Niles overly busy arrangements. Still, this was another compliment. Complex R B track with jazzy chords punctuated by seemingly frivolous lyrics. Its title, dance, dance, Dance and its parenthetical subtitle, which was a jazz phrase that dated to the Roaring Twenties. Yowza, yowza, yowza. It was the infectious dance, dance, dance, yowza, yowza, yowza. That finally got Chic signed to a label in 1977, the storied Atlantic Records, which had already passed on the group previously. The celebrated label founded by Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler, was once renowned for its R and B. Atlantic was built in the 50s and 60s by such legends as Ray Charles, Solomon burke. And lest we forget, Miss Aretha Franklin. But by the 70s, Atlantic had become better known for such huge selling white rock acts as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Teach your children well, yes, And listen, Zeppelin. This perhaps explains the label's blind spot. For a band like Chic, Atlantic wasn't primarily a black music mecca anymore. But when the smaller label Buddha Records issued an early pressing of Chic's Dance Dance Dance single and scored immediate DJ and dance floor buzz, Atlantic's president belatedly realized the song was a smash in the making. Atlantic signed Chic and reissued Dance Dance Dance in the summer of 1977. By the fall it had cracked the charts, first breaking on Billboard's dance chart, which was then called Disco Action. By December, it was number one in the clubs. And that's when Sheik's single broke into the pop top 40. Casey Kasem counted it down. The song that tops the disco chart this week at number 37 on American top 40, it debuts that's Dance Dance Dance Yazza Yazza Yazza by Chic. Dance Dance Dance eventually cracked the top 10, reaching number six on the Hot 100 in February 1978. That same month, Chic's self titled debut LP broke into the album chart's top 30. True to Nile Rogers vision, the album cover emulated the Roxy Music approach. No band members, not even its female singers. Instead, a pair of models with whistles in their mouth mouths eyed the camera seductively.
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Chris Melanphy
Come on everybody get on your feet Clap your hands Everybody screaming.
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Narrator/Host
The Chic album was certified gold by March 1978, and it generated another top 40 hit with the band's earliest recording, that club jam that had wowed the Night Owl crowd over a year earlier. Everybody Dance. That Single reached number 38 by June. In the clubs, the Chic LP went deep. A shuffling album cut called you'd Can get by, featuring a rare lead vocal by Bernard Edwards himself, followed both Dance Dance Dance and Everybody Dance to number one on the disco chart. Much like their albums with varying players and singers on each track, Chic saw themselves as a collective more than a band. In fact, when they signed with Atlantic, Rogers and Edwards formed a corporation, the Chic Organization limited To manage their array of projects. Just months after the Chic LP came out, Edwards and Rogers produced their frequent vocalist, Norma Jean Wright's debut solo album, Norma Jean. Released in the summer of 78, Norma Jean generated an instant smash that sounded like an extension of the suave chic brand. The number 502015 R B hit Saturday, The musical marvel cinematic universe of Chic was already spinning off hits in its first year to the radio, record stores and the clubs, which made the origin story of their biggest hit ever rather ironic. Nile Rogers had envisioned that Sheik would be, in his word, faceless, but he soon got a hard lesson in just what facelessness meant. Now that they were the toast of the clubs, Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards spent much of 1978 going to clubs for field research as well as pure pleasure. This, of course, included famed New York nightclub Studio 54, which had opened the prior year and was already at the peak of its influence and snooty exclusivity. Among the regulars at 54 was the iconoclastic model, actress and singer Grace Jones, who was just starting to score club hits of her own. Jones befriended Niall and Nard and invited them to the club frequently on nights when she was there and was putting names on Studio 54's legendary guest list. But one night when Joan's was not at the club and Rogers and Edwards were trying to get in, that's when they had some trouble. The clipboard holders didn't recognize them, not even as the hitmakers behind Sheik's floor filling hits. Nothing they said or did could get them past the velvet rope. Not even as Nile Rogers recounts in this 2016 onstage live interview, by trying on fake French accents.
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Nile Rogers
So we knock on the back door of Studio 54 and we say, hello, we are personal friends of Ms. Grace Jones. And the guy slams the door on our faces and he says, oh, fuck off.
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Chris Melanphy
And we went, no, no, no, no.
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Nile Rogers
No, no, no, no, no, no. The back door of Studio 54 was on 53rd street between 8th Avenue and Broadway. My apartment was on 52nd street between 8th and 9th Avenue. So we went to my apartment and this is the first thing that we wrote. One, two.
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Chris Melanphy
Ah.
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Nile Rogers
Off Studio 54.
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Narrator/Host
Off.
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Chris Melanphy
Aw.
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Nile Rogers
Off Studio 54.
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Narrator/Host
Fuck off. Bernard Edwards soon realized they had an actually catchy track on their hands, not just a piss take. He suggested that their F bomb could become the word freak. But freak off didn't sound much better. So Nile, who was familiar with LSD from his trippy hippie days, suggested quote, how about awe freak out? Like when you have a bad trip, so when you're out on the dance floor losing it, you're freaking out. And listener. That's when the best selling single in Atlantic Records history was born. Le Freak, as the Francophile duo called their song, was unusually wordy for Chic. It was sung by Alpha Anderson, who had taken on primary vocal duties now that Norma Jean had gone solo, joined by frequent collaborator Diva Gray, and they had their work cut out for them. The chorus was once again just a chant, like their prior hit, Dance, Dance, Dance. But the verses were cheeky and sounded like advertising copy, promising, you'll be amazed by the new dance craze. Young and old are doing it, I'm told. Just one try and you, you too will be sold. Released in the early fall of 1978, just weeks after the singles from their first album had faded on the charts, Chic's Le Freak took just seven weeks to reach number one. How big a hit was it? Here's some fun trivia for my fellow chart nerds. Le Freak pulled off a rare Hot 100 hat trick, reaching number one three times in December 1978. When Le Freak first Hit the top, it knocked out the blockbuster Barbra Streisand and Neil diamond duet, you don't bring.
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Chris Melanphy
Me flowers when you think I could learn how to tell you goodbye.
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Narrator/Host
After one week out of the top spot, Streisand and Diamond went back to number one, replacing Le Freak. But one week after that, Le Freak ejected Barbara and Neil's hit again. And it spent two more weeks on top. Then in early January 1979, the number one spot was taken over by another ballad, the Bee Gees latest single, Too Much Heaven. But chic weren't done. After a fortnight of the brothers Gib on top, Le Freak returned yet again to number one and stayed there three more weeks. In total, it's six weeks on top was greater than the Streisand, diamond and Bee Gees hits combined. By the time Le Freak's chart run was over, it had been certified for sales in the US alone of 6 million copies, according to the Recording Industry association of America. In the 70s, a million seller was searching certified gold and a 2 million seller was certified platinum. The RIAA did not yet officially have multi platinum awards. Those would be invented in the 1980s, but unofficially le Freak was the first ever triple platinum single since platinum awards were invented earlier in the decade. As for the Se Chic album, it was platinum, virtually out of the box while Le Freak was at number one. The week of Christmas 1978, Se Chic reached number four on the album chart. Remarkable for an R and B based disco album by a supposedly faceless group. Even more than their self titled debut lp, Se Chic represented the cutting edge of polished, poised dance music. Particularly on the album's second single, I Want yout Love. A number number seven hit in the spring of 1979. With its chiming bell sounds, I Want yout Love forecasted the sound of new wave dance music in the decade to come. Like Donna Summer, who two years earlier had spawned an entire genre of electronic dance music with I Feel Love.
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Chris Melanphy
Chic.
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Narrator/Host
Too were pointing the way to the future. Before the 70s were even out to date, the Chic organization had given themselves a constellation of hits and produced an acclaimed album by a singer in their orbit. Norma Jean Wright. Now Atlantic, wanted to see if perhaps they could work their magic on an act that they'd never met before, one that hadn't had a hit in years. Sister Sledge were true to their name. A family foursome composed of singers and sisters, Debbie Joanie Kim and Kathy Sledge. This 1975 single, Love don't go through no changes on Me was their breakthrough and a minor hit, reaching number 31 on the R B chart in 1975. But for the next three years, Sister Sledge came nowhere near the upper reaches of the charts. When Bernard Edwards and Nile Rogers took on Sister sledge in late 1978, well, it worked like a charm. He's the Greatest Dancer was the lead single from Sister Sledge's 1979 studio album. It topped the R B chart and got the sisters into the top 40 on the pop chart for the first time, where they reached number nine. Rogers had to convince the religiously raised sisters, particularly lead singer Kathy Sledge, to sing the line my creme de la creme, please take me home, which implied a Studio 54 era one night stand. The Sledge women had never even been to a disco, but they sang the line as instructed and like they owned it. According to Rogers, he may have even invented the now common hip hop trope of shouting out brand names when Kathy sang. From the moment it dropped, the Sister Sledge album sounded like a chic backed greatest hits album. Every track was a banger and many of them scored record club, black and pop radio airplay like the R B hit Lost in Music. And my all time favorite chic organization single, Thinking of you I'm thinking of.
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Chris Melanphy
You and the things you do to me that makes me love.
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Narrator/Host
Oh, and I haven't even mentioned the album's title, which might ring a bell. We are family we are family.
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Chris Melanphy
I got all my sisters with me we are family get up everybody say.
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Narrator/Host
Bernard Edwards and Nile Rogers wrote the album's title track specifically for Sister Sledge. It belonged to the Nation in 1979. A feel good sing along in a year of national malaise. The song was even later adopted by the 79 Pittsburgh Pirates, a backdrop to their World World Series championship. The We Are Family single went gold and brought Sister Sledge not only back to number one on the R B chart, but to number two on the pop chart. Sandwiched between Donna Summer's Hot Stuff and Anita Ward's Ring My Bell, it was a great summer for black female anthems on the Hot 100. And Sister Sledge's hit was the most anthemic of all. You would think We Are Family would rank as Rogers and Edwards Greatest achievement in 1979. Not even close. Sheikh scored a hit under their own name that year that not only brought them back to number one, but remains their greatest legacy. The baseline that launched a thousand ships. When we come back, how Sheik helped invent a genre and how it launched them into the 80s and passed the haters of disco. Non Slate plus listeners will hear the rest of this episode in two weeks. For now, I hope you've been enjoying this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfy. That's me. My producer is Asha Soludja. Special thanks to dance music scholar Christian John Wycaine for research assistance. June Thomas is the Senior Managing Producer and Gabriel Roth the Editorial Director of Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts, in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing 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. We'll see you for part two in a couple of weeks. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris Melanfy.
- [52:07]
Chris Melanphy
Sam.