Get down, baby bubba, baby, get down

One of the few musical greats who had massive hits in the Rock'n'Roll era and was almost as successful in the Disco era over a decade later, the marvellous Mr Gene Chandler is 85 years old today!

Although many people will indelibly associate the man with enduring standards such as Duke of Earl it is for this fantabulosa choon that I will always thank him.

I know it's far too early in the week for Disco (that's usually "Thank Disco It's Friday") but this is just too good to wait:

Fine, fine foxy lady
Get down (get on down)

We are, mama, gonna
Snake and boogie
Baby, get on down (get on down)

I know a funky place

We can dance all night
You can be my lady
If you play your cards right

But you gotta get down
Get on down, down, baby
Get on down, down, sugar
Get on down

You're looking real good
In your halter top, yeah, yeah
But get on down (get on down)

You sure got style
Don't you ever stop, no, no
Baby, get on down (get on down)

Girl, you're moving everywhere
You're sure hooked up, girl
You make the people
Stop and stare, ow

Get down, ha, get on down
Get down, baby
Get on down, get down, sugar
Get on down

Get down, baby bubba
Baby, get down
Get down, baby bubba
Baby, get down

Many happy returns, Gene Chandler (born Eugene Drake Dixon, 6th July 1937)

[Ironically Mr Chandler's Duke of Earl never made the UK charts in 1962, but was a Top Ten smash for Darts in 1979 - the very same year Get Down was a hit!]

He really wanted to be Patti Labelle

"An androgynous, cross-dressing, openly gay, African American, falsetto-singing, unapologetically flaming man-diva influenced primarily by church women, black blues singers, drag queens, hippies, and homos... Sylvester rode his marginality right into the mainstream: a star not despite the boundaries of race, gender, and sexuality he eagerly crossed but because of them.” - Joshua Gamson, The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, The Music, The Seventies in San Francisco

"His record label saw greater popularity for Sylvester’s stunning vocal skills, and pressured him to “butch up” his image. Defiantly, he attended meetings with executives in full-on drag." - Immortal Socialites magazine

"Despite the obvious magic he had with dance material, Sylvester never viewed himself as a disco act. You see, he really wanted to be Patti Labelle." - San Francisco Queer Cultural Center

"When people would ask him to label himself – gay rights activist, drag queen, etc. – he would say simply and proudly, 'I am Sylvester.'" - David Masciotra, Pop Matters

It would have been the 70th birthday today of the ultimate Queen of Disco!

All hail...

Sylvester featuring Two Tons'o'Fun- Dance (Disco Heat) fast version live

Sylvester and Patrick Cowley - Menergy

Sylvester - Someone Like You

Sylvester - I (Who Have Nothing)

Sylvester - You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)

There will never be another...

Sylvester James, Jr. (6th September 1947 – 16th December 1988)

The pioneer of Disco

“If disco – and the music which came after – has an angel, it is the raggedy figure of David Mancuso. If it has a birthplace, it is his club, the Loft.” - Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton, Last Night a DJ Saved My Life.

Legendary DJs such as Larry Levan, Frankie Knuckles, Francois Kervorkian and David Morales cited him as their greatest influence. Without Mr David Mancuso (who died on Monday) and his utopian Loft "club", the whole genre that we now know as "Disco" would have looked very different indeed. His Loft hosted one of the earliest regular "gay dance parties" in New York, at which Mr Mancuso (and his state-of-the art sound system) gave a first outing for many later-to-be-successful artists such as MFSB, Manu Dibango, Nuyorican Soul and Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band to whooping crowds of dancers, and provided a launch-pad from which the multi-coloured, multi-sexual, hedonistic NY club scene would flourish in the 1970s.

There's a whole raft of fascinating dance gems that range across the five-decade history of The Loft (everything from Ian Dury to Harold Melvin to Jah Wobble to the Three Degrees!) in the "Top 100" list compiled by a user called "The Scientist" over at RateYourMusic, and from it, this...

Possibly one of the gayest things you will experience all week - here's Easy Going and Baby I Love You:

Easy Going - Baby I Love You

Thank Disco it's Friday!

RIP David Mancuso (20th October 1944 – 14th November 2016).

Hope you have a suitably chiffon-clad and sparkly weekend in his honour, dear reader...

"Look" of the day...

...Caption Competition, anyone?

[Source - MattAdore]

I Will Survive

Thirty years ago, a huge crowd of rabid Rednecks gathered at a football stadium in Chicago to perform a mass detonation of hundreds of Disco records - a symbolic gesture ("Disco Sucks") that was supposed to signal the death of a type of music loathed by homophobes and racists across the USA.

This radical gesture may well have sparked the rapid demise of the illuminated dance floors, the go-go dancers and the glitterballs for a while, but they failed to kill the music. Despite a sea-change in styles and attitudes throughout the 80s (most American dance music in that decade featured guitars and heavy drum-box effects), in Europe we developed our own more synth-based Italo/Eurodance/Hi-NRG style, and deep underground in the US some pioneering mixers and club DJs were busy creating what later became known as House Music.

As one of those pioneers Frankie Knuckles says, "disco music is alive and well and living in the hearts of music-lovers around the world. It has simply changed its name to protect the innocent."

And so, thirty years later what type of dance music is dominant among cool clubbers? Disco, of course! Here's some examples...

First up (featuring possibly the most unconvincing heterosexual performance ever by Steve Perry), here's Cyberjacks:

Cyberjacks - Don't Drag Me Off This Dancefloor

And then there's this slice of brilliance from Shena:

Shena - Can't Stop The Rain

But of course, the greatest proponents of the "Disco" sound in the noughties must be the Freemasons (love them!)...

Moby - Disco Lies (Freemasons Remix)

Have a great weekend at the Disco!

Read more on the BBC website