Listen to the ground...there is movement all around... Saturday Night Fever didn't invent disco...but in many ways, it epitomized the genre. With the December 1977 release of the John Badham-directed drama and its soundtrack album, the onetime underground dance movement which had been rising to the mainstream since at least 1974 became the mainstream. Disco's alluring blend of the gritty and the glamorous gained a face in the form of John Travolta, whose tough yet tender Tony Manero of Bay
Get ready to strut into record stores--Saturday Night Fever's immortal soundtrack is being reissued as a super deluxe set alongside the film itself. Based on a New York Magazine article that was later found to be fabricated, Saturday Night Fever ironically solidified the image of disco in popular culture. John Travolta's rough-edged but sympathetic Tony Manero--a Brooklyn bum working in a hardware store by day and tearing up the floor of the 2001 Odyssey by night--established the young TV
Today, we're looking at two recent releases on Cherry Red's Big Break Records label from two legends of disco (and so much more): The Trammps and Gloria Gaynor! "Where were you when the lights went out in New York City?" asked The Trammps in song on the opening track of 1977's Trammps III. (The answer? Everyone was making love, naturally!) The urgent, atypically topical track by Allan Felder, Ron Tyson and arranger-producer Norman Harris is just one highlight on this underrated album,
Rhino U.K. is bringing disco back with a new triple-disc compilation of dance classics, and an updated reissue of a successful compilation released earlier this year. First up, Rhino's reissuing the new Nile Rodgers/CHIC compilation Up All Night. The double-disc set, originally compiled by Wayne A. Dickson of Big Break Records and mastered by Dickson and BBR engineer Nick Robbins, with liner notes from Christian John Wikane, was released in July to capitalize on Rodgers' highly enjoyable wave
At the crossroads of silky Philadelphia soul and pulse-pounding disco, you’d likely find The Trammps. Hailing from the City of Brotherly Love, The Trammps earned their immortality when the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack included their hit “Disco Inferno.” But that classic track is only one small part of the vocal group’s story, which is now being retold by Demon Music Group’s Music Club Deluxe label on the 2-CD, 34-track The Definitive Collection. Boasting recordings from Atlantic, Buddah
Now's as good a time as any to get into the sweet sounds and lush arrangements of Philadelphia soul in the 1970s. 2011 marked the 40th anniversary of legendary writer/producers Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff's creation of a label that set the groundwork for some of the best soul and R&B sounds of the decade, and this year's seeing a lot of excellent catalogue projects honoring that legacy. We've already told you about Legacy's Golden Gate Groove: The Sound of Philadelphia Live in San