Chuck’s Record Collection: “Disco Mania”

Early in the 1974-79 heyday of “disco music,” the music didn’t really have a definable sameness – it happened to be R&B and pop music with a strong beat that people could dance to.

If people ask me my favorite disco songs, they’re likelier to get examples from this era (1974-76), when it sounded like musicians and singers were grooving and before synthesizers became so common.

Don’t get me wrong: I love I Feel Love, etc., but to me those songs evoke a different mood than the early disco hits.

K-tel released a number of disco collections, but its first, 1975’s Disco Mania, evokes the R&B roots of disco satisfyingly.

It also includes some real outliers, given the more diffuse description of 1975 disco music. The studio version of Kiss’ Rock and Roll All Nite, a Hot 100 stiff in the summer of ’75, is on side two!

(It would take four more years for the quartet to record a bonafide disco hit.)

Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s Hey You and Styx’s Lady can’t be considered disco, either. And Jim Gilstrap’s Swing Your Daddy might make for a good shag dance – but is no glitter-ball favorite.

There’s less variation in the era for this collection. Most songs peaked on the Hot 100 between summer ’74 and summer ’75. (For the one big exception, see Question Marks)

Fans of the McCraes, George and Gwen, will find each of their biggest pop hits here, as will fans of the unrelated Carol Douglas and Carl Douglas.

My biggest issue with this collection is something that would become increasingly evident as the decade progressed:

To get 10 songs on a side, not only would the songs be compressed, affecting the sound quality, but the edits went beyond what it took to adjust an album version for a 45 single.

tnocs.com contributing author and record collector extraordinaire chuck small

Still, I have a soft spot for this collection as oddball as it is. Later disco collections would seem monotonous and not nearly as much fun. To hear the album for yourself, go here:

Top-shelf:

• Van McCoy and the Soul City Symphony’s The Hustle
• Blackbyrds’ Walking in Rhythm
• Gwen McCrae’s Rockin’ Chair
• Gloria Gaynor’s Never Can Say Goodbye
• Carol Douglas’ Doctor’s Orders•
• Shirley & Company’s Shame, Shame, Shame
• Carl Douglas’ Kung Fu Fighting
• George McCrae’s Rock Your Baby
• B.T. Express’ Express

Decent:

• Sugarloaf featuring Jerry Corbetta’s Don’t Call Us, We’ll Call You
(a great song, marred by a dumb edit that removes the “John, Paul and George” reference)
• Styx’s’ Lady
• Hot Chocolate’s Disco Queen
• Kool and the Gang’s Spirit of the Boogie
• Jim Gilstrap’s Swing Your Daddy

Yuck:

• …The Stylistics’ Disco Baby.
• The Hues Corporation’s Rockin’ Soul, and
• Disco Tex’s I Wanna Dance Wit’ Choo …

… aren’t terrible songs, but the slices here are mere teases. And the studio version of Rock and Roll All Nite deserved to fail – the live version, which brought them to AT40, was vastly superior.

Question Marks:

I have no idea what possessed K-tel to include Billy Preston’s 1973 No. 1, Will It Go Round in Circles? in this collection. Not only did it predate the songs popularly thought to kick off the disco era – Rock Your Baby and Rock the Boat – but Preston had another No. 1 from late 1974, Nothing from Nothing, that would have been a good stylistic fit.

I’ll guess it wasn’t included because it was used on a previous 1975 K-tel compilation, “Sounds Spectacular.” But then again, so were Shame, Shame, Shame and Never Can Say Goodbye!

Maybe K-tel thought three repeats were one too many.

Overall, far more “top-shelf” than “yuck” – and, really, those are more because of the collection’s edits than the songs themselves…

…so it’s not a bad set to have.

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