Daily Record 1/28/11: Endless Summer-Donna Summer (1994)

I’ve never hated disco music. I never thought it sucked.

There may have been times when I tried to play off my enjoyment of disco as “ironic” but the plain fact is I like disco music. I liked it in 1979 and I like it now.

Back in ’78 and ’79, I was the king of rare 7th/8th grade dances at St. Joseph School. It was easy to be the disco king at that age and in that place though, since hardly of the other boys in my class would “fast dance,” even as some of them were working up the courage to slow dance with girls.

I was totally cool with fast dancing and, in my white leisure suit and silk shirt, with my hair parted down the middle, I was well-prepared for hot grade school disco dancing action. So well-prepared, in fact, that I wound up dancing up a storm to Donna Summer’s “Heaven Knows” with one of the chaperone moms.

At the risk of bringing mortification onto my family for generations to come, I’ll simply note that, at the end of this dancing-with-someone-else’s-mom fiasco, the mom and I joined hands and spun wildly around during the climax of “Heaven Knows” until vertigo took hold and we both collapsed in heaps on the floor, dizzy in our disco decadence.

It would be difficult to calculate how many similar late 1970s scenes played themselves out, from Studio 54 down to church halls throughout the country,  to the throb of Donna Summer’s classic disco tunes. She was the Queen of Disco, after all.

In reality, Summer is a talented artist whose work far transcends labels, particularly a label as limited as “disco.” But it is as a dance floor diva that Donna Summer achieved her greatest successes, all of which are nicely chronicled on Endless Summer, a 1994 single-disc compilation of her work from “Love To Love You Baby” through “This Time I Know It’s For Real,” along with two tracks that were new to the compilation.

Even on a greatest hits disc, it’s clear that Donna Summer’s music was way more adventurous than the disco haters would have given her credit for. “I Feel Love” is an electrodance freakout (Brian Eno allegedly told David Bowie that “I Feel Love” was the future of modern music); “MacArthur Park” is a melodramatic cover that probably caused fans of the original version to shake their fists angrily at the dance music gods for allowing such an “abomination”; “The Wanderer” shows off Summer’s rock side; “Love Is In Control (Finger On the Trigger)” features a huge Quincy Jones production extravaganza.

And don’t forget “State of Independence,” a trippy tune written by Jon Anderson (of Yes fame) and Vangelis (of Chariots of Fire fame).

Even when Summer got a little cheesy (her “No More Tears” duet with Barbra Streisand), it’s all in good fun.

And, finally, let’s talk a moment about Summer’s huge hit, “Hot Stuff,” since this is the second time this week that a song with that title has been on one of the Daily Records. The Rolling Stones’ “Hot Stuff,” (from their Black and Blue album, which I covered earlier this week) was a move into reggae-influenced disco territory (or, maybe, disco-influenced reggae territory; it’s hard to tell) for the Stones.

Inversely, Summer’s “Hot Stuff” is a bold move from disco into rock. In fact, I’d love to go to a Rolling Stones concert, in which the Stones perform their song “Hot Stuff” and then segue, medley-like, into Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff.” Mick Jagger could totally pull that off, though such a medley would entail the Stones’ admitting that, when it comes to songs titled “Hot Stuff,” Donna Summer  just brought the hotter stuff.

Daily Record 1/18/11: Ken Burns Jazz-Dizzy Gillespie (2000)

I am fairly certain that Dizzy Gillespie was one of the five coolest men to ever have walked the face of the earth. Despite the somewhat dorky Ken Burns Jazz title, this compilation, which was tied into Burns’ exhaustive history of  jazz (which is the only one of Burns’ documentaries I’ve caught from beginning to end), provides ample evidence of Gillespie’s coolness and is probably an excellent place for a Gillespie neophyte to start if they want to hear some of his best work.

This collection covers a wide period of time–1940 through 1967–in the iconic trumpet player’s career and includes such jazz classics as “A Night in Tunisia” (the current unrest in that country reminded me of this tune, which led me to the entire CD), “Things to Come,” and the epic “Manteca.” I’m no student of jazz, but what I hear when I listen to this overview is Gillespie giving big band music a huge, innovative shot in the arm and then going on to investigate all manner of Latin music and just generally creating some of the most distinctive music (in any genre) of the ’40s and ’50s (and, to some extent, even the ’60s, though by then I don’t think Gillespie was pushing the boundaries the way he once did). If I were to use one word to describe Dizzy Gillespie’s music–even the music he recorded 70 years ago–the word I’d choose is modern.

If all of this sounds a tad academic to people who don’t care about jazz, I don’t mean it to because I think most of the music on this CD is highly accessible (the 14-minute-long “The Eternal Triangle” might be a bit much) and extremely tuneful. I get the impression that there is a lot going on in most of these songs, but I don’t feel like I’m enduring some kind of music appreciation lesson when I’m listening. This is fun stuff.

While this might seem odd on a superficial level, I originally came to appreciate Dizzy Gillespie through Chuck Mangione. I was a big fan of Mangione’s when he climbed the charts with his easy listening fluegelhorn-driven Feels So Good album. While it might not be too difficult to draw a straight line from Chuck M. to Kenny G., the fact is that Mangione had a deep, solid background in jazz from the beginning, no matter how nice “Feels So Good” and other Mangione tunes might sound in dentists’ offices and elevators.

Mangione organized a benefit concert at which a handful of jazz heavyweights played, including Gillespie. The concert became a double live album called Tarantellas, which included an entire side devoted to Gillespie’s performance. This is where I first heard blazing versions of “Manteca” and a few other of Gillespie’s bopping best.

Unfortunately, I saw fit to trade Tarantellas in at some used record store during a vinyl purging I had and I’ve never seen a copy of it in a used record store ever since. Plus, as far as I know, it’s never been released on CD. I’d love to hear it again but that doesn’t seem likely at this point.

That’s OK though. I am grateful to Mangione for leading me to Gillespie (and ultimately, to other jazz artists) and Dizzy left a vast array of music for us all to explore. So if you haven’t discovered Dizzy Gillespie yet, why not start today? Tell him Chuck (and Rich) sent you.

Biggest Hits-Bobby Bare (1982)

Biggest Hits–Bobby Bare (1982)

It usually takes around five hours to drive the 240 miles from the Aston/Boothwyn section of Pennsylvania to Dad’s hometown of Mt. Savage, Maryland, though my grandfather could allegedly do it in three hours. He apparently did not believe in rest stops.

When I was a kid, we’d head out to Mt. Savage a couple times a year—sometimes around Easter, during the summer, and once more around New Year’s. During our trips to and from Western Maryland, Dad used to control the radio.

Since the Volare station wagon didn’t have a tape player (either cassette or 8-track), we’d usually be held captive to Dad’s radio whims. More often than not, these whims revolved around finding a decent AM country music that could be enjoyed until its fading signal could be replaced by another decent AM country music station. And so it went.

Gradually, things like FM radio and Casey Kasem’s countdown shows began to creep into the travel equation, but let’s focus for a minute on those AM country-dominated trips.

Dad would find a station and lock in on it. Lisa and I, in the back seat, would take about as many songs by Conway, Loretta, Conway & Loretta, Charlie Rich and so many others about trucks, mama and jail as we could stand, before we’d beg Dad to find a station that might be playing the latest hit from ABBA or Elton. He’d relent for a while, if he found such a pop station, but then we’d be back to country once the pop signal showed signs of disappearing.

Mom has told me about one trip, which probably would have happened in 1980, during which we couldn’t get away from George Jones’ classic, “He Stopped Loving Her Today,” which, Mom claims, sent me into fits of laughter after hearing it one too many times. This might have been the trip that inspired me to write the words to my own fake country song, “Mama Was a Truck Drivin’ Man.” Which, I should note, was not about my mother.

Memories of those car rides have led me to a more thorough appreciation of country music in the 1970s than I had when we were actually making those trips and “suffering” through those AM stations. The well of country music runs so deep that any time I play an album from those years I feel like I might hear some forgotten (at least by me) classic, a tune I may have been forced to hear four hours into one of our in the Volare journeys–somewhere between Frederick and Flintstone, probably– but haven’t heard since.

A craving for tunes from those times is probably what led me to pick up Bobby Bare’s Biggest Hits compilation from one of the cheap boxes at the Princeton Record Exchange, one of the World’s Great Record Stores. The album’s title is a bit of a misnomer though—while some of the songs on Biggest Hits were undoubtedly popular with Bare’s longtime fans, he did not enjoy as much commercial success in this period of his career (the album covers three albums and a single Bare released from 1978-1981), as he had done previously. In fact, Biggest Hits really marks the last period during which Bare (whose career began in the early ‘60s) enjoyed any real radio play at all.

Lack of commercial success (I probably didn’t hear many of these songs on the Mt. Savage trips) certainly doesn’t dim the quality of the music, which is strong throughout the album.

The subject matter for Bare’s songs—drinking, loving, fighting, cheating—is typical of country songs, at least until he gets to the cross-dressing. Incidentally, all those subjects and more can be found in Biggest Hits’ leadoff track, “Tequila Sheila,” co-written by Mac Davis and frequent Bare songwriter Shel Silverstein. Bare seems to be able to have it both ways, with heartfelt ballads like Rodney Crowell’s “Till I Gain Control Again,” and goofy novelty songs like “Big Dupree” (a humorous song about castration) that usually don’t wear out their welcome too easily.

In addition to “Tequila Sheila,” two other highlights from Biggest Hits — “Numbers” and “Goin’ Back to Texas”—are all taken from Down & Dirty, a raucous 1979 live album that sounds like it would be a good fun listen, if you should ever happen to stumble upon it.

These days, of course, we have way more than just AM country radio stations for our car trips. While I’m sure this is a relief to my kids, I think I’d like to hear some of those stations again.

Best of Earth, Wind & Fire, Vols. 1 (1978) & 2 (1988)

Best of Earth, Wind & Fire (1978)

Best of Earth, Wind & Fire Vol. 2 (1988)

Sometime in July or August 1978, Dad, Mom, Lisa and I piled into the Plymouth Volare station wagon and headed over to the movie theater between Pathmark and K-mart (or was it still Grant’s?) at the strip mall in Brookhaven. We settled into our seats and took in a surreal double feature: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band and American Graffiti.

It was a pure 1970s midsummer night’s movie-going dream.

I don’t know what these two movies were doing together. American Graffiti is widely considered to be a classic film about youth and oncoming loss of innocence in the 1950s. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band is widely—no, I think universally—not considered to be a classic film about youth and oncoming loss of innocence in a mid-1970s conception of what the mid-1960s was supposed to look like. Or, it could be that I’m just totally over thinking Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band.

Oddly enough, we were there for Sgt. Pepper.  American Graffiti, which was originally released in 1973, was old news. We already knew all about the 1950s anyway, thanks to Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley. We were ready to move boldly into the ‘60s and Robert Stigwood’s cinematic vision of mid-to-late period Beatles music was going to be our gateway drug.

As horrid as Sgt. Pepper was (and I’ve never seen it since that night in ’78), there were a few moments within it that were not completely humiliating to everyone involved (including the viewer). Steve Martin (who I worshipped at the time) was funny as Dr. Maxwell Edison; Aerosmith, playing some kind of bad guy band, snarled through a suitably raunchy “Come Together;” and the finale, while not what most people would proclaim to be good, was a rave-up on the “Sgt. Pepper” reprise, performed by a bizarre collection of whoever was hot, whoever used to be hot and whoever aspired to be hot, in 1978.

Also clearly emerging as a highlight amid the wreckage was Earth, Wind & Fire, brilliantly performing Paul McCartney’s “Got To Get You Into My Life,” the song that leads off EWF’s first Best of collection. While I’d clearly heard hits like “Shining Star” and “Sing a Song”  on the radio, Sgt. Pepper may have been the first place where I saw EWF perform. I do not remember being blown out of my seat by their cameo in the movie, but it had to have been pretty awesome, particularly when compared to other scenes from the movie.

Now, more than 30 years later, EWF’s take on McCartney’s tune still strikes me as one of the best Beatles covers ever.  I can’t help but marvel at how thoroughly EWF make “Got to Get You Into Your Life” their own tune, while simultaneously calling to my attention how much I love the Beatles’ original.

It may be though, that recording one of the best Beatles’ covers ever is just a minor point on Earth, Wind & Fire’s resume. By the time they met up with Sgt. Pepper, EWF had already recorded a series of ambitious albums (including one, 1977’s All’n’All, that made it into music writer Tom Moon’s book 1,000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die) and some of the best pop funk singles the 1970s had to offer (and that decade offered much in the pop funk department). I’m talking here about “Sing a Song” and “Shining Star,” of course, but also “September,” “Fantasy” and others.

While I’ve yet to hear All’n’All, I can report that the singles that make up Best of… Vol. 1 and Best of… Vol. 2 sound just as good now as they did when they ruled the radio. Vol. 1 is clearly the classic of the two albums, though the second set does include EWF’s last big hits, “Let’s Groove,” “Boogie Wonderland” and “After The Love Has Gone.”

Conveniently, if you’re looking to fit the best of  both of these albums onto one CD or a tidy playlist, all you need to do is delete  “Turn On (The Beatbox)” and “Devotion” from the Best of…Vol. 2, since the former song is a minor song that was new to the ’88 set and “Devotion” is, for some reason on both volumes.

My kids know Earth, Wind & Fire from Chris Rock’s sitcom, Everybody Hates Chris, as the band that played at Chris Rock’s school the day he and his friend Greg cut class to go see Ghostbusters. Hearing EWF at their best ought to give Jimmy and Chris an idea why Chris was so bummed that he missed them (in addition to being in big trouble for cutting class).