THE STORY

After the best period of the funk movement, a kind of music conceived for dance rooms was born, a social phenomenon of enormous importance. This is the beginning of the "discos," local for a young people, where it comes set aside live music is set aside to leave the place to the "disc-jockey". On the wave of the big interest that aroused this new fashion in the public, also musicians and singers were attracted from that unexplored planet and for many of them fortune and money didn't delay to arrive.

 

BARRY WHITE

The first to believe was the author and soul singer Barry WHITE, Texan transplanted at Los Angeles. In 1974 he played for the 20th Century the album "Can't get enough" with two songs: "Can't get enough of your love baby" and "You're the first, the last, my everything" destined to become one of the classical song programmed by the clubs still today. Endowed with a phenomenal voice, with a very low stamp that makes it immediately recognizable, and accompanied with a real orchestra of forty elements and with a broad employment of chorists, Barry WHITE is considered one of the more prestigious components of the discomusic. Beside his solist activity, Barry WHITE created a vocal trio of St. Pedro - the Glodean sisters, Linda James and Diane Taylor. The group is initially called Love Unlimited and afterwards Love Unlimited Orchestra ("White gold" and "Hi steppin' hip dressin' fella"). In 1977 Barry White returns to unsheathe successes he had also enriched his group of new characters between which a young native singer of the East Coast: Adrian Donna Gaines.

 

DONNA SUMMER

After singing in many clubs and after her participation at the movie "Hair," A. Donna Gaines moved to Germany and, with the name of Donna Summer, was the uncontested queen of the discomusic, thanks, above all, to an Italian producer: George Moroder that has signed all her more important jobs: from the first "Love to love you baby" - of which tales were told on the presumed orgasms experienced from Donna Summer during the recording. Obviously the song finds itself immediately in classification and becomes a hit in discos. Initially snobbed from the Americans, puzzled from the manipulations to which her voice was subjected, Donna Summer becomes queen of the discomusic with three songs number one in all the world: "Live and more" (1978), "Bad girl" (1979) and "On the radio" (1979) with the duet "No more tears enough is enough" with Barbara Streisand.

 

GLORIA GAYNOR

If Donna Summer is the ephemeral image of pop star built in study, an other famous soul artist equipped with big vocal talent is Gloria Gaynor, appreciated also from a specialistic public (Frank Sinatra). After the first successes ("Honey bee" and "Never can say goodbye") and any past year apart, Gloria Gaynor realizes what still today is a hit in disco: "I will survive," that becomes number one in all Europe and also in the USA. Twenty years after its exit it's still very sold today.

 

VILLAGE PEOPLE

Going on to speak about men - so to say ! - we find the Village People, that in 1978 stormed on the scene with a sound loaded of joy and energy. The texts were ironic and happy-go-lucky ("YMCA") and easily connected to their condition, never, however, with vulgar and hard tones like it often happens today. The six components of the group, under the protection of the French producer Jacques Morali, always published for the Casablanca label ("Macho man", "Cruising" and "Go west").

 

SYLVESTER

Another figure show up strongly tied up to the homosexual environment that has done the history of the discomusic is Sylvester. Born in Los Angeles, artistically grows in San Francisco where he signs a contract for the Fantasy, he records "Step II," that contains the famous "You make me feel mighty real" a real hammer. Sylvester James, this his true name, beyond to a brief and fortunate solist career, also created a duo of good and corpulent vocalists: Jzoda Rhodes and Martha Wash called Two Tons o'Fun.

 

BEE GEES

An other band entirely composed of men and the unique entirely composed of white, is that of the Australians Bee Gees. For the Robin brothers, Barry and Maurice Gibb the year of the turn is 1975 when under the guide of Robert Stigwood and with a team of arrangers of big work the funky trio goes toward sonority ("Jive talking" - n°1 in 1975). The top comes reached signing the sonorous column of the film "Saturday night fever" ("Night fever" and "If I can't have you" with Yvonne Elliman and "Staying alive"). The record will sell thirty millions of copies at the time.

 

So, it explodes the fever of Saturday night and for millions of young people spending the evenings of the weekend in a disco becomes a fashion which they could not abdicate. And also if seeing again John Travolta with his trousers and collars extra-large today makes smile, "Saturday night fever" remains a fundamental episode in the history of the music.