Hatsumi Shibata — レッド・スキャンダル (Red Scandal)
from ラブ・イズ・イリュージョン b/w レッド・スキャンダル (1979)
My favorite Japanese disco diva, Hatsumi Shibata, with a smoking track from 1979, ‘Red Scandal’… the b-side to ‘Love is Just an Illusion.’ The vinyl cover is rad, too.
If you like this, don’t miss ‘Singer Lady.’
Lamont Dozier — Dearest One
b/w Fortune Teller (Mel-o-dy, 1962)
Before his disco-funk raging in the 70s, Lamont Dozier was a damn smooth soul singer, and already baring his impressive songwriting chops. This—at age 20, mind you—was his first Motown recording.
Dennis Parker — New York By Night (extended version)
from Like An Eagle (1979)
I posted yesterday about pornstar-turned-disco-crooner-turned-soap-opera-cop Dennis Parker… since then I’ve been listening to his sole LP over and over, and I’m kind of haunted by it, especially knowing his story. The music isn’t all that spectacular—this track, for example, is terribly overproduced even for disco, with string accents, horn blasts and vocal overdubs worthy of a commercial jingle.
But lyrically this is great stuff, especially sung in such an offhand way by a mustachioed pornstar:
At Studio 54 / they’re waiting at the door / can’t get in / just can’t win
Bushes in the park / shadows moving dark / fast romance / furtive glanceOn 42nd Street / x-rated is the beat / see some skin up on the silver screen
At 53rd and 3rd / A dollar is the word / turn that trick / you better hurry, kid
So flashy and so heartbreakingly painful all at once…
Dennis Parker — Like an Eagle
from Like an Eagle (1979)
Wow.. amazing music video for ‘Like an Eagle,’ a 1979 disco track.. taped from French television. Great shots of the seedy 70s Times Square, and Dennis Parker is strutting around NYC like a crazy person—just the way you should with a disco track like this.
Dennis Parker aka Wade Nichols started his career as a porno actor, starring in flicks like Boynapped! and Bang Bang You Got It, before being noticed by disco producer Jacques Morali (the man behind the Village People). Morali convinced Parker to record a disco album and this track is one of the hits that resulted from the collaboration.
In the meantime, Parker continued his work in the x-rated business, and took a gig as police chief in the soap opera Edge of Night, but he was forced to quit in 1984 as his health deteriorated due to AIDS. He committed suicide the year after.
Haruko Kuwana — Downtown
from Moonlight Island (1982)
More Japanese disco bliss. Here Haruko Kuwana covers the 1975 classic ‘Downtown’ by Tatsuro Yamashita’s short-lived pop group Sugar Babe. But she sings it in 英語 kids: Downtown Saturday Night…
I would love to track down this album.. hit me up if you have it! (Mas disco…)
Haruomi Hosono, Suzuki Shigeru, Tatsuro Yamashita — Passion Flower
from Pacific (1978)
Aw yeah. Three incomparable instrumentalists, one sparkling disco rhinestone. You might call this elevator music. But it’s the kind you’d hear as you breeze out of the elevator at your Hanalei Bay resort, hiding behind your Ray-Bans, and someone hands you a coconut with a straw in it. Oh yes.
Jiro over at the fantastic Ying Yangs hooked me up with this album and I thank him warmly from my cabana.
Tatsuro Yamashita — Daydream
from Ride on Time (1980)
One of my absolute favorite things is Japanese disco. So smooth, so sugary…like Fun Dip in musical form. Makes you wanna scream. Tatsuro Yamashita is one of my musical heroes, as he also founded the classic Japanese group Sugar Babe about seven years before this. Pop genius.
Massara — Margherita (1979)
Today we’ve got a special double feature — one song, two ways. The first (and original) track is the Italian dancefloor hit ‘Margherita,’ aka ‘Daisy’… which repackages the “he loves me, he loves me not” children’s rhyme into an orgiastic italo-disco blow-out.
The genius behind this anthem was Pino Massara, an Italian composer and producer who wrote songs for some of the leading men and ladies of Italian music—Mina, Adriano Celentano and Nicola Arigliano among them. (This track actually samples Celentano’s 1968 hit ‘Azzurro,’ which Pino did not write.)
What I would give to be in a Milanese disco circa 1979, knowing Italians’ love for sing-alongs… pazzesco.
(Stay tuned for part two…)
Cube — Two Heads are Better Than One (1982)
Ready, set, dance. Very catchy synth-driven Italo-disco from Bologna in the early 80s. The trio is Englishman Paul Griffiths on guitar and vocals, backed by his Italian buddies Rudy Trevisi and Serse Mai, who play everything else, mostly stuff requiring a plug.
Chubby and the Turnpikes — I Know the Inside Story b/w I Didn’t Try (1967)
Bathe in the harmonies of Ralph, Pooch, Chubby, Butch and Tiny Tavares—five soul-crooning brothers from New Bedford, Massachusetts. Later, renaming the group Tavares, the brothers dipped into disco, scoring hits like their Bee Gees cover ‘More Than a Woman.’
Useless trivia: the single was backed by ‘I Didn’t Try.’ But promo copies of this record, like the image above, combined the A and B-side titles by mistake.
Sandii — Drip Dry Eyes
from Eating Pleasure (1980)
This is wild — disco-reggae from Japanese/Hawaiian singer Sandii and synth wizard Haruomi Hosono, who produced and arranged the album. (Most of the playing here is by Hosono and his bandmates in Yellow Magic Orchestra.) The wardrobe styling on the cover is apt for the album’s title, I suppose… lettuce cups?
Feel like I’ve been through a washing machine
I’m all washed up and ready to drown
You just locked me in, and took me for a spin
With your drip dry eyes…
Hatsumi Shibata — Singer Lady (1975)
70s glamour at its finest — Japanese diva Hatsumi Shibata sings disco.
Thanks to Hashim B. for hooking me up with this track. I’ve been having a terrible time finding any albums by Shibata online… if you can help please let me know!
B.T. Express — Do It Til You’re Satisfied
from Do It Til You’re Satisfied (1974)
Here is some extremely chewy disco-funk from the “Brooklyn Sound” of the 70s—the group known first as Madison Street Express, later Brooklyn Trucking Express. The spoken word call/response on this track is nothing short of genius. Their other big hit, ‘Express,’ features someone blowing on a wooden train whistle. Also genius. And surely not a coincidence that the album hit #1 on the Soul charts.
This also happens to be the primordial funk from which crawled the smoothly evolved R&B of Kashif (he was keyboardist for the band for a stint in the mid 70s, though doesn’t appear on this album).
The cover is not a platform from the JMZ line, as I’d originally imagined. Instead, as the train sleuths (and former Long Island Railroad conductors) over at Railroad.net have determined, those beautifully ornate railings once graced the Nostrand Ave LIRR station. Trains. An obsession of mine, I’ll admit. My biggest unrealized fantasy as a 9-year-old, nose buried deep in Model Railroader magazine, was to build a train set that would displace everything else in my parents’ garage. Never say never…
Change — Heaven of My Life
from Miracles (1981)
Yesterday Vinyl Confessions & Her Friends was wondering who Suzanne Kraft sampled in his track ‘Chng.’ Well I wasn’t about to figure that out (encyclopedic knowledge of early 80s disco/funk bands notwithstanding..joking) so I asked Kraft.
He says “Change are my number 1.” And yes, it’s this funky track from Change, a pair of Italian producers who wrote music, tracked it, and sent the instrumental versions to New York to get vocals slapped on. Change launched crooner Luther Vandross to prominence; he sang lead on their first album, The Glow of Love, but wasn’t offered enough money to do so on this album. He still did backing vocals though…very distinctive. Indelibly Luther.
Also worth noting (as Vinyl Confessions did) that Cole M. Greif-Neill, of Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, sampled this same tune on the track ‘Peppergood’ by his side project The Samps. (2010) To be served up later…
Suzanne Kraft — Chng
Absolutely kicking track from my favorite disco kid, Suzanne Kraft aka Diego Herrera. So impossibly funky it makes me wish I was doing aerobics. A potential liability if you’re listening in a locale that doesn’t permit dancing. To which I say—get thee to a dancefloor.
Of this track, Diego says: “it’s a re-edit I did well over a year ago that Running Back wanted to put out but I messed up the Ableton set and couldn’t get it sounding how I wanted it to.”
Sounds pretty much how I want it to though… and speaking of Running Back, it’s a Berlin-based label that’s just put out Kraft’s Green Flash LP… a Voyager-worthy record (ok it’s not golden) of slowly evolving, slightly hypnotic disco boogie beats. I’ll post a track from that soon. If you can’t wait, go run back over there to check out the LP, the mp3s, or the Running Back tumblr. Oh yeah, and the original posting of ‘Chng’ o’er at the mighty dublab mp3 blog.
