Disco is a genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the 1970s from the United States' urban nightlife scene.
The disco sound is typified by "four-on-the-floor" beats, syncopated basslines, and string sections, horns, electric piano, synthesizers, and electric rhythm guitars. Lead guitar features less frequently in disco than in rock. Well-known disco artists include Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, the Bee Gees, Chic, KC and the Sunshine Band, Thelma Houston, Cerrone, Village People and Michael Jackson.[1][2] While performers and singers garnered public attention, record producers working behind the scenes played an important role in developing the genre. Films such as Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Thank God It's Friday (1978) contributed to disco's mainstream popularity.
Disco started as a mixture of music from venues popular with African Americans, Hispanic and Latino Americans, Italian Americans,[3][4] LGBT people (especially African-American and Latino American gay men),[5] and psychedelic hippies in Philadelphia and New York City during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Disco can be seen as a reaction by the counterculture during this period to both the dominance of rock music and the stigmatization of dance music at the time. Several dance styles were developed during the period of disco's popularity in the United States, including the Bump and the Hustle.
By the late 1970s, most major U.S. cities had thriving disco club scenes, and DJs would mix dance records at clubs such as Studio 54 in New York City, a venue popular among celebrities. Discothèque-goers often wore expensive, extravagant and sexy fashions. There was also a thriving drug subculture in the disco scene, particularly for drugs that would enhance the experience of dancing to the loud music and the flashing lights, such as cocaine and Quaaludes, the latter being so common in disco subculture that they were nicknamed "disco biscuits". Disco clubs were also associated with promiscuity as a reflection of the sexual revolution of this era in popular history.
Disco was the last popular music movement driven by the baby boom generation. It began to decline in the United States during 1979-80, and by 1982 it had lost nearly all popularity there. Disco Demolition Night, an anti-disco protest held in Chicago on July 12, 1979, remains the most well-known of several "backlash" incidents across the country that symbolized disco's declining fortune.
Disco was a key influence in the development of electronic dance music and house music. It has had several revivals, such as Madonna's highly successful 2005 album Confessions on a Dance Floor, and more recently in the 2010s, entering the pop charts in the US and the UK.
EtymologyThe term "disco" is shorthand for the word discothèque, a French word for "library of phonograph records" derived from "bibliothèque". The word "discothèque" was current in the same meaning in English in the 1950s.[6]
"Discothèque" became in use in French as a term for a type of nightclubs in Paris after these had resorted to playing records during the Nazi occupation in the early 1940s. Some clubs used it as their proper name. In 1960 it was also used to describe a Parisian nightclub in an English magazine.[6]
In the summer of 1964 a short sleeveless dress called "discotheque dress" was very popular in the United States for a short time. The earliest known use for the abbreviated form "disco" described this dress and has been found in the Salt Lake Tribune of 12 July 1964, but Playboy magazine used it soon after to describe Los Angeles nightclubs in September of the same year.[6]
Vince Aletti was one of the first to describe disco as a sound or a music genre. He wrote the feature article "Discoteque Rock Paaaaarty" that appeared in Rolling Stone magazine in September 1973.
Musical characteristicsThe music typically layered soaring, often-reverberated vocals, often doubled by horns, over a background "pad" of electric pianos and "chicken-scratch" rhythm guitars played on an electric guitar. "The 'chicken scratch' sound is achieved by lightly pressing the strings against the fretboard and then quickly releasing them just enough to get a slightly muted scratching [sound] while constantly strumming very close to the bridge."[10] Other backing keyboard instruments include the piano, electric organ (during early years), string synth, and electromechanical keyboards such as the Fender Rhodes electric piano, Wurlitzer electric piano, and Hohner Clavinet. Synthesizers are also fairly common in disco, especially in the late 1970s.
The rhythm is laid down by prominent, syncopated basslines (with heavy use of broken octaves, that is, octaves with the notes sounded one after the other) played on the bass guitar and by drummers using a drum kit, African/Latin percussion, and electronic drums such as Simmons and Roland drum modules. The sound was enriched with solo lines and harmony parts played by a variety of orchestral instruments, such as harp, violin, viola, cello, trumpet, saxophone, trombone, clarinet, flugelhorn, French horn, tuba, English horn, oboe, flute (sometimes especially the alto flute and occasionally bass flute), piccolo, timpani and synth strings, string section or a full string orchestra.
Most disco songs have a steady four-on-the-floor beat, a quaver or semi-quaver hi-hat pattern with an open hi-hat on the off-beat, and a heavy, syncopated bass line. Other Latin rhythms such as the rhumba, the samba and the cha-cha-cha are also found in disco recordings, and Latin polyrhythms, such as a rhumba beat layered over a merengue, are commonplace. The quaver pattern is often supported by other instruments such as the rhythm guitar and may be implied rather than explicitly present.
Songs often use syncopation, which is the accenting of unexpected beats. In general, the difference between a disco, or any dance song, and a rock or popular song is that in dance music the bass drum hits four to the floor, at least once a beat (which in 4/4 time is 4 beats per measure), whereas in rock the bass hits on one and three and lets the snare take the lead on two and four (the "backbeat"). Disco is further characterized by a 16th note division of the quarter notes as shown in the second drum pattern below, after a typical rock drum pattern.
The orchestral sound usually known as "disco sound" relies heavily on string sections and horns playing linear phrases, in unison with the soaring, often reverberated vocals or playing instrumental fills, while electric pianos and chicken-scratch guitars create the background "pad" sound defining the harmony progression. Typically, all of the doubling of parts and use of additional instruments creates a rich "wall of sound". There are, however, more minimalist flavors of disco with reduced, transparent instrumentation, pioneered by Chic.
DJs
"The [disco] DJ was central to the ritual of 1970s dance culture, but the dancing crowd was no less important, and it was the combination of these two elements that created the conditions for the dance floor dynamic."[11] In disco parties and clubs, a "...good DJ didn't only lead dancers...[to the dance floor,] but would also feel the mood of the dance floor and select records according to this energy (which could be communicated by the vigor of the dancing, or level of the crowd's screams, or sign language of dancers directed towards the booth)."[11] Disco-era DJs would often remix (re-edit) existing songs using reel-to-reel tape machines, and add in percussion breaks, new sections, and new sounds. DJs would select songs and grooves according to what the dancers wanted, transitioning from one song to another with a DJ mixer and using a microphone to introduce songs and speak to the audiences. Other equipment was added to the basic DJ setup, providing unique sound manipulations, such as reverb, equalization, and echo effects unit. Using this equipment, a DJ could do effects such as cutting out all but the throbbing bassline of a song, and then slowly mixing in the beginning of another song using the DJ mixer's crossfader.
The DJs played "... a smooth mix of long single records to keep people 'dancing all night long'".[12]
Notable U.S. disco DJs include Karen Mixon Cook (the first female disco DJ in the US), Jim Burgess, Walter Gibbons, John "Jellybean" Benitez, Richie Kaczar of Studio 54, Rick Gianatos, Francis Grasso of Sanctuary, Larry Levan, Ian Levine and David Mancuso.
DJs not only played songs in clubs; they also remixed, looped and live-mixed these songs from the DJ booth, changing the ways songs sounded. For example, a DJ might use the intro or bassline from a popular disco track and beatmatch and layer the vocals from a second song over top. As well, some DJs were also record producers who created and produced disco songs in the recording studio. Larry Levan, for example, is as well known for his prolific record producer work as for his contributions as a DJ.
Because record sales were often dependent on dance floor play by DJs in leading nightclubs, DJs were also influential for the development and popularization of certain types of disco music being produced for record labels.
Production
The "disco sound" was much more costly to produce than many of the other popular music genres from the 1970s. Unlike the simpler, four-piece-band sound of funk, soul of the late 1960s, or the small jazz organ trios, disco music often included a large pop band, with several chordal instruments (guitar, keyboards, synthesizer), several drum or percussion instruments (drumkit, Latin percussion, electronic drums), a horn section, a string orchestra, and a variety of "classical" solo instruments (for example, flute, piccolo, and so on).
Disco songs were arranged and composed by experienced arrangers and orchestrators, and record producers added their creative touches to the overall sound using multitrack recording techniques and effects units. Recording complex arrangements with such a large number of instruments and sections required a team that included a conductor, copyists, record producers, and mixing engineers. Mixing engineers had an important role in the disco production process, because disco songs used as many as 64 tracks of vocals and instruments. Mixing engineers and record producers, under the direction of arrangers, compiled these tracks into a fluid composition of verses, bridges, and refrains, complete with orchestral builds and breaks. Mixing engineers and record producers helped to develop the "disco sound" by creating a distinctive-sounding, sophisticated disco mix.
Early records were the "standard" three-minute version until Tom Moulton came up with a way to make songs longer. Moulton wanted to make longer songs, so that he could take a crowd of dancers at a club to another level and keep them dancing longer. He found that was impossible to make the 45-RPM vinyl discs of the time longer, as they could usually hold no more than five minutes of good-quality music. With the help of José Rodriguez, his remaster/mastering engineer, he pressed a single on a 10" disc instead of 7". They cut the next single on a 12" disc, the same format as a standard album. Moulton and Rodriguez discovered that these larger records could have much longer songs and remixes. 12-inch records, even for singles, quickly became the standard format for all DJs of the disco genre.
Sound and light equipmentPowerful, bass-heavy, hi-fi sound systems were viewed as a key part of the disco club experience. "Mancuso introduced the technologies of tweeter arrays (clusters of small loudspeakers, which emit high-end frequencies, positioned above the floor) and bass reinforcements (additional sets of subwoofers positioned at ground level) at the start of the 1970s in order to boost the treble and bass at opportune moments, and by the end of the decade sound engineers such as Richard Long had multiplied the effects of these innovations in venues such as the Garage."[11]
Typical lighting designs for disco dance floors could include multi-coloured lights that swirl around or flash to the beat, strobe light, an illuminated dance floor and a mirror ball.
Disco dancingIn the early years, dancers in discos danced in a "hang loose" or "freestyle" approach. At first, many dancers improvised their own dance styles and dance steps. Later in the disco era, popular dance styles were developed, including the "Bump", "Penguin", "Boogaloo", "Watergate" and "Robot". By October 1975 the Hustle reigned. It was highly stylized, sophisticated and overtly sexual. Variations included the Brooklyn Hustle, New York Hustleand Latin Hustle.[14]
During the disco era, many nightclubs would commonly host disco dance competitions or offer free dance lessons. Some cities had disco dance instructors or dance schools, which taught people how to do popular disco dances such as "touch dancing", "the hustle", and "the cha cha". The pioneer of disco dance instruction was Karen Lustgarten in San Francisco in 1973. Her book The Complete Guide to Disco Dancing (Warner Books 1978) was the first to name, break down and codify popular disco dances as dance forms and distinguish between disco freestyle, partner and line dances. The book topped the New York Times bestseller list for 13 weeks and was translated into Chinese, German and French.
In Chicago, the Step By Step disco dance TV show was launched with the sponsorship support of the Coca-Cola company. Produced in the same studio that Don Cornelius used for the nationally syndicated dance/music television show, Soul Train, Step by Step's audience grew and the show became a success. The dynamic dance duo of Robin and Reggie led the show. The pair spent the week teaching disco dancing to dancers in the disco clubs. The instructional show which aired on Saturday mornings had a following of dancers who would stay up all night on Fridays so they could be on the set the next morning, ready to return to the disco on Saturday night knowing with the latest personalized dance steps. The producers of the show, John Reid and Greg Roselli, routinely made appearances at disco functions with Robin and Reggie to scout out new dancing talent and promote upcoming events such as "Disco Night at White Sox Park".
Some notable professional dance troupes of the 1970s included Pan's People and Hot Gossip. For many dancers, a key source of inspiration for 1970s disco dancing was the film Saturday Night Fever (1977). This developed into the music and dance style of such films as Fame (1980), Disco Dancer (1982), Flashdance (1983), and The Last Days of Disco (1998). Interest in disco dancing also helped spawn dance competition TV shows such as Dance Fever (1979).
Disco fashion[edit]
Disco fashions were very trendy in the late 1970s. Discothèque-goers often wore glamorous, expensive and extravagant fashions for nights out at their local disco club. Some women would wear sheer, flowing dresses, such as Halstondresses or loose, flared pants. Other women wore tight, revealing, sexy clothes, such as backless halter tops, "hot pants" or body-hugging spandex bodywear or "catsuits".[15] Men would wear shiny polyester Qiana shirts with colorful patterns and pointy, extra wide collars, preferably open at the chest. Men often wore Pierre Cardin suits, three piece suits with a vest and double-knit polyester shirt jackets with matching trousers known as the leisure suit. Men's leisure suits were typically form-fitted in some parts of the body, such as the waist and bottom, but the lower part of the pants were flared in a bell bottom style, to permit freedom of movement.[15]
During the disco era, men engaged in elaborate grooming rituals and spent time choosing fashion clothing, both activities that would have been considered "feminine" according to the gender stereotypes of the era.[15] Women dancers wore glitter makeup, sequins or gold lamé clothing that would shimmer under the lights.[15] Bold colors were popular for both genders. Platform shoes and boots for both genders and high heels for women were popular footwear.[15]Necklaces and medallions were a common fashion accessory. Less commonly, some disco dancers wore outlandish costumes, dressed in drag, covered their bodies with gold or silver paint, or wore very skimpy outfits leaving them nearly nude; these uncommon get-ups were more likely to be seen at invitation-only New York City loft parties and disco clubs.[15]
Drug subculture and sexual promiscuity
In addition to the dance and fashion aspects of the disco club scene, there was also a thriving club drug subculture, particularly for drugs that would enhance the experience of dancing to the loud, bass-heavy music and the flashing colored lights, such as cocaine[16] (nicknamed "blow"), amyl nitrite ("poppers"),[17] and the "... other quintessential 1970s club drug Quaalude, which suspended motor coordination and gave the sensation that one's arms and legs had turned to "Jell-O."[18] Quaaludes were so popular at disco clubs that the drug was nicknamed "disco biscuits".[19]
Paul Gootenberg states that "[t]he relationship of cocaine to 1970s disco culture cannot be stressed enough..."[16] During the 1970s, the use of cocaine by well-to-do celebrities led to its "glamorization" and to the widely held view that it was a "soft drug".[20] Cocaine was also popular because its stimulating effect "...fueled all-night parties" at disco clubs.[21] LSD, marijuana, and "speed" (amphetamines) were also popular in disco clubs, and the use of these drugs "...contributed to the hedonistic quality of the dance floor experience."[22][23] Since disco dances were typically held in liquor licensed-nightclubs and dance clubs, alcoholic drinks were also consumed by dancers; some users intentionally combined alcohol with the consumption of other drugs, such as Quaaludes, for a stronger effect.
According to Peter Braunstein, the "massive quantities of drugs ingested in discothèques produced the next cultural phenomenon of the disco era: rampant promiscuity and public sex. While the dance floor was the central arena of seduction, actual sex usually took place in the nether regions of the disco: bathroom stalls, exit stairwells, and so on. In other cases the disco became a kind of 'main course' in a hedonist's menu for a night out."[18] At The Saintnightclub, a high percentage of the gay male dancers and patrons would have sex in the club; they typically had unprotected sex, because in 1980, HIV-AIDS had not yet been identified.[24][25] At The Saint, "...dancers would elope to an un[monitored] upstairs balcony to engage in sex."[24] The promiscuity and public sex at discos was part of a broader trend towards exploring a freer sexual expression in the 1970s, an era that is also associated with "swingers clubs, hot tubs, [and] key parties."[26]
History[edit]
The first discotheques[edit]
Disco was mostly developed from music that was popular on the dance floor in clubs that started playing records instead of having a live band. The first discotheques mostly played swing music. Later on uptempo rhythm and bluesbecame popular in American clubs and northern soul and glam rock records in the UK.
In the early 1940s nightclubs in Paris resorted to playing (jazz) records during the Nazi occupation.[6]
Régine Zylberberg claimed to have started the first discotheque and to have been the first club DJ in 1953 in the "Whisky à Go-Go" in Paris. She installed a dance floor with coloured lights and two turntables so she could play records without having a gap in the music.[27]
In October 1959 the owner of the Scotch Club in Aachen, West Germany chose to install a record player for the opening night instead of hiring a live band. The patrons were unimpressed until a young reporter, who happened to be covering the opening of the club, impulsively took control of the record player and introduced the records that he chose to play. Klaus Quirini later claimed to thus have been the world's first nightclub DJ.[6]
Discotheque dancing became a European trend that was enthusiastically picked up by the American press.[6]
The birth of disco is often claimed to be found in the private dance parties held by New York City DJ David Mancuso's home that became known as The Loft, an invitation-only non-commercial underground club that inspired many others.[9] He organized the first major party in his Manhattan home on Valentine's Day 1970 with the name "Love Saves The Day". After some months the parties became weekly events and Mancuso continued to give regular parties into the 1990s.[28] Mancuso required that the music played had to be soulful, rhythmic, and impart words of hope, redemption, or pride.[29]
Timeframe and social context for the rise of disco culture in New York[edit]
In the 1970s, the key counterculture of the 1960s, the hippie movement, was fading away. The economic prosperity of the previous decade had declined, and unemployment, inflation and crime rates had soared. Political issues like the backlash from the Civil Rights Movement culminating in the form of race riots, the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy and the Watergate scandal left many feeling disillusioned and hopeless. The start of the ’70s was marked by a shift in the consciousness of the American people: the rise of the feminist movement, identity politics, gangs, etc. very much shaped this era. Within New York city specifically, there was a surge in immigration which led to white flight - as many of these immigrants were Asian, Latino, and Black (Afro-Caribbeans). Disco music and disco dancing provided an escape from negative social and economic issues.[30]
In Beautiful Things in Popular Culture, Simon Frith highlights the sociability of disco and its roots in 1960s counterculture. "The driving force of the New York underground dance scene in which disco was forged was not simply that city's complex ethnic and sexual culture but also a 1960s notion of community, pleasure and generosity that can only be described as hippie", he says. "The best disco music contained within it a remarkably powerful sense of collective euphoria."[31]
When Mancuso threw his first informal house parties, the gay community (who comprised much of The Loft's attendee roster) was often harassed in the gay bars and dance clubs, with many gay men carrying bail money with them to gay bars. But at The Loft and many other early, private discotheques, they could dance together without fear of police action thanks to Mancuso's underground, yet legal, policies. Vince Aletti described it "like going to party, completely mixed, racially and sexually, where there wasn't any sense of someone being more important than anyone else," and Alex Rosner reiterated this saying "It was probably about sixty percent black and seventy percent gay...There was a mix of sexual orientation, there was a mix of races, mix of economic groups. A real mix, where the common denominator was music." [32]
Film critic Roger Ebert called the popular embrace of disco's exuberant dance moves an escape from "the general depression and drabness of the political and musical atmosphere of the late seventies."[33]
Pauline Kael, writing about the disco-themed film Saturday Night Fever, said the film and disco itself touched on "something deeply romantic, the need to move, to dance, and the need to be who you'd like to be. Nirvana is the dance; when the music stops, you return to being ordinary."[34]
1966–74: Proto-disco and early history of disco music[edit]
During the 1960s, when the discotheque culture from Europe became popular in the United States, several music genres with dance-able rhythms rose to popularity and evolved into different sub-genres: rhythm and blues (originated in the 1940s), soul (late 1950s and 1960s), funk (mid-1960s) and go-go (mid-1960s and 1970s; more than "disco", the word "go-go" originally indicated a music club). Those genres, mainly African-American ones, would influence much of early disco music.
During the 60s, the Motown record label developed a popular and influential own sound, described as having "1) simply structured songs with sophisticated melodies and chord changes, 2) a relentless four-beat drum pattern, 3) a gospel use of background voices, vaguely derived from the style of the Impressions, 4) a regular and sophisticated use of both horns and strings, 5) lead singers who were half way between pop and gospel music, 6) a group of accompanying musicians who were among the most dextrous, knowledgeable, and brilliant in all of popular music (Motown bassists have long been the envy of white rock bassists) and 7) a trebly style of mixing that relied heavily on electronic limiting and equalizing (boosting the high range frequencies) to give the overall product a distinctive sound, particularly effective for broadcast over AM radio." [35] Motown had many hits with early disco elements by acts like the Supremes (for instance "You Keep Me Hangin' On" in 1966), Stevie Wonder (for instance "Superstition" in 1972), The Jackson 5and Eddie Kendricks ("Keep on Truckin'" in 1973).
In the mid-1960s and early 1970s Philadelphia soul and New York soul developed as sub-genres that also had lavish percussion, lush string orchestra arrangements and expensive record production processes.
At the end of the 1960s musicians and audiences from the Black, Italian and Latino communities adopted several traits from the hippie and psychedelia subcultures. They included using music venues with a loud, overwhelming sound, free-form dancing, trippy lighting, colorful costumes, and the use of hallucinogenic drugs.[36][37][5] In addition, the perceived positivity, lack of irony, and earnestness of the hippies informed proto-disco music like MFSB's album Love Is the Message.[36][38] Partly through the success of Jimi Hendrix, psychedelic elements that were popular in rock music of the late 1960s found their way into soul and early funk music and formed the subgenre psychedelic soul. Examples can be found in the music of the Chambers Brothers, George Clinton with his Parliament-Funkadelic collective, Sly and the Family Stone and the productions of Norman Whitfield with The Temptations.
The long instrumental introductions and detailed orchestration found in psychedelic soul tracks by the Temptations are also considered as cinematic soul. In the early 1970s, Curtis Mayfield and Isaac Hayes scored hits with cinematic soul songs that were actually composed for movie soundtracks: "Superfly" (1972) and "Theme from Shaft" (1971). The latter is sometimes regarded as an early disco song.[39]
Psychedelic soul influenced proto-disco acts such as Willie Hutch and Philadelphia soul.[40]
In the early 1970s, the Philadelphia soul productions by Gamble and Huff evolved from the simpler arrangements of the late-1960s into a style featuring lush strings, thumping basslines, and sliding hi-hat rhythms. These elements would become typical for disco music and are found in several of the hits they produced in the early 1970s:
- "Love Train" by the O'Jays (with M.F.S.B. as the backup band) was released in 1972 and topped the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1973
- "The Love I Lost" by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes (1973)
- "Now That We Found Love" by The O'Jays (1973), later a hit for Third World in 1978.
- "TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia)" by MFSB with vocals by The Three Degrees, a wordless song written as the theme for Soul Train and a #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1974.
Other early disco tracks that helped shape disco and became popular on the dance floors of (underground) discotheque clubs and parties include:
- "Soul Makossa" by Manu Dibango was first released in France in 1972. It was picked up by the underground disco scene in New York and subsequently got a proper release in the U.S., reaching #35 on Billboard Hot 100 in 1973
- "The Night" by the Four Seasons was released in 1972, but was not immediately popular. It appealed to the Northern soul scene and became a hit in the UK in 1975.[citation needed]
- "Love's Theme" by Barry White's the Love Unlimited Orchestra, an instrumental song from their album Rhapsody in White reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 early in 1974.
- "Jungle Fever" by The Chakachas was first released in Belgium in 1971, was later released in the U.S. in 1972, were it reached #8 on the Billboard Hot 100 that same year.
Early disco was dominated by record producers and labels such as Salsoul Records (Ken, Stanley, and Joseph Cayre), West End Records (Mel Cheren), Casablanca (Neil Bogart), and Prelude (Marvin Schlachter), to name a few. The genre was also shaped by Tom Moulton, who wanted to extend the enjoyment of dance songs — thus creating the extended mix or "remix", going from a three-minute 45 rpm single to the much longer 12" record. Other influential DJs and remixers who helped to establish what became known as the "disco sound" included David Mancuso, Nicky Siano, Shep Pettibone, Larry Levan, Walter Gibbons, and Chicago-based Frankie Knuckles. Frankie Knuckles was not only an important disco DJ; he also helped to develop house music in the 1980s.
Disco hit the television airwaves as part of the music/dance variety show Soul Train in 1971 hosted by Don Cornelius, then Marty Angelo's Disco Step-by-Step Television Show in 1975, Steve Marcus' Disco Magic/Disco 77, Eddie Rivera's Soap Factory, and Merv Griffin's Dance Fever, hosted by Deney Terrio, who is credited with teaching actor John Travolta to dance for his role in the film Saturday Night Fever, as well as DANCE, based out of Columbia, South Carolina.
In 1974, New York City's WPIX-FM premiered the first disco radio show.[41]
Norman Whitfield[edit]
As a producer and songwriter Norman Whitfield had helped to develop the Motown sound in the 1960s with many hits for Marvin Gaye, the Velvelettes, the Temptations and Gladys Knight & The Pips. From around the production of the Temptations' album Cloud Nine in 1968 he incorporated some psychedelic influences and started to produce longer tracks, with more room for elaborate rhythmic instrumental parts. A clear example of such a long psychedelic soul track is "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone", which appeared as a single edit of almost seven minutes and an approximately 12-minute-long 12" version. By the early 70s, many of his productions had evolved more and more towards funk and disco, as heard on albums by the Undisputed Truth and the 1973 album G.I.T.: Get It Together by The Jackson 5. After he left Motown in 1975 he produced some more disco hits, including "Car Wash" (1976) by Rose Royce.
Disco culture in the United Kingdom in the early to mid-1970s[edit]
In the late 1960s, uptempo soul with heavy beats and some associated dance styles and fashion were picked up in the British mod scene and formed the northern soul movement. Originating at venues such as the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, it quickly spread to other UK dancehalls and nightclubs like the Chateau Impney (Droitwich), Catacombs (Wolverhampton), the Highland Rooms at Blackpool Mecca, Golden Torch (Stoke-on-Trent) and Wigan Casino. As the favoured beat became more uptempo and frantic in the early 1970s, northern soul dancing became more athletic, somewhat resembling the later dance styles of disco and break dancing. Featuring spins, flips, karate kicks and backdrops, club dancing styles were often inspired by the stage performances of touring American soul acts such as Little Anthony & the Imperials and Jackie Wilson.
In 1974 there were an estimated 25,000 mobile discos and 40,000 professional disc jockeys in the United Kingdom. Mobile discos were hired deejays that brought their own equipment to provide music for special events. Glam rock tracks were popular, with for example Gary Glitter's 1972 single "Rock and Roll Part 2" becoming popular on UK dance floors while it did not get any radio airplay.[42]
1974–77: Rise to the mainstream
From 1974 to 1977, disco music continued to increase in popularity as many disco songs topped the charts.
