Those of you too young to remember the days of disco may not understand how truly reviled it was. The teenage son of a friend of mine mocked the fact that I bought, owned and played the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.
But not everyone thought disco sucked. Another friend bought me the Donna Summer album Live and More, a two-LP collection that featured, on side three, in order, live versions of Love to Love You Baby, I Feel Love, and Last Dance.
Then on side four, there was a 17-minute studio version of the MacArthur Park Suite, starting and ending with the Jimmy Webb song with One of a Kind and Heaven Knows mixed there.
The woman born LaDonna Adrian Gaines was one of the most significant artists in her time. “A five-time Grammy Award winner, Summer was the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach number one on the United States Billboard 200 chart and charted four number-one singles in the US within a 12-month period.
“Summer earned a total of 42 hit singles on the US Billboard Hot 100 in her lifetime, with 14 of those reaching the top-ten. She claimed a top 40 hit every year between 1975 and 1984, and from her first top-ten hit in 1976, to the end of 1982, she had 12 top-ten hits (10 were top-five hits), more than any other act during that time period.”
Donna Summer had “nineteen Number One dance hits between 1975 and 2008 (second only to Madonna).” Her “success continued throughout the Eighties and into the Nineties. In 1992 Summer was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.”
In 2013, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, described as the Queen of Disco and the Mother of Modern Dance Music. Unfortunately, it was the year after she died of lung cancer in May of 2012.
Listen to multiple versions of Donna Summer songs, shortest take first
@Love to Love You Baby – #2 pop for two weeks, #3 R&B in 1976 – here or here
@I Feel Love – #6 pop, #9 R&B in 1977 here or here or here
Last Dance – #3 for two weeks pop, #5 R&B in 1978 here or here
MacArthur Park – #1 pop for three weeks, #8 R&B in 1978 here or here
Hot Stuff – #1 for three weeks pop, #3 for three weeks in 1979; here; it also won her a Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, the first time the category was included.
@Bad Girls – #1 for five weeks pop, #1 R&B in 1979 here or here
No More Tears (Enough is Enough) – with Barbra Streisand – #1 for two weeks pop, #20 R&B in 1979; here or here; four Number One pop hits in a little over a year.
@She Works Hard for the Money – #3 for three weeks pop, #1 for three weeks R&B in 1983 here or here
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
@ co-written by Donna Summer
Donna Summer would have been 70 on New Year’s Eve.
I wasn’t “into” disco but loved Donna Summer, and her music was in fact the first that I remember ever dancing to one Halloween (although it also involved a LOT of vodka…). Beep beep, toot toot.
The nice thing about the cover art to On the Radio is the fact that they let Donna look like a Normal Person, as distinguished from the slinky disco-diva portrayed on the sleeve of Four Seasons of Love.
That said, my favorite track of hers is “Winter Melody,” from that same Four Seasons LP. It went nowhere as a single.