"Let Me Take You Dancing" Bryan Adams (1979)

 

A lot of people don't know that Bryan Adams first hit was a disco tune....

"Benihana" Marilyn Chambers (1977)

 

Following on the heels of '70s porn star Andrea True, who scored a massive Top 40 hit with "More More More" (as The Andrea True Connection) in 1976. Fellow porn actress Marilyn Chambers tried her hand at disco-pop music, hoping for similar success. 

Oh well. Nice try.

And yes, it's all true, Marilyn Chambers was also the fresh faced young mom on the early '70s boxes of Ivory Snow laundry detergent (above.) Once Proctor & Gamble found out about her porn career, the box was quickly redesigned with a different model (below.)

"Where Is My Man" Eartha Kitt (1983)

"Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" Tiny Tim (1982)

Originally sold as a flexi-disc part of a novelty card (I would hope so), here's Tiny Tim with his rendition (?) of the Rod Stewart classic.

No "Tiptoe Through The Tulips" falsetto here. If you're too scared to click on the YouTube video, imagine Al Jolson on amyl nitrate and backed by the Mos Eisley Spaceport Cantina Band and you'll have an idea of what this sounds like.

Drug Store Christmas Records For Kids

Never heard of The Caroleers? You're not alone. Their name isn't even mentioned on some of their own records! 

But if you were a kid of the '50s to '70s, you may have had a few of their records.

And they may have sold as many Christmas records between 1950-1975 as Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole and Burl Ives. 

Admittedly, there are no actual sales numbers of these records because the only places you could find them were in racks at drug stores or supermarkets. And the RIAA never calculated music sales outside mainstream retail record stores in those days. But from the sheer numbers of these records I encounter in thrift stores and on eBay, it was likely a few million. 

The Caroleers recorded childrens records for Peter Pan Records in the early '50s as The Peter Pan Caroleers. Peter Pan Records was a division of Synthetic Plastics Corporation (SPC). SPC was based in Newark, NJ and started out in the late '20s making other plastic products (buttons, board game and toy pieces, hair combs and whatever other minute miscellanea you could make out of PVC.)

SPC started Peter Pan Records in 1949. They initially made plastic 78 RPM records for children. They knew as the 33 1/3 RPM long playing and 45 RPM record was taking the nation by storm, there would be BIG business in children's records due to the sudden rise in hand-me-down 78 RPM phonographs from their parents who quickly adopted the slower speeds and multiple speed functions of the automatic record changers that were coming into vogue.

By the late '50s, they were making the then standard 45s. You may better remember the Peter Pan childrens 45s from your '60s/'70s childhood. They were the second biggest (behind Disney) producer of children's records in America.

 

Playhour Records (late '60s): Contrary to popular collector belief, it wasn't SPC, but Pickwick that made Playhour Records, following the SPC/Peter Pan formula perfectly. Playhour records were packaged in tote pack sets of 12 45s and sold for $3.  

SPC expanded in the adult market with their budget record labels. They often mixed in their Caroleers recordings for Peter Pan on their Christmas albums marketed for adults. (Under the Yuletide, Spin-O-Rama, Diplomat and Tinkerbell labels.) These albums are regular thrift store/eBay finds.

Where we have this nearly flawless Perry Como impersonator.....

 

...or this Tom T. Hall imitator....

At least, "The Caroleers" was their pseudonym. No one truly knows who they were, where they came from. Who was their leader, etc. Nothing. Session information and artistic liner notes do not exist. As with everything SPC ever produced..

The cold hard truth is "The Caroleers" were just a blanket name for a group of unknown session singers and musicians at SPC who were paid a flat fee for their services and recieved no royalties from their recordings. And this was perhaps the best selling group on a budget label ever.

And guess how much songwriters Jack Rollins and Steve Nelson got in royalties from The Caroleers' recording of their "Frosty The Snowman"? Just guess.....

In an apparent Gene Autry knockoff.....

Most of The Caroleers recordings were made in the 1950s and '60s at a time when music publishing was fraught with copyright loopholes galore, allowing for dozens of knockoff and "tribute" records (much like we see today.) SPC and other budget record labels got away with this by claiming their music was intended for children and thus for play inside homes, not over the radio or publicly. SPC did not service radio stations and most radio stations did not play their product. (Most.) So they actually claimed that they didn't have to owe songwriters royalties in spite of making millions in profit from their songs.

Today, the artists and songwriters are usually in on it too, as these knockoffs are actually a revenue stream, no matter how disingenuous.

     

However in the early '70s, songwriters were sick of all these cheap record labels whoring their music and collectively put an end to this racket and most budget labels ceased operation or went into other lines.

About this time however, SPC stopped pressing the old Caroleers records and hacked up something even more nefarious for Christmas in the '70s.

"The Peppermint Kandy Kids" anyone?....This record was narrated with Peter Fernandez doing utterly the very worst Jackie Vernon impersonation you will ever hear.

However even in the disco era, old habits died hard with SPC (by then known as Peter Pan Industries.) They even cashed in on the Disco Duck craze with "Irwin The Disco Duck"   

SPC went back to exclusively childrens records as Peter Pan and later, Power Records which incorporated an action comic book style format targeted to boys.

Christmas With Conniff - The Ray Conniff Singers (1959)

This album always brings visions of aluminum Christmas trees and this music blasting out of console stereos like these.

The Ray Conniff Singers were essentially the vocal relief between the Mantovani and 101 Strings instrumentals in the Name-That-Tune world of your typical "Beautiful Music" FM radio stations of the '60s and '70s. They were known for making "safe" covers of pop songs your parents could like.


This included disco.


They actually continued until the '80s.

 

A KJR Rock N' Roll Christmas (1975)

"(A KJR) Rock N' Roll Christmas" Ric Hansen & Julie Miller (1975)

Listen Here

In the '70s, the most listened to Top 40 radio station in Seattle was "Channel 95" KJR (950 AM.)

The station could easily claim to as many as 1/4 to even 1/3rd of all the radios in Puget Sound were tuned in to KJR at any given time and they would be pretty much spot on. You heard KJR everywhere in the '70s.

And back then, this sticker on the window or bumper of any car in the Seattle area meant the driver was pretty cool.

While FM rock was available (KJR's FM sister station in the '70s was KISW.), it was still a niche and would remain so until the 1979 disco implosion that drove everyone to harder rock or Adult Contemporary pop in Seattle. (KJR-AM today is All Sports.) 

But KJR was a Seattle institution in the thick of the '70s. So much so, it was revived on 95.7 FM during the '70s nostalgia wave of the '90s. (Somehow, I never got used to the FM-upgraded tagline in their '90s jingles "KJR Seattle.....Channel 95.7!")

And when you're THIS big, you can put out your own Christmas song and have it easily become a local hit. And that's what KJR did in 1975.

Julie Miller (who?) does an eerily accurate Karen Carpenter imitation while powerhouse jock Ric Hansen runs down the kind of stuff you heard on KJR in 1975 and before joining the chorus (yes, he sings on this one.)

If you're from Seattle and you remember KJR back in the day, it's an awesome holiday flashback. If not, it's probably pretty much 3 minutes of WTF.

Enjoy!

Disco Noel

("Disco Dance Step Lesson Enclosed!")

The Disco Duck

In the end.....nobody was spared.

"Disco Duck" Rick Dees & His Cast of Idiots (1976)

"Disco Duck" Paul Vincent (1976, French Version)

"Silly Love Songs" Irwin The Disco Duck & The Wibble-Wabble Singers And Orchestra (1977)

"Macho Duck" Donald Duck (1979)

The Night That Disco Died

34 years ago tonight in Chicago, Radio DJ Steve Dahl of Chicago rock station WLUP put a glorious end to the disco music craze of the '70s called "Disco Demolition Night" when he and another DJ came up with the idea of the Disco Demolition at Comiskey Park on July 12, 1979. Dahl, who was never a fan of disco had been fired from rock station WDAI-FM 94.7 the previous Christmas Eve when that station changed it's format to All Disco.

That was the last straw. This meant war.

Dahl was hired by WLUP almost immediately and the anti-disco backlash had officially begun.

Fans who brought a disco record to the ballpark this night 34 years ago were admitted for 98 cents, a number which closely matched WLUP’s 97.9 MHz dial position. The event took place at Comiskey Park between games of a White Sox/Tigers double-header. Early fears of embarrassingly low attendance were squashed when 90,000 disco-haters converged onto a stadium that held 52,000.

After the Sox lost the first game 4-1, during which time the increasingly rowdy fans got drunk and crazy, the real fun began. Steve Dahl wore a combat helmet and rode around the ballpark in a Jeep. In center field a giant box was packed full of disco LPs and blown up which left a hole in the playing surface. People who didn’t get their Village People, KC & The Sunshine Band and Sister Sledge records in the box used them as frisbees and began flinging them through the air. Thousands of fans then swarmed the field, lighting fires and starting small riots. The bases were stolen, the batting cage was destroyed and chaos ruled. Chicago police in riot gear finally cleared the field which was so badly damaged that the second game could not be played. It was later determined that the White Sox would have to forfeit the game to the Tigers because they failed to provide acceptable playing conditions.......

After the Disco Demolition Night promotion, disco began to lose its popularity. Rapidly.

Steve Dahl on the other hand still worked anti-disco sentiment, even producing a parody record of Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy" (one of the first ever "parody" type records which "Weird" Al Yankovic would later become famous for) called "Do Ya Think I'm Disco". He recorded it as a single on the independent Ovation Records label (one of the smaller national indie labels of the time that was based in Chicago.)

http://blogfiles.wfmu.org/DP/2007/11/306_14_Steve_Dahl_-_D%27Ya_Think_I%27m_Disco.mp3



As for disco, it had completely left the pop charts by fall of 1980. It was replaced by an even more tedious form of music called "adult contemporary" and acts like Barbara Streisand (one of the very few acts to have disco hits and survive the backlash) and Neil Diamond began filling the airwaves along with the arena rock bands (Foreigner, Journey, Rush, Loverboy, etc, etc.)

However, disco never REALLY died. It went back underground to the gay dance clubs and R&B charts where it started for most of the early '80s and resurfaced as pop with the Madonna craze of the mid-'80s. It exists today as a specialty genre simply called "dance music". A brief nostalgic revival in the '90s of '70s disco brought a lot of the older music back into the mainstream......

The ULTIMATE DJ Turntable.....

.....circa 1930.....

"Rasputin" Boney M (1978)

An irresistible disco classic........

"Heaven On The Seventh Floor" Paul Nicholas (1977)

Well before "Love In An Elevator".........

The Soundesign Trendsetter 7

I've never been a fan of Soundesign. Especially their super chintzy '80s systems.

However in the '70s, Soundesign, while still an overall lowbrow electronics firm, did have the distinction of daring to be, um, different. And that's where we find this beast..

The Trendsetter 7 (which thankfully didn't set any trends) was a 200 lb disco themed monstrosity with an automatic three speed (33, 45 and 78 RPM) BSR turntable, AM/FM Stereo receiver, cassette and 8-Track tape decks that looked more like a jukebox than a home stereo system.

With the lighting system on in a darkened room, it looked like a real party starter

The amplifier pumped out a reasonable 50 watts per channel (perhaps the most powerful amplifiers Soundesign ever made) and was perfect for your inner Disco Stu.

But it IS a Soundesign product and while light years better than anything they made in the '80s, it did have some major drawbacks. The phono cartridge was ceramic and prone to picking up external vibrations. The tape decks got gummy with heavy use. The radio was actually very good and unusually selective and sensitive on FM. The AM section, while wide-band and very good fidelity wise had pretty crummy distant reception and selectivity, the stronger local AM signals tended to dominate. The cabinet was horrendously cheap, made of particle board and fell apart easily. With both speakers housed the same cabinet underneath, the bass was especially boomy.

Later models of this system were much smaller and had the speakers enclosed behind flashing lights.

 One model also had a overhead light with a small mirrored ball.

These stereos were never big sellers and the ones that were sold were usually destroyed after the disco bust. Finding a complete, intact unit is extremely rare and the few surviving ones that are in good condition sell for quite a bit.

September

"Do you remember the 21st night of September......."

And it's Friday night too......Make it special.....

Cheers!

Pink Lady

In the waning edge of the disco craze, a little unknown female duo from Japan called Pink Lady began appearing on American TV.

So WHO were these girls?

Pink Lady was the biggest selling and most famous Japanese pop act of the 1970's. They scored several MASSIVE hits in Japan. And they were ready to hit America

They scored a minor Top 40 hit in America. "Kiss In The Dark" (1979) which peaked at #37. And released an English language album on Elektra Records.

They looked sure become the next BIG thing in America. They took Japan by storm in the '70s. They were very beautiful and very talented. So in March 1980. NBC unveiled "Pink Lady" for your Saturday evening viewing pleasure. 

But leave it to American TV network boss minds to completely screw it up.....

You see, Mie (left) and Kei (right) were paired with this dork, Jeff Altman (lower center.) in utterly the WORST variety TV show America has ever seen. This show was so bad, it actually KILLED the variety TV show format in America ever since.

It certainly wasn't Pink Lady themselves. Even the most attractive and talented act couldn't survive a TERRIBLE production.

First, the music on the show was primarily disco at a time when disco was on it's deathbed. Power Pop bands on one end and Adult Contemporary music on the other were dominating the Top 40 charts at the time.  

On the first episode of the series (and this is on DVD too. ) He made one particularly shocking comment. Even in that less politically correct year, our jaws dropped

"You just get turned on by my sexy round eyes."

Off in the distance, you could already hear the sound of millions of people changing the channel.

Bizarrely, these girls seemed to take it all in stride. That was because they actually didn't know what was being said. Pink Lady themselves knew very little English. And most of their direction came off-camera and for each sketch, they had to memorize lines they didn't understand.

Finally, this show was aired at prime time on a Saturday night. An AUTOMATIC kiss of death for any new TV show.

In every episode Jeff Altman played the dumbass (very well), flanked by two beautiful Japanese ladies. Pink Lady were the stars of the show. But like a kazoo in the middle of an angelic harp solo, Jeff Altman's annoying presence made it unbearable. 

I felt sorry for them.  They deserved better. American network TV can be very, very cruel.

Their American show and fame was extremely brief. The show only lasted for ONE MONTH. Only 5 episodes ever aired. And they never attempted an American comeback.

But in spite of this disaster, they did pick up some American fans, who saw through this horrible travesty. They have maintained an English fan site with more information and details on their history, music and current activity (they've reunited every few years....):

http://www.pinkladyamerica.com/