Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco (25 page)

This new sound was epitomized by a vocal group from Los Angeles, the Hues Corporation. St. Clair Lee, Fleming Williams, and H. Ann Kelley first got together in 1969 and named themselves after the company owned by billionaire recluse Howard Hughes. They released a couple of flops in the early ’70s before appearing on three tracks on the soundtrack of 1972’s
Blacula.
In 1973, they went into the studio with the Crusaders as their backing band and recorded
Freedom for the Stallion.
The album went nowhere, but one track, “Rock the Boat,” was popular at discotheques and generated enough buzz to propel the track onto radio playlists and, almost a year after it was released, to the top of the American pop charts. The song was a tortuous extended metaphor about a love affair on the rocks, but the title phrase, which was repeated ad nauseam, seemed to echo the message of upward mobility that stations like WBLS were projecting: “Don’t rock the boat.” The music—gently lilting bass line, trade-wind string washes, breezy ersatz gospelisms straight out of the supper club—certainly wouldn’t have done any damage to any seafaring vessel as it lapped against the hull like the tide going out.

Crocker and disco musicians like the Hues Corporation, Barry White, George McCrae, the Joneses, the Originals, Van McCoy, Jimmy Ruffin, and Carol Douglas supplanted soul’s roadhouse with the penthouse and the church with the discotheque. In many ways disco represented the ideal of integration as laid out by the civil rights legislation of the ’60s. “Disco, unlike many other entertainment mediums, has exhibited an extraordinary ability to bring together people of varying colors, races, ideologies, sexual preferences and social financial levels, in an ecumenical dialog of music and dance which transcends many of the limitations of petty everyday prejudices,” wrote
Billboard
’s Radcliffe Joe.
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Even during the heyday of the ’60s, it was still remarkable that Otis Redding, Richie Havens, and Sly Stone would appear on the same stage as rock artists. As
Rolling Stone
’s Abe Peck said, by the mid-1970s, “black style [was] more accessible to whites than it was during the Smoldering Sixties.”
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This accessibility paralleled the rise of the black middle class; it signified the transformation of Afro-America from underclass to full participation in the American dream. The percentage of black families below the low-income level shrank from 48.1 percent in 1959 to 27.8 percent in 1974.
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“From 1965–69, the percentage of blacks making less than $3,000 decreased, while the percentage of blacks earning over $10,000 increased to 28%. In 1965, ten percent of all young blacks were in college; six years later that figure was 18%. By 1972, 2,264 blacks served as elected officials, the highest number in American history at that time. The total annual income of black America was $100 billion.”
40

The problem with this economic and political miracle, though, was that civil rights legislation largely delivered what it promised: the equation of racial liberation with entrée into corporate America. It was a vision of success and salvation that had nothing to do with uplifting the African-American community as a whole, but rather sought to encourage individual achievement and to promote equality and justice as the attainment of white standards of excellence. As a result, Nelson George wrote, “the amount of [black] income invested in black communities was minuscule, and most of that college-trained talent became workers in established white businesses, not independent entrepreneurs. Moreover, many of the economic gains were created by government intervention and monitoring. Blacks were not, then, growing into an independent economic force, but were becoming an increasingly lucrative market for white-provided commodities.”
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But even this imperfect position was perilous and difficult to maintain. As journalist Ellis Cose wrote, citing the research of sociologist Sharon Collins, “For blacks, middle-class status was largely a ‘politically dependent condition.’ A disproportionate number of blacks worked for the government, often in ‘black-related’ agencies, others owed their jobs to ‘legislation that forced employers to hire blacks.’ Still others were in positions that ‘depended on money being funneled from the government into the private sector in all sorts of ways,’ from job-training programs to minority set asides. If the government had not been looming in the background, ‘these people would not have been hired for the most part.’”
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The fragility of status and the sacrifices of assimilation have long been conditions suffered by immigrant groups throughout the world. Of course, the vast majority of African Americans weren’t recent or voluntary immigrants, and it took them hundreds of years to attain a position that most ethnicities reach within two or three generations. Although disco mostly championed assimilation, the tensions and resentment of the new black middle class were articulated in two extraordinary records by one of the original prophets of the integrationist aesthetic.

As one of the principal songwriters at Motown, Lamont Dozier had been one of the architects of the “sound of young America,” applying Fordist production methods to the gospel tradition. Dozier left Motown, along with songwriting partners Brian and Eddie Holland, in 1968 and started writing more political material that would have never made it past Quality Control under Berry Gordy’s regime. “Fish Ain’t Bitin’” (1974), Dozier’s second single as a solo artist, begins like a standard early ’70s “times are bad, woe is me” complaint before turning into one of the few records to openly attack Nixon’s racial policies head-on: “Tricky Dick is trying to be slick / And the short end of the stick / Is all I’m gonna get / Tricky Dick, please quit … lord, when will I overcome or am I just destined, destined to be a bum?… can’t afford to be lazy when the cost of living’s gone crazy.” Where other soul records that explicitly critiqued Nixon—the Honeydrippers’ “Impeach the President,” Weldon Irvine’s “Watergate,” the JB’s’ “You Can Have Watergate Just Gimme Some Bucks and I’ll Be Straight”—were aimed more at Watergate and his duplicity, the lyric referencing “We Shall Overcome” gave “Fish Ain’t Bitin’” a different dimension. The flip side was “Breaking Out All Over,” which smushed together a model stunted funk groove (short, really clipped guitar riff and undermixed horn exclamations) in one channel and more sophisticated chord changes and instrumentation (flutes, soaring strings, a piano somewhere between the church, supper club, and Keith Jarrett’s
Köln Concert
) in the other—a near-perfect exposition of the “Hollywood” style even if the lyrics about the after-effects of trying to kick an addictive love affair were darker than the norm.

On 1975’s “Going Back to My Roots,” Dozier sought to resolve this double consciousness: “Zippin’ up my boots / Going back to my roots / To the place of my birth / Back to down earth … / I’ve been living in a world of fantasy / I’m going back to reality / I’ve been searching for riches I had all the time / And finding out that happiness was just a state of mind / I’m going back home, back where I belong … / I’ve been standing in the rain / Drenched and soaked with pain / Tired of short time benefits / And being exposed to the elements / Picking up the pieces of what’s left of me / Going back to nest in my family tree.” The arrangement shifts almost imperceptibly from a standard, but admittedly very funky, disco-era Crusaders (both keyboardist Joe Sample and reeds player Wilton Felder played on the session) groove—the big, blocky piano chords, the lush guitar effects, the stringlike synth fills, Paulinho da Costa’s run-of-the-mill percussion runs and, most important, the very straight-ahead main rhythm—to, all of a sudden, at about the five-minute mark, percussion and the tightly coiled (very African sounding) guitar riffs. Then the breakdown (all Brazilian percussion and vocal whoops and a massed African chorale) just builds and builds, but never resolves itself—it just fades out. The song was covered in 1981 by Odyssey, but that version begins with part of the African chant and a guitar riff and a bass line that are distinctly more African than at the beginning of Dozier’s version. In other words, there is no journey in Odyssey’s version, whereas Dozier’s original reenacts the restlessness and strains at the heart of the new black middle-class dream.

Dozier’s notion of going back to one’s roots is escapism as surely as Crocker’s cocktail-party paradise, but it was escapism based on betrayal rather than a desire to buy in. Although “Going Back to My Roots” was a smallish disco hit, its message ran counter to disco’s prevailing discourse. The problem was that disco was championing a view of the world that was being dismantled as it was being celebrated. The economic crises of the 1970s disproportionately affected African Americans largely because their economic gains were heavily dependent on government intervention. As sociologist Bart Landry declared, “Without prosperity, the civil rights laws lost much of their impact.” Indeed, Landry found that the recession in the early ’70s resulted not only in a slowdown in the expansion of the black middle class but also a rollback: “Close examination of the data from the 1973–75 and 1980–82 recessions reveals that middle-class blacks not only fared worse than whites during these periods but they actually
lost ground relative to whites.
”
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While disco’s view of the world was faltering in the black suburbs, it was positively collapsing in America’s urban ghettos. Even the growth of black political power (or, at least, representation) couldn’t help the condition of the inner city. “The dilemma for urban blacks is that they are gaining political influence in large urban areas (in 1975 blacks were mayors of 11 large metropolitan cities with populations of 100,000 or more) at the very time when the political power and influence of the cities are on the wane,” wrote sociologist William Julius Wilson. “The growth of corporate manufacturing, of retail and wholesale trade on the metropolitan periphery; the steady migration of impoverished minorities to the central city; the continuous exodus of the more affluent families to the suburbs; and, consequently, the relative decline of the central-city tax base have made urban politicians increasingly dependent on state and federal sources of funding in order to maintain properly the services that are vital for community health and stability. Whereas state and federal funds contributed about 25% to major-city revenues a decade ago, their contribution today amounts to about 50%. Thus, America’s metropolises are increasingly controlled by politicians whose constituencies do not necessarily live in those cities. It is this
politics of dependency
that changes the meaning and reduces the significance of the greater black participation in urban political processes.”
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This trend was repeated in the music industry. Disco held out the promise of crossover success on a mass scale. It never materialized. In fact, the exact opposite was true. As Radcliffe Joe wrote, “It is one of the great ironies of the multi-billion dollar discotheque phenomenon that while the whole concept has its roots in black music and black lifestyles, it has emerged as something of a mixed blessing for blacks.”
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According to Joe, in 1973 (just before the disco boom took off), black artists accounted for thirty-six of the one hundred best-selling singles in the United States; by 1978, the number was down to twenty-one. Nelson George expressed the same trend slightly differently: From 1967 to 1973, the average R&B number one would reach #9 on the pop charts; between 1974 and 1976, the average fell to #15; and in 1978, it was down to #22. While this average roller-coastered up and down, it hit a low in 1981 of #30. As Joe concluded, “A survey of the leading charts shows that disco has not, as had originally been anticipated, made it easier for black artists to enjoy crossover … to the pop charts.”
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This sense of betrayal, shattered hopes, and fear was the dark heart behind disco’s glossy veneer. Disco was a party, but it was celebrating a world that was slipping away; it was movin’ on up at the same time as it was imprisoned by fate. Salvation, whether by the grace of God or the power of the dollar, was no longer something to believe in or hold out for. The only solidity was provided by the “changing same”: No matter what they promise, they just find another way to pull out the rug from under your feet. While this theme popped up from time to time on many of disco’s finest records—“Going Back to My Roots,” the Temptations’ “Law of the Land,” Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes’ “Bad Luck”—it would become writ large by disco’s greatest group.

“DON’T BE A DRAG, PARTICIPATE”

Chic

It’s New Year’s Eve 1977. Bassist Bernard Edwards and guitarist Nile Rodgers have had the year of their lives. The two studio musicians abandoned a lifetime of anonymous session work to make a name for themselves by wholeheartedly embracing the disco boom. Working with a few other musicians and singers as Chic, the two have scored two of the year’s biggest dance floor hits, “Dance, Dance, Dance” and “Everybody Dance,” and released an album with the giant Atlantic label. To top it all off, singer/model/actress/New York nightlife queen Grace Jones wants to work with them on her next record and has invited them to her gig at Studio 54.

Edwards and Rodgers are dressed to the nines. “That night both Bernard and I were in black ties,” Rodgers told journalist Anthony Haden-Guest. “I had a Cerutti dinner jacket and Bernard had an Armani. We were killin’. I probably had a wing-collar shirt, with a decorative front, but not lacy. Pleated, with studs. The whole bit. Spectator shoes. You know, two-tone … You know, Grace Jones! And we were Chic. We wanted to look Chic. We wanted to
smell
Chic!”
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However, it’s snowing and the slush is ruining their threads. They make their way around back and tell the doorman that they’re on the guest list. He doesn’t find their names. After pleading their case to no avail, Edwards and Rodgers go to the main entrance to join the throngs desperately hoping that the doorman, Marc Benecke, would deem them worthy for entrance into the hallowed confines of Steve Rubell’s pleasure palace.