Donna Summer: The Queen of Disco Dies

Donna Summer: The Queen of Disco Dies

Informational/Tribute

We all know by now Donna Summer has died.  We all know the story of how another young girl raised in the Church singing gospel went off looking for a singing career.  We have heard the story of how this young woman from Boston went to do European Versions of the Broadway Musical “Hair”.   She married a guy named Helmet Sommer and changed her name to the Anglican version ‘Summer’.

As StarPulse.com put it, “1974, when she met producers/songwriters Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte while working on a Three Dog Night record. The three teamed up for the single "The Hostage," which became a hit around Western Europe, and Summer released her first album, Lady of the Night, in Europe only.

 In 1975, the trio recorded "Love to Love You Baby," a disco-fied reimagining of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin's lush, heavy-breathing opus "Je T'aime...Moi Non Plus." Powered by Summer's graphic moans, "Love to Love You Baby" became a massive hit in Europe, and drew the attention of Casablanca Records, which put the track out in America. It climbed to number two on the singles charts, and became a dance club sensation when Moroder remixed the track into a 17-minute, side-long epic on the LP of the same name.”

The rest is history, the rest of what Donna Summer did can be found on dozens of websites and the stats of her record sales and the music standards she set and the legend of the genre she nearly single handedly defined are all a matter of public record.  

But it is the private record and the personal reality of what this music meant in our lives that I want to focus on.

For those of us in our 50’s, who were teenagers when Disco broke out like a plague, it changed our lives.  Donna Summer kicked down the door, and they all came in and had us dancing and partying all over the U.S., particularly in the New York/ Metropolitan area.  I remember “Speak Easy” in Island Park and the acts that played there, “The Three Degrees, Andrea True Connection, Gloria Gaynor, The Trammps, Vanilla Fudge” and many more.

I remember how I went on my first date to a Donna Summer tune playing on an FM station.  I remember how hot the sex was in the backseat of my Chevy.  I remember how disco music and disco musicians were on every radio station and TV network.  I remember ‘Midnight Special’ and the Disco acts that appeared on ‘Soul Train’.  I remember how some disco music just turned me off but Donna Summer’s music always seemed to turn me on.

I can almost smell the sea breeze remembering when I danced with my wife to ‘On The Radio’ playing from a boom box near the trailer we rented at Camp Pendleton, right on the water at San Onofre, just before I got shipped out to Okinawa.  I remember my wife’s bridesmaid jumping on the back of a motorcycle, running off with one of my Marines while my wife and I were dancing in the sand.

Every time I hear a Donna Summer tune playing I see some fun from my yesterdays.  That’s why it took so long to write this…it’s hard to see the screen between the tears. 

I listened to two songs on May 17^th,  the day Donna Summer died ( it was also my late wife’s birthday), ‘The Wind Cries Mary’ by Jimi Hendrix and ‘I Wish It Would Rain’ by the Temptations.

   

Like salt and sulfur in an open wound so is the music to my soul.  But the booze helps while I listen to the music of Donna Summer and the rest who are on the ‘other side’.  All too soon we will become yesterday.  But some of us will live long enough to forget.

And its raining.

RJ