Tag Archive | University of Puget Sound

Saturday Night Fever

Feb12

The Bee Gees

February 12, 2019

It was this trio’s  sound which came to define a  craze which swept the United States in 1978. By early January the Bee Gees dominated the Billboard charts. They would go on  to have three number one singles that year, solidifying Disco as the ‘sound’.

On February 12th the Bee Gee’s Stayin’ Alive, the song featured in the opening segment of the hit movie Saturday Night Fever, was in the middle of a four week stint at the top.  Two months earlier, on December 17, 1977, the movie captured the attention of the country. Soon guys were donning their own white disco suits and gals strapped on wedgy high heels and wore swingy dresses, flooding dance floors everywhere as they gyrated to the catchy beat.

More than the movie, however, it was the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack that defined the era. From the Infallible Wikipedia:

“It remains the best selling soundtrack of all time with over 45 million units sold. In the United States, the album was certified 16× Platinum for shipments of at least 16 million units. The album stayed atop the album charts for 24 straight weeks from January to July 1978 and stayed on Billboard‘s album charts for 120 weeks until March 1980. In the UK, the album spent 18 consecutive weeks at No. 1. The album epitomized the disco phenomenon on both sides of the Atlantic and was an international sensation. The album has been added to the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress for being culturally significant.”

Saturday-Night-Fever-Soundtrack-Ristampa-Vinile-lp2.jpgThe Bee Gees, already a successful group, had no small part in the creation of the soundtrack. In all, eight of their original songs are featured. But for the fact that Columbia records refused the producers the rights to use Boz Skaggs song Lowdown, the Bee Gees might never have gotten involved.

Movie producer, Robert Stigwood, contacted Robin Gibb who related the conversation as this:

“We were recording our new album in the north of France. And we’d written about and recorded about four or five songs for the new album when Stigwood rang from LA and said, ‘We’re putting together this little film, low budget, called Tribal Rites of a Saturday Night. Would you have any songs on hand?’, and we said, ‘Look, we can’t, we haven’t any time to sit down and write for a film’. We didn’t know what it was about.”

What happened next is that most of the songs were written in one weekend and the rest, they say, is history.

bee gees 1978.jpgAlthough the Bee Gees may have lost an album that year, their place in the annals of musical legends was solidified.

As a 20 year old college co-ed, I was not immune from the disco craze. A student at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, myself and a sorority sister enrolled in a Disco dancing class at Tacoma Community College.

For a number of weeks we attended the class where we learned all the fancy footwork, arm movements and twirls of the dance.  I bought a white dress with a handkerchief hem, donned my white wedge sandals, and was soon going out dancing.

Despite my natural klutziness, I managed to dance with the best of them and, in the process, met a recent alumni from one of the fraternities who turned out to be the best dancer I ever knew. Alan knew every step, every move, and was a great teacher and partner. Dancing with him was magical.

At the time I did not appreciate what a unique time or experience it was. By 1979 Disco had faded due – I think – to the reluctance of the majority of the male population to learn the dances.  It was soon replaced with moon walking and other forms of dance and then, in the late 1980’s, with the phenomenon of country line dancing. And so it goes throughout history.  But for me, whenever I hear Stayin’ Alive or any Bee Gee song of that era, I find myself busting the moves. Just don’t tell my daughter, okay?

A couple of links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Fever_(soundtrack)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_Gees

Disco Duck

Oct16

October 16, 2018

In the world of one hit wonders this ‘song’ has quite the interesting history. It was written and recorded in the summer of 1976 by a Memphis disc jockey. And it was the impetus for him being fired from his job. Regardless, the satirical novelty piece went on to become the number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 on October 16 of that year. It’s name: Disco Duck.disco duck

Rick Dees was working at a Memphis radio station when he conceived the concept for the song. At the time, Disco music was just starting to emerge into the mainstream. Prior to then it had been primarily a sound associated with the Disco clubs popular in the northeast United States. By the time the movie ‘Saturday Night Fever’ was released, it was nearly impossible to not at least have heard the term ‘Disco.’

But back to Disco Duck. Dees was motivated to write it based on another novelty song from the 1960’s. According to the Infallible Wikipedia:

dees duck

‘Written by Dees, ‘Disco Duck’ was inspired by a 1960s novelty dance song called ‘The Duck,’ recorded by Jackie Lee (Earl Lee Nelson) in 1965. According to Dees, it took one day to write the song, but three months to convince anyone to perform it.

Combining orchestral disco styles with a Donald Duck–esque voice as the main plot point, the story within ‘Disco Duck’ centers around a man at a dance party who is overcome by the urge to get up and ‘get down’ in a duck-like manner. When the music stops, he sits down, but when he decides to get up and dance again, he finds that everyone in the room is now doing his dance.”

Radio being radio, Dees soon found himself unemployed due to management forbidding him to play the song on their station. Also from the Infallible Wikipedia:

” For all its success, ‘Disco Duck’ was shunned by radio stations where Dees was living in Memphis, including WMPS-AM, the station Dees worked for at the time. Station management forbade Dees from playing the song on his own show and rival stations in the city refused to play it for fear of promoting the competition. When Dees talked about (but did not play) the song on his show one morning, his boss fired him citing conflict of interest. After a brief mandatory hiatus, Dees was hired by station WHBQ-AM, WMPS’s primary competition in Memphis.”

Dees went on tour to promote the song, eventually gathered a group to play it live, and the song was featured in the 1977 hit movie ‘Saturday Night Fever.’

My own memory of this song dates to January of 1978 during the peak of the Disco craze. Disco was THE music of the year. Saturday Night Fever had been released in December 1977 and we were all learning how to dance Disco.

But it was during an annual event for the Greek system at the University of Puget Sound when Disco Duck was forever burned into my brain.

Each January the fraternities and sororities would have a weeklong event which culminated in the initiation of new members to their ranks. The sororities called this “Inspiration Week.” For the guys it was “Hell Week.”

I belonged to one of two sororities which, when the Greek system at UPS saw a decrease in numbers a few years earlier, moved into former fraternity houses smack dab in the middle of ALL the remaining frat’s. This turned out to be a mixed blessing. Unlike the other sororities on campus, we had an actual freestanding house rather than having to live in the dorms. The down side was that we had four frat’s which flanked our house and the boys were, one might say, creative.

Phi Delta ThetaThe frat which impacted us the most were the Phi Delta Theta’s – aka Phi Delt’s (their house pictured above) – whose members included most of the UPS football team as well as a fair number of the wild boys. And during Hell Week they did interesting things.

I cannot say from firsthand experience what exactly went on within their walls that week but we did hear gossip as to the activities. It was reported at the time that the soon to be initiated members all lived downstairs in their basement chapter room, sleeping on mattresses on the floor and being subjected to one particular song played over and over and over, night and day. Kind of a sleep deprivation torture.

That song in January 1978 was… Disco Duck.

This part I know to be true as we could hear it thumping through the walls of our sorority at all hours. We were subjected to Disco Duck for the entire week until, I’m certain, not only were THEY sick of the song, but so were all the women in my sorority.

Now all of you may be wondering, ‘Didn’t anyone have to go to classes?” And the answer is ‘no.’ UPS at the time had a month long program known as ‘Winterim’ where every student on campus did an immersion study of one single subject. When January was over there was a week off before the next semester started. It was during this week when the Greek’s had their activities prior to initiations… so the shenanigans were in high supply.

To the best of my knowledge everyone survived Hell week. As far as Disco Duck is concerned I will forever associate it with that place and time… and I will turn it off as soon as the first chords are played. But for all of you I will sacrifice my finer sensibilities. Because YOU need to hear Disco Duck to understand the song and, sort of, the genre which swept the country for a year and half back in the late 1970’s.

A couple of Wikipedia links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Duck

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco

The original “Duck” song from 1966:

https://youtu.be/Zu4lb6rXhnw