KC & The Sunshine Band Article
Still Wearing Their Boogie Shoes by Jay Luster
Still Wearing Their Boogie Shoes by Jay Luster
Still Wearing Their Boogie Shoes by Jay Luster
The history of music defines, in many ways, the history of humankind. We know our anthropological ancestors had music because archeologists have found flutes made from the hollow bones of birds, and from bamboo dating back at least ten millennia. Imagine yourself, after eating a bunch of magic mushrooms gathered in a primitive basket, lurching around the fire, banging your club while listening to Play That Funky Music Caveboy. By the 1970's, we traded in our unsophisticated wooden clubs for clubs with sophisticated names like the Crisco Disco, or the more subtle Studio 54.
From the Waltz, to the Polka to the Twist, there has always been music which encouraged a good hearty shake of our groove thing. In the early 1970's, hippie, folk, & psychedelia music was peaking, but weren't really danceable. Around that time disco emerged, and the world of dance has never been the same. In 1972 the O'Jays had a major hit with a song called "Love Train." It was an inspired marriage between funk and a steady four count beat. Eventually songs like "Don't Rock The Boat'' by Hues Corporation, and George McCrae's "Rock Your Baby" came to dominate worldwide music sales charts.
Around that time, a guy named Harry Wayne Casey was toiling away sweeping floors and unpacking boxes as a record store clerk. He'd struck up a friendship with some of the distributors delivering those records to the store and was invited to the TK Record Studio.
There he began by sweeping floors, and packing boxes for shipment. Soon he met recording engineer and bassist Richard Finch, and it became immediately evident to Finch that Casey was a gifted song writer meant for more than tidying up. After the Florida native penned, and produced, Rock Your Baby, Casey was ready to make his own records.
In 1974 Casey's group, called K.C. and the Sunshine Band released an album called Do It Good. Because it hadn't caught on in America, but had in Europe, the band crossed the ocean, and unsurprisingly the tour was a huge success. On its heels, TK re-released Do It Good and began aggressively promoting it in the US where it finally garnered some well-deserved attention and strong reviews. The sales still lagged a bit, but the word of mouth, and their local popularity in Miami began focusing national attention on both the band, its leader, and the newest dancing fad.
Still Wearing Their Boogie Shoes by Jay Luster
Still Wearing Their Boogie Shoes by Jay Luster
In 1975, the disco craze took off like a rocket ship powered by synthesizers, horns, a lively bass, and its danceable four on the floor drum beat. The music itself often featured Latin, soul, & funk influences, but all of it came in a neon bright package. That's when disco music caught on in the US in a big way. Seemingly overnight, clubs sprung up all over the country trying to cash in on the latest musical fad. Disco seemed to gain in popularity everyday, and KC and the Sunshine band was the vanguard.
Folks began showing up to the clubs in leisure suits, slinky dresses, experimental hair cuts, and big gold jewelry. They were fueled by sex, cocaine, alcohol, and even the same magic mushrooms gathered by our cave painting forebears. The culture which formed around disco music was revolutionary in many ways. Birth control had only recently become ubiquitous, and it gave everyone liberty to participate in recreational sex with an abandon that had never existed in human history. Drugs were easy to come by and were cheap and there was little if any stigma attached to using them for fun. The dance craze appealed to nearly everyone, and the clubs were practically bursting with twenty something's looking for fun on Saturday nights.
KC & The Sunshine Band quickly became one of the biggest disco era bands. They boasted charttopping success with songs like the hard rocking "Get Down Tonight," the instructive "That's The Way I Like It," & the inviting "Shake Your Booty," as well as somewhat softer, yet still danceable love songs like "Keep It Comin' Love." Indeed, KC & The Sunshine Band were so popular they accomplished a feat which was only done once before. Like the Beatles, they scored four #1 hits within a one-year period. Their first four albums, selling more than a million copies apiece, were certified platinum, or multi-platinum. While it might be hard to believe today, in the mid 1970's KC was about as big as a band could get.
As the end of the 70's decade drew near, disco, as a cultural phenomenon, suffered a disheartening backlash. In 1979's "Disco Demolition" fan promotion, headline-hunting radio shock jocks Steve Dahl and Gary Meier, for reasons unknown, literally blew up a box of dance records.
The promotion was an epic disaster. In between games of a baseball double header at Chicago's Comiskey Field, a big box of disco records was brought out to center field where it was subsequently detonated. The explosion was heard for miles around, and it left a moon sized crater on the field. It is estimated that as many as fifteen thousand people had sneaked into the already sold out stadium, and even before the pointless pyrotechnics, the crowd had doused the field with beer and firecrackers. After the blast, it is estimated 20,000 crazed morons stormed the field and pretty much stole or destroyed anything that wasn't nailed down or painted over. In the aftermath, it was reported that as many as fifty people suffered injuries. It is little wonder the promotion is still seen as one of the worst planned and most disastrous events in baseball & music history. After that, despite still being loved by millions, disco music lost its spot in radio music rotation, and with the mainstream record buying public. Nightclubs, and dance bands everywhere found themselves bankrupt, and out of work practically overnight.
If that was disco's low point, then its high point was probably the 1977 movie Saturday Night Fever. The movie itself was not a masterpiece, but it became popular by the charismatic dancing of John Travolta in a white leisure suit. The breathtaking soundtrack of the movie sold more than fifteen million records and is, to this very day, still the highest selling soundtrack of all time. It spawned huge hit songs like "Staying Alive '' by the Bee Gees and "If I Can't Have You" by Yvonne Elliman. The last song on side three of the double record set is "Boogie Shoes" by KC & The Sunshine Band.
The song broke on Saturday Night Fever and then showed up time and again in the media. It has been featured in at least six movies and several TV shows as well as commercials. Shapely, sexy, former inmate #77806-112, Felicity Huffman, danced to the song on two different TV shows.
The first time was on a desk shaking her booty quite fetchingly on the show Sports Night, and the second time she provocatively shimmied her groove thing on a bar in a scene from Desperate Housewives. Interestingly, KC's use of the word "booty" caused dictionaries all over the world to amend the definition of the word from the stolen gains of pirates to include its use as a description for the human buttocks.
Boogie Shoes is definitely a forgotten classic that has transcended disco, and still sounds as fresh today as it did during its heyday.
In 2009, KC and The Sunshine Band were invited to perform on the mega-hit TV show American Idol. That performance reintroduced them to a national audience who were craving something both new and nostalgic. Disco didn't die on that baseball field nearly 45 years ago. It still exists today, and it's one of the greatest forms of dance music ever sprung from the creative mind of the ancestors of the cavemen.
KC & The Sunshine Band in Rock On Magazine
