DJ Kool Herc
Clive Campbell, better known by his stage name DJ Kool Herc, is a Jamaican–American DJ, credited with helping originate hip hop music in The Bronx, New York City, in the 1970s through his "Back to School Jam", hosted on August 11, 1973 at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. After his younger sister, Cindy Campbell, became inspired to earn extra cash for back-to-school clothes, she decided to have her older brother 16 years old, play music for the neighborhood in their apartment building. Known as the "Founder of Hip-Hop" and "Father of Hip-Hop", Campbell began playing hard funk records of the sort typified by James Brown as an alternative both to the violent gang culture of the Bronx and to the nascent popularity of disco in the 1970s. Campbell began to isolate the instrumental portion of the record which emphasized the drum beat—the "break"—and switch from one break to another. Using the same two-turntable set-up of disco DJs, he used two copies of the same record to elongate the break; this breakbeat DJing, using funky drum solos, formed the basis of hip hop music.
Campbell's announcements and exhortations to dancers helped lead to the syncopated, rhythmically spoken accompaniment now known as rapping. He called the dancers "break-boys" and "break-girls", or b-boys and b-girls. Campbell's DJ style was taken up by figures such as Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash. Unlike them, he never made the move into commercially recorded hip hop in its earliest years. Clive Campbell was the first of six children born to Nettie Campbell in Kingston, Jamaica. While growing up, he saw and heard the sound systems of neighborhood parties called dance halls, the accompanying speech of their DJs, known as toasting, he emigrated with his family at the age of 12 to The Bronx, New York City in November 1967, where they lived at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. Campbell attended the Alfred E. Smith Career and Technical Education High School in the Bronx, where his height and demeanor on the basketball court prompted the other kids to nickname him "Hercules", he began running with a graffiti crew called the Ex-Vandals, taking the name Kool Herc.
Herc recalls persuading his father to buy him a copy of "Sex Machine" by James Brown, a record that not a lot of his friends had, which they would come to him to hear. He and his sister, began hosting back-to-school parties in the recreation room of their building, 1520 Sedgwick Avenue. Herc's first sound system consisted of two turntables connected to two amplifiers and a Shure "Vocal Master" PA system with two speaker columns, on which he played records such as James Brown's "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose", Jimmy Castor's "It's Just Begun" and Booker T. & the M. G.'s' "Melting Pot". With Bronx clubs struggling with street gangs, uptown DJs catering to an older disco crowd with different aspirations, commercial radio catering to a demographic distinct from teenagers in the Bronx, Herc's parties had a ready-made audience. DJ Kool Herc developed the style, the blueprint for hip hop music. Herc used the record to focus on a short percussive part in it: the "break". Since this part of the record was the one the dancers liked best, Herc isolated the break and prolonged it by changing between two record players.
As one record reached the end of the break, he cued a second record back to the beginning of the break, which allowed him to extend a short section of music into "five-minute loop of fury". This innovation had its roots in what Herc called "The Merry-Go-Round," a technique by which the deejay switched from break to break at the height of the party; this technique is called "The Merry-Go-Round" because according to Herc, it takes one "back and forth with no slack."Herc stated that he first introduced the Merry-Go-Round into his sets in 1972. The earliest known Merry-Go-Round involved playing James Brown's "Give It Up or Turnit a Loose" switching from that record's break into the break from a second record, "Bongo Rock" by The Incredible Bongo Band. From the "Bongo Rock"'s break, Herc used a third record to switch to the break on "The Mexican" by the English rock band Babe Ruth. Kool Herc contributed to developing the rhyming style of hip hop by punctuating the recorded music with slang phrases, announcing: "Rock on, my mellow!"
"B-boys, b-girls, are you ready? Keep on rock steady" "This is the joint! Herc beat on the point" "To the beat, y'all!" "You don't stop!" For his contributions, Herc is called a "founding father of hip hop," a "nascent cultural hero," and an integral part of the beginnings of hip hop by Time. On August 11, 1973, DJ Kool Herc was a disc jockey and emcee at a party in the recreation room at Sedgwick Avenue. DJ Kool Herc: extended an instrumental beat to let people dance longer and began MC'ing during the extended breakdancing.... Helped lay the foundation for a cultural revolution. According to music journalist Steven Ivory, in 1973, Herc placed on the turntables two copies of Brown's 1970 Sex Machine album and ran "an extended cut'n' mix of the percussion breakdown" from "Give It Up or Turnit Loose", signaling the birth of hip hop; the "b-boys" and "b-girls" were the dancers to Herc's breaks, who were described as "breaking". Herc has noted that "breaking" was street slang of the time meaning "getting excited", "acting energetically," or "causing a disturbance".
Herc coined the terms "b-boy", "b-girl," and "breaking" which became part of the lexicon of what would be called hip hop culture. Early Kool Herc b-boy and DJ innovator Grandmixer DXT describes the early evolution as follows:... verybody would form a circle and the B-boys would go into the center. At first th
Bob Marley and the Wailers
Bob Marley and the Wailers were a Jamaican reggae band led by Bob Marley. It developed from the earlier ska vocal group, the Wailers, created by Marley with Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer in 1963. By late 1963 singers Junior Braithwaite, Beverley Kelso, Cherry Smith had joined on. By the early 1970s, Marley and Bunny Wailer had learned to play some instruments and brothers Aston "Family Man" Barrett and Carlton Barrett, had joined the band. After Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh left the band in 1974, Marley began touring with new band members, his new backing band included the Barrett brothers, Junior Marvin and Al Anderson on lead guitar, Tyrone Downie and Earl "Wya" Lindo on keyboards, Alvin "Seeco" Patterson on percussion. The "I Threes", consisting of Judy Mowatt, Marcia Griffiths, Marley's wife, provided backing vocals; the Wailers were formed when self-taught musician Hubert Winston McIntosh met the singers Neville Livingston, Robert Nesta Marley in 1963. The lineup was known variously as the Teenagers, the Wailing Rudeboys, the Wailing Wailers and just the Wailers.
The original lineup featured Junior Braithwaite on vocals, Bob Marley on guitar, Peter Tosh on keyboard, Neville Livingston on drums, Cherry Smith and Beverley Kelso on backing vocals. By 1966 Braithwaite and Smith had left the band, which consisted of the trio Livingston and Tosh; some of the Wailers' most notable songs were recorded with Lee "Scratch" Perry and his studio band the Upsetters. In 1964, the Wailers topped the Jamaican charts with "Simmer Down"; the Wailers worked with renowned reggae producer Leslie Kong, who used his studio musicians called Beverley's All-Stars to record the songs that would be released as an album titled "The Best of The Wailers". In 1966, they created a rocksteady record label, the Wail N Soul M. During the early 1970s the Upsetters members Aston "Family Man" Barrett and his brother Carlton Barrett, formed the Wailers Band, providing instrumental backing for The Wailers; the Wailers recorded groundbreaking ska and reggae songs such as "Simmer Down", "Trenchtown Rock", "Nice Time", "War", "Stir It Up" and "Get Up, Stand Up".
An attempt at creating a full overview of all the music made by The Wailers prior to their signing to Island Records was made by the Roots Reggae Library. The original Wailers line-up disbanded in 1974 due to Tosh and Livingston's refusal to play "freak clubs"; the pair believed doing so would violate their Rastafarian faith. Bob Marley formed Bob Marley and the Wailers with himself as guitarist and main singer, the Wailers Band as the backing band, the I Three as backup vocalists; the Wailers Band included the brothers Carlton Barrett and "Family Man" Barrett on drums and bass Junior Marvin and Al Anderson playing lead guitar, Tyrone Downie and Earl "Wya" Lindo playing keyboard, Alvin "Seeco" Patterson playing percussion. The I Three consisted of Bob Marley's wife Judy Mowatt and Marcia Griffiths. Livingston believed that producer Chris Blackwell, whom he called "Chris Whiteworst", was responsible for the bad relationship between the band members, as he thought Blackwell released their albums under "Bob Marley and the Wailers" instead of "the Wailers" since 1969, which tested their friendship.
Perry released two compilation albums for Trojan Records in 1974, Rasta Revolution and African Herbsman, which contained songs from Soul Rebels and Soul Revolution and he was the copyright holder of several songs from these albums. These changes caused a major dispute between Marley and Perry, when the former saw the albums, six months after their publication, in the Half Way Road in England. Bob Marley and the Wailers, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer all enjoyed considerable success as reggae music continued to gain popularity during the 1970s and 1980s. One of the last performances that included Marley was in 1980 at Madison Square Garden. Several of the group's members have died subsequent to Marley's death in 1981: Carlton Barrett and Tosh in 1987, Braithwaite in 1999, Smith in 2008, Earl Lindo in 2017. Bunny Wailer and Beverley Kelso are the only surviving members of the group's original line-up; the I Three called I Threes, were formed in 1974 to support Bob Marley and the Wailers after Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer – the original Wailer backing vocalists – left the band.
The three members were Judy Mowatt and Marcia Griffiths. Their name is intended as a spin on the Rastafarian "I and I" concept of the Godhead within each person; the Wailing Wailers Soul Rebels Soul Revolution The Best of The Wailers Catch a Fire Burnin' Natty Dread Rastaman Vibration Exodus Kaya Survival Uprising Confrontation Apr–Jul 1973: Catch a Fire Tour Oct–Nov 1973: Burnin' Tour Jun–Jul 1975: Natty Dread Tour Apr–Jul 1976: Rastaman Vibration Tour May–Jun 1977: Exodus Tour May–Aug 1978: Kaya Tour Apr–May 1979: Babylon by Bus Tour Oct 1979 – Jan 1980: Survival Tour May–Sep 1980: Uprising Tour The Upsetters Word and Power The Wailers Band The Original Wailers Ma
Atlantic Records
Atlantic Recording Corporation is an American record label founded in October 1947 by Ahmet Ertegün and Herb Abramson. Over its first 20 years of operation, Atlantic earned a reputation as one of the most important American labels, specializing in jazz, R&B, soul by Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Wilson Pickett and Dave, Ruth Brown and Otis Redding, its position was improved by its distribution deal with Stax. In 1967, Atlantic became a wholly owned subsidiary of Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, now the Warner Music Group, expanded into rock and pop music with releases by Led Zeppelin and Yes. In 2004, Atlantic and its sister label. Craig Kallman is the chairman of Atlantic. Ahmet Ertegün served as founding chairman until his death on December 14, 2006, at age 83. In 1944, brothers Nesuhi and Ahmet Ertegun remained in the United States when their mother and sister returned to Turkey after the death of their father Munir Ertegun, Turkey's first ambassador to the U. S; the brothers were fans of jazz and rhythm & blues, amassing a collection of over 15,000 78 RPM records.
Ahmet ostensibly stayed in Washington to undertake post-graduate music studies at Georgetown University but immersed himself in the Washington music scene and entered the record business, enjoying a resurgence after wartime restrictions on the shellac used in manufacture. He convinced the family dentist, Dr. Vahdi Sabit, to invest $10,000 and hired Herb Abramson, a dentistry student. Abramson had worked as a part-time A&R manager/producer for the jazz label National Records, signing Big Joe Turner and Billy Eckstine, he had no interest in its most successful musicians. In September 1947, he sold his share in Jubilee to his partner, Jerry Blaine, invested $2,500 in Atlantic. Atlantic was run by Abramson and Ertegun. Abramson's wife Miriam ran the label's publishing company, Progressive Music, did most office duties until 1949 when Atlantic hired its first employee, bookkeeper Francine Wakschal, who remained with the label for the next 49 years. Miriam gained a reputation for toughness. Staff engineer Tom Dowd recalled, "Tokyo Rose was the kindest name some people had for her" and Doc Pomus described her as "an extraordinarily vitriolic woman".
When interviewed in 2009, she attributed her reputation to the company's chronic cash-flow shortage: "... most of the problems we had with artists were that they wanted advances, and, difficult for us... we were undercapitalized for a long time." The label's office in the Ritz Hotel in Manhattan proved too expensive, so they moved to a room in the Hotel Jefferson. In the early fifties, Atlantic moved from the Hotel Jefferson to offices at 301 West 54th St and to 356 West 56th St. Atlantic's first recordings were issued in late January 1948 and included "That Old Black Magic" by Tiny Grimes and "The Spider" by Joe Morris. In its early years, Atlantic concentrated on modern jazz although it released some country and western and spoken word recordings. Abramson produced "Magic Records", children's records with four grooves on each side, each groove containing a different story, so the story played would be determined by the groove in which the stylus happened to land. In late 1947, James Petrillo, head of the American Federation of Musicians, announced an indefinite ban on all recording activities by union musicians, this came into effect on January 1, 1948.
The union action forced Atlantic to use all its capital to cut and stockpile enough recordings to last through the ban, expected to continue for at least a year. Ertegun and Abramson spent much of the late 1940s and early 1950s scouring nightclubs in search of talent. Ertegun composed songs under the alias "A. Nugetre", including Big Joe Turner's hit "Chains of Love", recording them in booths in Times Square giving them to an arranger or session musician. Early releases included music by Sidney Bechet, Barney Bigard, The Cardinals, The Clovers, Frank Culley, The Delta Rhythm Boys, Erroll Garner, Dizzy Gillespie, Tiny Grimes, Al Hibbler, Earl Hines, Johnny Hodges, Jackie & Roy, Lead Belly, Meade Lux Lewis, Professor Longhair, Shelly Manne, Howard McGhee, Mabel Mercer, James Moody, Joe Morris, Art Pepper, Django Reinhardt, Pete Rugolo, Pee Wee Russell, Bobby Short, Sylvia Syms, Billy Taylor, Sonny Terry, Big Joe Turner, Jimmy Yancey, Sarah Vaughan, Mal Waldron, Mary Lou Williams. In early 1949, a New Orleans distributor phoned Ertegun to obtain Stick McGhee's "Drinking Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee", unavailable due to the closing of McGhee's previous label.
Ertegun knew Stick's younger brother Brownie McGhee, with whom Stick happened to be staying, so he contacted the McGhee brothers and re-recorded the song. When released in February 1949, it became Atlantic's first hit, selling 400,000 copies, reached No. 2 after spending six months on the Billboard R&B chart – although McGhee himself earned just $10 for the session. Atlantic's fortunes rose rapidly: recorded 187 songs were recorded in 1949, more than three times the amount from the previous two years, received overtures for a manufacturing and distribution deal with Columbia, which would pay Atlantic a 3% royalty on every copy sold. Ertegun asked about artists' royalties, which he paid, this surprised Columbia executives, who did not, the deal was scuttled. On the recommendation of broadcaster Willis Conover and Abramson visited Ruth Brown at the Crystal Caverns club in Washington and invited her to audition for Atlantic, she was injured in a car accident en route to New York City, but Atlantic supported her for nine months and signed her.
"So Lon
Love to Love You Baby (song)
"Love to Love You Baby" is a song by American singer Donna Summer from her second studio album Love to Love You Baby. Produced by Pete Bellotte, written by Italian musician Giorgio Moroder and Bellotte, the song was first released as a single in the Netherlands on June 1975 as "Love to Love You" and released worldwide on November 1975 as "Love to Love You Baby", it became. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame named it one of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll, Summer's only selection on this list. By 1975, Summer had been living in Germany for eight years and had participated in several musical theatre shows, she had released an album in The Netherlands entitled Lady of the Night, written by Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte and produced by Bellotte, which had given her a couple of hit singles. She was still a complete unknown in her home country when she suggested the lyric "Love to Love You Baby" to Moroder in 1975, he asked Summer to record it. The full lyrics were somewhat explicit, at first, Summer said she would only record it as a demo to give to someone else.
However, Summer's erotic moans and groans impressed Moroder so much that he persuaded her to release it as her own song, "Love to Love You" became a moderate hit in the Netherlands. In an interview in 1976, Summer responded to a number of questions that she claimed she'd been asked about the process of recording the song: "Everyone's asking,'Were you alone in the studio?' Yes, I was alone in the studio.'Did you touch yourself?' Yes, well I had my hand on my knee.'Did you fantasize on anything?' Yes, on my handsome boyfriend Peter." A tape of the song was sent to Casablanca Records president Neil Bogart in the U. S. and he played it at a party at his home. Impressed with the track, Bogart continued to play it over all night, he contacted Moroder and suggested that he make the track longer - as long as 20 minutes. However, Summer again had reservations, she imagined herself as an actress playing the part of someone in sexual ecstasy. The studio lights were dimmed so that Summer was more or less in complete darkness as she lay on the floor.
The final recording lasted over 16 minutes, according to the BBC, contained 23 "orgasms". By that point, the song was renamed "Love to Love You Baby", it took up the entire first side of the album of the same name, edited versions were found on 7" vinyl. Released in November 1975, the song became an international disco smash. In the U. S. it became Summer's first US Top 40 hit, spending two weeks at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in February 7 & 14 1976 being held off the number one spot by Paul Simon's "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" and logged four weeks atop the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart, as well number three on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. In the UK, upon release in January 1976, the song reached #4 on the UK Singles Chart in spite of the BBC's initial refusal to promote it, they refused to play it. As a result of the success of the song, Summer would be named "the first lady of love," which labeled her with a sexually oriented, fantasy image from which she would struggle to free herself.
Casablanca Records became responsible for the distribution of Summer's work in the U. S. Bogart was keen for Summer to portray the image of the rich, sexy fantasy figure with which this song had labeled her. Bogart and his wife Joyce would become close friends with Summer once she returned to the United States. However, Bogart began interfering with aspects of Summer's personal and professional life, she would become a born-again Christian, leave disco and the Bogarts behind, file a lawsuit against them. Thereafter, Summer decided to exclude "Love to Love You Baby" from her concert playlists. However, she reintroduced the song into her concert repertoire some 25 years later. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame named the song one of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll in 1995. VH1 placed "Love to Love You Baby" at #63 in their list of 100 Greatest Dance Songs in 2000. Slant Magazine ranked the song 10th in its 100 Greatest Dance Songs in 2006. Marked by "little more than Donna Summer simulating an orgasm over a background of blaxploitation cymbals, wah-wah guitars, a funky-butt clarinet riff, some synth chimes, "Love to Love You Baby" was extended into a seventeen-minute minisymphony at the behest of Casablanca Records chief Neil Bogart, who wanted a soundtrack for his sexual exploits.
The song reached number two in the American charts and was responsible for the development of the twelve inch single." Donna Summer has since been forced to stop performing "Love to Love You" live because, "Riots broke out was in a tent in Italy, 5,000 men no women, was doing'Love to Love You, Baby,' scantily clad, the guys got so wrapped up that they began to push the stage back. And had to run off the stage, to trailer out the back, and they started to rock it. Just thought,'I'm going to die today, I'm not going to get out of here.' It's not the kind of song you just want to throw out there." Donna Summer – lead vocals Pete Bellotte – guitars Dave King – bass Michael Thatcher – keyboards Giorgio Moroder – keyboards Martin Harrison – drums Lucy, Gitta – backing vocals Original Netherlands 7" "Love to Love You" "Need-a-Man Blues" NB This original release ran for just over 3 minutes and 20 seconds. This version was integrated into the 16-minute version found on the album. All su
Mixing engineer
A mixing engineer is a person responsible for combining the different sonic elements of a piece of recorded music into a final version of a song. He or she mixes the elements of a recorded piece together to achieve a good balance of volume, while at the same time deciding other properties such as pan positioning, so on; the best mixing professionals have many years of experience and training with audio equipment, which has enabled them to master their craft. A mixing engineer occupies a space between artist and scientist, using their skill at assessing the harmonic structure of sound to enable them to fashion appealing timbres, their work is found in all modern music, but many artists now mix and produce their own music with a digital audio workstation and a computer. A more technical definition: an audio engineer in sound recording, audio editing and sound systems who balances the relative volume and frequency content of a number of sound sources; these sound sources are the different musical instruments in a band or vocalists, the sections of an orchestra and so on.
Mixing Engineers are sometimes formally trained in a music background, some have a degree in audio engineering or recording engineering*. A degree in music can help and broaden the engineer's credentials, though it is known that most experience comes from operating complex audio equipment; the mixing ear comes from years of observing all kinds of sounds and variations of effects and filters, through the process of trial and error. Mixing engineers rely on their intuition in the process of mixing, but all mixers follow certain fundamental procedures: Analyzing the client artist's "groove", or "style" Finding the most important elements to emphasize Figuring out how to emphasize the tracks meaning de-emphasizing other tracks Fine-tuning the final mix A mixer is given tracks to work with, they show up well after the artists or session musicians are done recording, just have this audio to work with. Their job consists of balancing the relative impact of each audio stream, by putting them through effects processors, having the right amount of each.
Equalization-The main tool of a mixing engineer is the mixing console, which changes the relationship of each audio frequency, to another, to boost or cut specific frequency ranges within the track, giving each space in the limited frequency range available from 20-20,000 Hz between ~400–8000 Hz, the most sensitive range of human hearing. Removing conflicting frequencies from 250–800 Hz is crucial, where interference and construction between voices can create annoying, displeasing effects, called "mud". Cuts in this area can help with artificial sounding brightness. By boosting frequencies below this range, one can give voices depth to them. Above this, boost can gives voices presence, but only if they do not overlap with another voice's more prominent higher harmonics. Placed high Q value filters will allow surgical alteration, necessary in the human vocal range, a 1 dB boost here is equivalent in loudness to a 5-6 dB boost at the relative extremes. Key in removing mud is making the proper boosts higher up, to replace brightness lost when cutting shared frequencies.
A spectrum analyzer can help in viewing harmonic structure of voices. Every mixer approaches the challenge of equalization differently, as everyone has a different psychoacoustic perception of sound, different levels of physical hearing loss. Dynamic range compression-Compression reduces the range between a signal's lowest low and highest high; the threshold controls. By adjusting attack and release settings, having the right ratio, one can give a track more presence, but too much compression will destroy an otherwise pleasing track. By setting the trigger to another audio source, called side-chaining, higher levels of compression, hard clipping to a small degree; this is used in progressive music, however the effect is artificial only good for one kind of pumping, syncopated sound. Panning- settings spread the sound field out, which can create space for voices otherwise lacking. Stereo playback will result in different frequency response the signal, depending on the reverberation characteristics of the room.
With modern technology, now it is done artificially. This allows a creation of a novel resonant body. Decay time and perceived size can be controlled which, combined with control of the diffusion network, pre-filtering, choruses, allows any resonator to be approximated. Panning changes the relative gain of each stereo track, which can create sonic space in a mix. Note that mixing only can happen after every track is set to the correct master track volume; some equipment mixing engineers might use: Analog-to-digital converters Digital audio workstations Digital-to-analog converters Dynamic Range Compression Microphones Mixing consoles Music sequencers Signal processors Tape machines Audio engineering Audio mixing Recording engineer Recording studio Sound recording
Donna Summer
LaDonna Adrian Gaines known by her stage name based on her married name Donna Summer, was an American singer and actress. She gained prominence during the disco era of the late 1970s. A five-time Grammy Award winner, Summer was the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach number one on the United States Billboard 200 chart and charted four number-one singles in the US within a 12-month period. Summer has sold over 100 million records worldwide, making her one of the world's best-selling artists of all time, she charted two number-one singles on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart in the US and a number-one single in the United Kingdom. Summer earned a total of 42 hit singles on the US Billboard Hot 100 in her lifetime, with 14 of those reaching the top-ten, she claimed a top 40 hit every year between 1975 and 1984, from her first top-ten hit in 1976, to the end of 1982, she had 12 top-ten hits, more than any other act during that time period. She returned to the Hot 100's top-five in 1983, claimed her final top-ten hit in 1989 with "This Time I Know It's for Real".
Her most recent Hot 100 hit came in 1999 with "I Will Go with You". While her fortunes on the Hot 100 waned through those decades, Summer remained a force on the US Dance Club Songs chart over her entire career. While influenced by the counterculture of the 1960s, Summer became the lead singer of a psychedelic rock band named Crow and moved to New York City. Joining a touring version of the musical Hair, she left New York and spent several years living and singing in Europe, where she met music producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte in Munich, where they recorded influential disco hits such as "Love to Love You Baby" and "I Feel Love", marking her breakthrough into an international career. Summer returned to the United States in 1975, other hits such as "Last Dance", "MacArthur Park", "Heaven Knows", "Hot Stuff", "Bad Girls", "Dim All the Lights", "No More Tears" and "On the Radio" followed, she became known as the Queen of Disco. Summer died on May 17, 2012, at her home in Naples, Florida.
In her obituary in The Times, she was described as the "undisputed queen of the Seventies disco boom" who reached the status of "one of the world's leading female singers." Giorgio Moroder described Summer's work with them on the song "I Feel Love" as "really the start of electronic dance" music. In 2013, Summer was inducted into the Roll Hall of Fame. In December 2016, Billboard ranked her as the 6th most successful dance artist of all time. LaDonna Adrian Gaines was born on December 31, 1948 in Boston, Massachusetts, to Andrew and Mary Gaines, was one of seven children, she was raised in the Boston neighborhood of Mission Hill. Her father was a butcher, her mother was a schoolteacher. Summer's performance debut occurred at church when she was ten years old, replacing a vocalist who failed to appear, she attended Boston's Jeremiah E. Burke High School where she performed in school musicals and was considered popular. In 1967, just weeks before graduation, Donna left for New York City where she joined the blues rock band Crow.
After a record label passed on signing the group since it was only interested in the band's lead singer, the group agreed to dissolve. Summer auditioned for a role in the counterculture musical, Hair, she landed the part of Sheila and agreed to take the role in the Munich production of the show, moving there after getting her parents' reluctant approval. She became fluent in German, singing various songs in that language, participated in the musicals Ich bin ich and Show Boat. Within three years, she moved to Vienna and joined the Vienna Volksoper, she toured with an ensemble vocal group called FamilyTree, the creation of producer Günter "Yogi" Lauke. In 1968, Summer released on Polydor her first single, a German version of the title "Aquarius" from the musical Hair, followed in 1971 by a second single, a remake of the Jaynetts' 1963 hit, "Sally Go'Round the Roses", from a one-off European deal with Decca Records. In 1969, she issued the single "If You Walkin' Alone" on Philips Records, she married Austrian actor Helmuth Sommer in 1973, gave birth to their daughter Natalia Pia Melanie Sommer, the same year.
She provided backing vocals for producer-keyboardist Veit Marvos on his Ariola Records release Nice to See You, credited as "Gayn Pierre". Several subsequent singles included Donna performing with the group, the name "Gayn Pierre" was used while performing in Godspell with Helmuth Sommer during 1972. While working as a model part-time and back up singer in Munich, Summer met German-based producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte during a recording session for Three Dog Night at Musicland Studios; the trio forged a working partnership, Donna was signed to their Oasis label in 1974. A demo tape of Summer's work with Moroder and Bellotte led to a deal with the European-distributed label Groovy Records. Due to an error on the record cover, Donna Sommer became Donna Summer. Summer's first album was Lady of the Night, it became a hit in the Netherlands, Sweden and Belgium on the strength of two songs, "The Hostage" and the title track "Lady of the Night". "The Hostage" reached the top of the charts in France, but was removed from radio playlists in Germany because of the song's subject matter.
One of her first TV appearances was in the television show, Van Oekel's Discohoek, which started the br
Ralph Carter
Ralph David Carter is an American actor and singer best remembered as Michael Evans, the youngest child of Florida and James Evans, Sr. on the CBS sitcom Good Times from 1974–1979. Before joining Good Times, Carter appeared in the Broadway musical Raisin, based on the Lorraine Hansberry drama A Raisin in the Sun. Carter started on Broadway at just nine years old in the musical The Me Nobody Knows. After runs in Tough To Get Help and Via Galactica, he landed his breakout role as Travis Younger in Raisin. For which, he won the 1973 Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Performer as well as the 1974 Theatre World Award, a nomination for the 1974 Tony Award in the category for Best Supporting or Featured Actor in a Musical. Norman Lear was enjoying huge success in the 1970s, with the hit televisions series All in the Family and Son and Maude. In February 1974, Maude's housekeeper, Florida Evans, was given her own spin off Good Times. John Amos, who had appeared on Maude as Florida's husband, was renamed James for Good Times.
Carter's success in Raisin brought him to the attention of Lear, who bought out the remainder of his Broadway contract to cast him as the first original character of Good Times and Florida's youngest son, Michael. In 1975, Carter recorded an album called When You're Young and in Love, performed it on Soul Train; the title song, along with another called "Extra" charted at No. 10 and No. 12 respectively. He released a single called "Get it Right" in 1985. In 2005, Carter appeared in the cast of "Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death" for the Classical Theater of Harlem Company. Ralph Carter at the Internet Broadway Database Ralph Carter at the Internet Off-Broadway Database Ralph Carter on IMDb
