Tag: 1976

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History Music People

The Major’s Friday Night Disco Party

Disco Ball

WELCOME to another wild and crazy edition of the ‘Disco Party’ on this (soon-to-be) Friday night. I actually won’t be home tonight, so this is going out to the world just a little bit early today.

This week we’re gonna get down and get funky with a classic jam that you simply can’t sit down to and watch as a spectator. You’ve gotta get up and activate yourself. Get yourself up and dance like a maniac. Go forth. It’s all good. I guarantee that once you do so it’s gonna be real tough to get this hook out of your mind for hours to come. It is that addictive.

I give you the Detroit Spinners – still going strong after nearly 50 years in the biz. Here’s their 1976-1977 # 2 gold Disco smash that’s all about the infamous  “Rubberband Man”. Here’s how they stretched it out on NBC-TV‘s legendary “Midnight Special” on the 17TH of September in 1976:

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Blogging History Life Music Radio Television

The Major’s Friday Night Disco Party

It started as an experiment 5 weeks ago to replace the now defunct ‘Friday Night Blogroll Review’, and now it’s a runaway smash hit that’s become the fastest-growing weekly blog series of the summer.

Back during the Autumn of 1976 I was a 9-year-old kid attending the 4TH grade at Magnolia Elementary School right in the middle of my Lanham Maryland neighbourhood. My little brother was just learning how to walk on his own as he approached 18-months-old. WPGC ‘AM & FM Morningside’ was the TOP 40 radio station to dance to as the disco beat went on and on.

Here’s a classic track that took its sweet time to reach the top of the Billboard Hot 100 – over 4 months – but it finally got there in October of 1976. It’s 23-year-old (at the time) Walter Murphy with his modern (at the time) disco remake of Ludwig Van Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 5” from 170 years earlier !  It’s “A Fifth Of Beethoven”, and here’s how Walter Murphy & The Big Apple Band performed it LIVE on the legendary “Midnight Special” on NBC-TV on Friday August 20TH 1976: 

‘The Major’s Friday Night Disco Party’ is a joint MASSIVESMASH.COM / The Major’s Life Blog production.

Categories
History Music People Radio

The Major’s Friday Night Disco Party

We sure knew how to party back in 1976 – the year of our U.S. Bicentennial. We turned 200 on July 04TH of that year, but we didn’t look a day over 175 !

Disco music was still growing up during the Summer of 1976, and 26-year-old Memphis Tennessee Radio Deejay Rick Dees (one of my personal all-time ‘American Idols’) decided that the time was right to gather his ‘Cast Of Idiots’ together in a recording studio and lay down that track all about that ‘Disco Duck’. It went on to become a U.S. # 1 platinum retail and pop radio smash later that year, and the whole nation was quacking up a storm out on the dance floors.

So you think you can dance the duck ?  Give it a shot !