Donna Summer

LaDonna Adrian Gaines (1948 – May 17, 2012), famous as Donna Summer, was an American singer and songwriter who gained prominence during the disco era of the late 1970s. She had a mezzo-soprano vocal range, and was 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 chart, and she also charted four number-one singles in the United States within a 13-month period. (Wiki).

Donna and Disco

Donna Summer and the Bee Gees are believed to have originated disco. But it is not true. Rather they pumped up the volume in a genre that was already kicking but hadn’t found its feet. In 1975, Summer took the lyrics of “Love to love you baby” to Giorgio Moroder, one of the founders of electronic music, who sexualised it with much moaning and groaning. Summer had strong reservations because of her Christian upbringing but the song reached second place in the Billboard Hot 100 singles, making over-the-top content legit in popular music. Two years later, the Bee Gees were asked to compose for Saturday Night Fever, which was already on the floors. Their drummer had an emergency during the recording of “Stayin’ alive”, so they improvised by picking a couple of bars from his work and rerecording them in an endless loop. And thus, quite by accident, was born another hallmark of the disco sound — insistently pulsing repetitive rhythm.