Disco Music Kc And The Sunshine Band

[Yoshi Heffernan]

KCand the Sunshine Band is an American disco and funk band that was founded in 1973 in Hialeah, Florida.[2][3] Their best-known songs include the hits "Get Down Tonight", "That's the Way (I Like It)", "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty", "I'm Your Boogie Man", "Keep It Comin' Love", "Boogie Shoes", "Please Don't Go", and "Give It Up". The band took its name from lead vocalist Harry Wayne Casey's last name ('KC') and the 'Sunshine Band' from KC's home state of Florida, the Sunshine State. The group had five number one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the 1970s.

The band was formed in 1973 by Harry Wayne Casey (KC) and Richard Finch. Casey was a record store employee and part-timer at TK Records in Hialeah, Florida[4] The band was originally called KC & The Sunshine Junkanoo Band because KC used studio musicians from TK and a local Junkanoo band called the Miami Junkanoo Band. Meantime, bassist Richard Finch had been engineering records for TK, which is how the Casey-Finch musical collaboration began.[4] They were soon joined by guitarist Jerome Smith and drummer Robert Johnson, both TK studio musicians.[4]

The first few songs, "Blow Your Whistle" (September 1973) and "Sound Your Funky Horn" (February 1974), were released as singles, and did well enough on the U.S. R&B chart and overseas that TK wanted a follow-up single and album. In the meantime, while working on demos for KC & the Sunshine Band, the song "Rock Your Baby" (George McCrae) was created.[4] Written by Casey and Finch, it featured Smith on guitar and became a number one hit in 51 countries in mid-1974. The band's "Queen of Clubs", which featured uncredited vocals by McCrae, was a hit in the UK, peaking at number 7,[4] and they went on a tour there in 1975.

KC and other band members were frequent guests on WHYI-FM, branded as Y-100, one of southeast Florida's more powerful FM pop stations, that covered Dade and Broward Counties and beyond. This gave the band significant hometown exposure, during the rise of the disco genre in one of its epicenters.[5]

The release of the self-titled second album KC and the Sunshine Band in 1975 spawned the group's first major U.S. hit with "Get Down Tonight".[4] It topped the R&B chart in April and hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in August.[4] "That's the Way (I Like It)" also became a number one hit[2] in November 1975 and the group received four nominations and one win at the 1976 Grammy Awards. The 1976 album Part 3 yielded two number one singles: "I'm Your Boogie Man"[2] and "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty".[2] Another hit, "Keep It Comin' Love"(1977), peaked at number two in the US. Their success lasted until the fifth album from 1979; their last chart topping hit was "Please Don't Go", hitting number one[2] for one week in January 1980, and becoming the first number one hit of the 1980s. With the explosion of new wave music and the declining popularity of disco, the group explored other styles and changed labels, joining Epic Records in 1980 after TK Records went bankrupt.[4]

With a change in styles, Casey enjoyed success, dueting with Teri DeSario with "Yes, I'm Ready", which hit No. 2 in March 1980;[4] the adult contemporary sound was much different from his disco hits of the 1970s, and his first major success away from the Sunshine Band.

In 1981, the partnership between Finch and Casey came to an acrimonious end. Two years after the release of the previous album, the band released two albums with new material: The Painter (1981) and Space Cadet Solo Flight (1981).[4] These albums did not chart, but in 1982, with All in a Night's Work a hit track called "Give It Up" (1983) brought a return to success in the UK, and appeared one year later in the U.S. Top 40.[4] The song was also featured on the band's next album, 1983's KC Ten.[4] Epic Records, however, refused to issue the song as a single due to its prior failure in the US. Because of this, a frustrated Casey formed Meca Records, releasing the single himself on this label in a final attempt to garner the song some success in America. It worked, but the album still failed to meet expectations. This led to the group falling into stasis around 1984 with Casey's retirement.

A revival of interest in disco music in 1991 brought Casey out of retirement. He reformed the band with some new members and two other original members, (percussionist Fermin Goytisolo and vocalist Beverly Champion-Foster) and began touring once again. The new band has released a large number of compilation albums through Rhino Records, along with some newly recorded material. The album Oh Yeah! was released in 1993 after a ten-year gap between new albums (excluding compilations).

In the 1970s, at the height of disco fever, the Florida group KC And The Sunshine Band were one of the biggest acts in the world with five No 1 singles, including "Get Down Tonight," "That's The Way (I Like It)" and "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty."

Looking at the run of success and number of hits, one could argue that outside of the Bee Gees and the queen of disco, Donna Summer, KC And The Sunshine Band were the most successful band of the disco era.

Having been synonymous with disco has had its drawbacks though, as KC (real name Harry Wayne Casey) talks about in this utterly fascinating conversation we have over the phone while he is in Miami. That was part of the reason he walked away from music for more than two decades.

But now he has a new single with Chic's Nile Rodgers, "Give Me Some More (Aye Aye Yai)," a show at L.A.'s Greek Theater this Saturday (May 25) with War, enough material for a two-CD set he tells me and much more on the horizon.

Harry Wayne Casey: Oh yeah, as a matter of fact, almost 40 something years now the first act I ever opened up for when we first became popular was War in Pittsburgh. We've done shows with them since then. We haven't done it in a while so it's kind of full circle. This is just a selective date, I think we're talking about doing more with them.

Casey: My friend Tony Moran is a very famous DJ, he's known all over the world. He sent me this track and the guitar part on the track sounded like it should be Nile Rodgers playing, so I called him up and asked him if he would do a guest appearance for me on the single. I've never really collaborated with too many other artists. It's kind of my first collaboration with another artist. I've known Nile for a long time though, so it's great to do stuff with your contemporaries.

Casey: Oh yeah, I'm already trying to reach out and do some stuff with some other artists right now. I'm not sure why I never did it. I had a duet, but that was someone I've known since elementary school. Did something with Double You, we had a big hit with "Please Don't Go" in 1993 in Europe. It's just something I've been exploring more lately. About five years ago I came out of this musical coma or whatever and I just started writing again and feeling like I had that flow happening like when I was 23 years old back in the beginning. So I'm just getting into all this stuff. I have enough music coming up for a double-CD set. I don't know what you call that anymore. It would be like a double-CD set. So I'm thinking of pulling in some other artists or other people to come and do some guest spots.

Casey: The crazy thing is I'm always kind of writing. But physically going into the studio and actually putting things down that lasted from 1984 all the way up to 2013. So this project I have been working on now is a six-year project.

Casey: My manager at the time, Billy Sammeth, hooked me up with a DJ by the name of Lee Dagger in England and Lee sent me this track. He hooked me up with him in March of 2012, he was here for the Winter Music Conference, and we got to talking. He said, "I'll send you this track." And he sent me this track. It kind of just kept sitting around and sitting around. I didn't do anything with it. It was just sitting there. In December I put the track on to listen to again and all of a sudden, which I can't even explain it, this title came to me, the words started flowing, the melody, everything just came to me overnight. I woke up one day and the next day this melody happened, the words happened and I wrote the whole song like in 30 minutes or whatever it was. I got so excited about it and I thought, "Send me another track." He sent me another one and everything flowed again. So it was exciting. It was like back in '93 when I was kind of in retirement and Arsenio Hall wanted to see a reunion of the band and I went to do the TV show and I realized I'd stopped doing something I loved. So it was almost one of those moments where it was like, "Wow, this is what I do and I should just give it a shot."

Casey: After 10 years it just felt I had used every word there was, I'd used every chord there was. It just got to a point where I just wanted to shut down. It was overwhelming big time. So in '84 I just shut it all down. But my mind's always going. I have millions of pieces of paper and napkins and match books and all this stuff with little things on them. Even in my notes now on my iPhone or recorded snippets of ideas that pop into my head. So I just got on this roll and kept getting more tracks and more things and then band members gave me some tracks. I started cutting stuff with the band and stuff with these other DJs, who were sending me tracks and it just opened up. It was explosive creatively. So that's why it felt like I'd just woken up out of some kind of coma or something. Because here I was kind of moving along and then all of a sudden the creative flow, the same flow that I remember having when I was younger, happened again. It was almost like I can't stop it. I've got this album finished and these guys I'm working with keep sending me tracks. Now I've written two more songs and I just keep writing. It's fun. There's no pressure to do it. If I sell records I do. My new single, it's my seventh record in a row on the Billboard Dance Charts. So that's where I'm at right now. And I feel comfortable with it. There's no pressure to do it. I'm gonna make this music and put it out and if the new generation of fans love it that will be great. And if they don't it's putting out something I love and something that's very close to my heart.

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