US Disco Charts - Late 70s, A question

[Nobby]

Hello

I have a question about the US Billboard charts

Growing up in the UK in the late 70s/Early 80s I was intrigued by the Billboard US Disco top 20 which appeared in Record Mirror every week, I was mainl interested because the titles were quite often very different from those in the UK charts (top 75 etc) of the same period and featured such exotic acts as Kano, Lemon, Loverde, Vivian Vee etc.

Quite often an LP was listed as having "all cuts" being played (such as Two Tons Of Fun, Ava Cherry "Ripe" or "Queen Of The Night") - but did all cuts really get played, even the slow ones? or was this an aid to listing.
Alternatively some LPs (Sticky Fingers and Sylvester's "Stars" for example) only had 3 of their 4 cuts listed even though the fourth was playable (especially "I Need Somebody To Love Tonight") - did these tracks not get any plays?

Apologies if this has appeared elsewhere, or if it appears a bit involved, any info would be gratefully received.

many thanks to you all,

Nobby

[MixMasterMax]

Not in the clubs I visited. Each DJ would have a specific crowd to please and even though an LP had 4 excellent tracks they would focus on maybe 2 or 3. Never all the tracks. Now, this is not to say commutatively, all the tracks were played throughout all the clubs...at some point. The only slow track we ever heard was at the end of the night, usually the last song. This would let the crowd know that it was time to exit.

[Cory Ander]

Originally Posted by Nobby

Hello

I have a question about the US Billboard charts

Growing up in the UK in the late 70s/Early 80s I was intrigued by the Billboard US Disco top 20 which appeared in Record Mirror every week, I was mainl interested because the titles were quite often very different from those in the UK charts (top 75 etc) of the same period and featured such exotic acts as Kano, Lemon, Loverde, Vivian Vee etc.

Quite often an LP was listed as having "all cuts" being played (such as Two Tons Of Fun, Ava Cherry "Ripe" or "Queen Of The Night") - but did all cuts really get played, even the slow ones? or was this an aid to listing.
Alternatively some LPs (Sticky Fingers and Sylvester's "Stars" for example) only had 3 of their 4 cuts listed even though the fourth was playable (especially "I Need Somebody To Love Tonight") - did these tracks not get any plays?

Apologies if this has appeared elsewhere, or if it appears a bit involved, any info would be gratefully received.

many thanks to you all,

Nobby

it seems unlikely that any club or DJ would really play every cut on any particular album, at least it didn't happen in any club I went to so I don't know why Billboard would imply that. Most disco albums I own from that period have ballads on them and I almost never heard ballads in clubs. And the clubs I went to wouldn't even usually play the full versions of long songs like Love and Kisses' "I Found Love (Now that I Found You)". The DJ would wait until the percussion section and blend in another song. It's funny because even though I enjoy listening to disco suites like that, I wouldn't want to dance to the same song for 16 minutes. My beer would get hot (or stolen)

[markydefad]

Having spent a lotta time with the Billboard charts, I think sometimes it was just easier to write "all cuts" than list the main ones, especially if they have long titles and number more than 3...space was an issue --everything had to fit in that one column. They couldn't list 12 tracks by title and have it all fit.

[ added later: I've noticed a few times that they had to decrease the size of the font as the chart progresses, I assume, to fit it all in...If I recall they had the Top 10 in a larger font and the rest in a size smaller...this didn't happen often...but it did happen...the current chart I'm working on does list 5 tracks from one LP [KC & The Sunshine Band's 3rd LP]...now why they didn't say --all cuts, I don't know????!!!

Thus far, in the charts I've been compiling, towards the end of 1976--the "all cuts" LPs would mainly be the Salsoul Orchestra & Donna Summer [& The Trammps!!!-how could I forget that one???!!!] LPs released to date. On both the Salsoul Orchestra LPs there is one ballad track that wouldn't count as a dance track--but rather than call attention to that one track...it was easier to write "all cuts"...however, one time on the first Salsoul Orch. LP they did write "all cuts--except "Love Letters"...but only once as far as I recall...

But later, on a multiple disc set containing numerous dance tracks, Like "Thank God It's Friday"...Billboard only charts 4 tracks: "Last Dance/After Dark/Thank God It's Friday/Take It To The Zoo"...when a number of other tracks were playable as well...so maybe they change their policy as time goes by...I think people wanted to see specific titles listed, not just generic "all cuts."

Regarding Sylvester's "Stars": I think Billboard listed the 3 uptempo tracks and while I know clubs like Trocadero played the downtempo (around 110 bpm) "I Need Somebody To Love Tonight"...maybe fewer clubs that didn't have a "morning/sleaze" time period would go that low in bpms, so that title was not reported...but some clubs certainly did.

So, in conclusion, I think the various factors were: efficiency obtained in typing "all cuts," space limitations, different clubs having different taste, and different compilers having different ideas about how to do it.

[garrybcoston]

Originally Posted by markydefad

Having spent a lotta time with the Billboard charts, I think sometimes it was just easier to write "all cuts" than list the main ones, especially if they have long titles and number more than 3...space was an issue --everything had to fit in that one column. They couldn't list 12 tracks by title and have it all fit.

Thus far, in the charts I've been compiling, towards the end of 1976--the "all cuts" LPs would mainly be the Salsoul Orchestra & Donna Summer LPs released to date. On both the Salsoul Orchestra LPs there is one ballad track that wouldn't count as a dance track--but rather than call attention to that one track...it was easier to write "all cuts"...however, one time on the first Salsoul Orch. LP they did write "all cuts--except "Love Letters"...but only once as far as I recall...

But later, on a multiple disc set containing numerous dance tracks, Like "Thank God It's Friday"...Billboard only charts 4 tracks: "Last Dance/After Dark/Thank God It's Friday/Take It To The Zoo"...when a number of other tracks were playable as well...so maybe they change their policy as time goes by...I think people wanted to see specific titles listed, not just generic "all cuts."

Regarding Sylvester's "Stars": I think Billboard listed the 3 uptempo tracks and while I know clubs like Trocadero played the downtempo (around 110 bpm) "I Need Somebody To Love Tonight"...maybe fewer clubs that didn't have a "morning/sleaze" time period would go that low in bpms, so that title was not reported...but some clubs certainly did.

So, in conclusion, I think the various factors were: efficiency in typing "all cuts," space limitations, different clubs having different taste, and different compilers having different ideas about how to do it.

Yeah, I was a DJ for a while myself and I never played all the tracks on a new disco album; I mainly relied on the charts (to see what was new and hot), and of course what was popular from the club/disco audience. Usually the charts were right on course because in the U.S. they were guided by the audience from the big cities (i.e. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, etc.), so whatever went over big in those cities filtered down to the smaller cities and so forth.

As for the European disco cuts, again we relied on what was sent over from overseas to New York and the other big cities first to decide what album would be played and what cuts from that album would be popular; the same formula, again, was used for new disco albums and cuts generated in the United States.

Garry