Disco records that were nearly hits

[jazz_pilgrim]

I have always been interested in some of the disco/funk records that teetered on the very edge of the charts, but didn't quite make it. One more notch higher up in the charts and they would have made national radio playlists etc. Two examples I remember well:

El Coco's Cocomotion reached #31 in 1977 in the UK charts. That was when Radio One only concentrated on the Top 30.

Fat Larry's Band's Looking For Love Tonight reached #41 when Radio One concentrated on the Top 40.

As a consequence of missing out by one place, neither received mainstream play nor became big commercial hits.

Who knows - one more place higher and they might have been another overplayed disco classic....

Anybody remember any other examples?

Secondly, I was reading last week that during the Seventies, sales returns from the specialist disco/funk record shops would not have been included in compiling the UK National Charts figures.

Is this true? Was this the same in the U.S.?

And what impact would this have made had such sales returns from these shops been included in the stats for compiling the National charts? How many disco records might have made it onto national radio playlists?

[QUINNY]

Jazz: I think you're right about the chart returns and it makes sense really. Most of these shops would have been heavily into imports which couldn't appear on a UK sales chart.
My local records shop, Henry's Records in Southampton was an old fashioned small independant that WAS on the list of retailers used for the chart info. Therefore they used to get all the UK product and were supported by most of the pro DJs in the Southampton area. I'd like to think that they and others like them DID help to make many disco type releases into hits. Proof of the pudding is surely the very fact that, the UK had many more top 40 disco type records hit the national charts, than the USA. I think Holland must have seen the largest 'crossover'.

[jazz_pilgrim]

Didn't McFadden and Whitehead make an early entry into the UK top 30 - based almost entirely on import sales of Ain't No Stopping Us Now alone? And wasn't Anita Bell a very similar case the week after?

I may be wrong on these facts- but I am sure this was so at the time and have always believed it....

[DISCODISK]

i think there were 100s jazz how about "could heaven ever be like this" idris muhammad no:42
re chart returns i think the 7os was probibly the least accurate period for sales there ever was with all the hyping and stuff that went on.many records that sold well in the north were pulled from the charts as they thought something must be wrong as most sales were in the north [the three before 8 maxi,wigans last 3 records played at the end of the night sold 175,000 the first week of release THAT was pulled] and theres many cases like that, add to that all the hyping like putting a record on the release sheet to be released this week when in fact it wasnt out for two more weeks so kids would trail from shop to shop tring to obtain it leaving the shopkeeper to order masses of copies as everyone was asking for it.also chart return shops recieving surprise FREE records in a box left in their doorstep in the morning what shopkeeper wouldnt push them!add to that all the import sales not included,the bootlegs some of simon soussans pressings were doing 100,000 copies, so accurate isnt the word here and what about woolworths many of their shops were chart return shops and at that time they only stocked the top 40 so how could they create a new entry :roll: thats the pop buisiness folks :lol: :lol: :lol:

[QUINNY]

DISCODISK: Calm down, calm down. :lol:
Just out of interest.
We all know that the Northern Soul jocks were great at talking everything up, so is it possible that some of the figures you've quoted could be wrong?
Looks like Mr. Soussan make a bucket load of illegal money and his legit records must have been a real let down eh?
He'd only get a very small proportion of their turnover.
I'm glad that a load of discs didn't make it into the top 40, otherwise we may have had our own disco sucks backlash.
Personally, I would have hated more Northern Soul records to have made the charts as you must know. The same goes for Disco and Jazz Funk too. I reckon all in all it was all pretty well represented chart wise. There was a brief time in '76 (was it?) when Northern Soul looked like it was going to take over and that would have been a travesty really, just like if all the much loved Jazz Funk records of '79/80 had all scored. O.K. there were strong followings, but Northern Soul and Jazz Funk fans still only accounted for a relatively small percentage of all music fans, within the whole UK dance scene. I feel it's pretty poor when any one type of music dominates things. It tends to quell any real diversity for a while and breeds a strange fanaticism.

[markydefad]

Aaahh...the British charts!!!!

I happened to notice last night that I have the mid-Feb 1975 British Top 40 on the same page as the next Tom Moulton column. Out of curiosity, I scanned it to take a look/see at how the burgeoning Disco fad was doing on the British charts. Um...well it wasn't too promising. Helen Reddy & The Carpenters were there; Gloria Gaynor & B. T Express were NOT. (Out of fairness maybe they charted later). Engelbert Humperdinck had the #1 LP. :roll:

Are you Brits interested in these stats? If so, I'll type it up next week.

I also have the Brazilian Top 10. "Feelings" by Morris Albert is on it!!!! :P

[QUINNY]

Marky: (a) Maybe it's a bit early to start assuming that we didn't have disco crossover hits. (b) We were maybe a bit slow on the uptake and didn't have a massive black audience who could immediately effect sales and influence matters. '75 was still early, even by US standards. (c) We would probably be a few months or more behind the US in record release dates and many wouldn't be picked up until they'd had some action over there.
The British Disco charts would be interesting (especially to you) but the national pop charts no, not for me, especially as I managed without them in Spain. I'm sure I didn't miss much and quite often cringe when I see and hear what I did miss. Glad I wasn't in the country.
I think you'd be pleasantly surprised which records did make the national charts in the UK and hence entered the national psyche.

[DISCODISK]

[quote="QUINNY"]DISCODISK: Calm down, calm down. :lol:

i saw this very early today and was very amused but couldnt reply till now cos avbin washin me shell suits anme trakkies!
soussans bootlegs really did sell masses quinny those figures come from friends of mine who wholesaled/retailed these things and in the mis 70s,also i worked in record shops not just in the north but also in birmingham and they flew out by the van load we would order plenty [boxes] for a saturday and many times we just sold out halfway through the day there would have been many more of these records in the u.k charts but when they were legally issued it was too late.
simon made a lot of money u.k singles at the time were 50 pence simons boots were 85 pence or a pound [with a 25 pence profit for the shop] how much to press ? 5 pence maximum? and hundreds and hundreds of titles nothing much escaped simons pressings.with time more and more things are coming to light he wasnt exactly doing it in his garden shed he was taking them to major record labels to transfer from disc to tape brunswick was one!
the really funny thing is today with some originals now so expensive for most people so some of the early boots are now selling on auction sites for silly money as some of them were very authentic looking though legal reissues can be had people want something that looks like the original ive seen some sell for 60 to 80 dollars and the people know they are bootlegs!i saw a guy the other day on e.bay bidding on a bootleg of "love factory" eloise laws on music merchant it wasnt stated it was a bootleg the bid was 42 pounds i felt a bit sorry for him asuming he was young i mailed him and said slow down originals have distributed by buddah on the bottom and if you look youll get an original for this price,he carried on and won it at 46 pounds !but thats what auction sites are doing to record collecting :evil:
re the british charts i also agree people would be surprised at what did chart not just disco wise but all music from black america sometines i hear records from the early 70s and i think god that was top 3 pop !!!!

[SandraDee]

Like the shell-suits & trakkies bit DD! (are they purple & yellow? all us North-west scallies wear 'em!) :lol:

To go back to Jazz's original topic, I was frequently disappointed when favourite singles of mine would run out of steam at no.41 or 40-something(when it was the top 40 that was featured on TV, press, etc.) :evil: . Examples were MFSB's 'Mysteries of the World' (41 was good for an instrumental), Sylvester's 'Stars' & Sister Sledge's 'All American Girls'.

[QUINNY]

Steely: I suspect that many of the records that got to 41 or so did it on the back of lotsa freebie copies to participating returns shops and ran out of steam 'cos the real demand wasn't there. The record companies just loved to try and push a record by giving incentives to the right shops. Even I played a little piano phrase on a record that got into the top 50 just (I think), and that was largely due to a buzz over a very short timescale and the fact that the label which released it, was a chart returns shop. The record just flew out of their outlets and so probably distorted things to an extent. Disco records were very much victims of fashion, manipulation and hype, even more so than the average pop records of the time.

[SandraDee]

Quinny, u actually played piano on a hit record?! :o What was it? Hope it wasn't a Richard Clayderman type record :-?

[QUINNY]

Steely: It's nothing I'm particularly proud of and I didn't get paid one red cent, even though it was a 17 hour day.

The story is this:
Local record shop sells lotsa discs to local DJs. Thinks, why don't we get the rights to release some on our own label. Anyway, to cut a long story very short I got a phone call from a local studio owner (who had hit the charts with Honky in '76/'77) that he'd been asked to do a remix of Sylvester's 'Do You Wanna Funk'. "He didn't have 2 reel to reel recorders, could I hire him one of mine, oh and BTW you were once a DJ, perhaps you could help me"?
So there it was, Sylvester's disco classic on a 10 inch reel, the very master. I felt in awe.
Basically he put lotsa heavy drum machine parts over the top of the original. It was an absolute bastard to keep the two in sync (which I did with my mixing experience) and many, many razor blade edits were necessary. So we listened to it and I said, "it doesn't sound at all Housey, 'cos nearly all of dem records have some cheesey piano riff. Can't you put some on it?" Well, he was a self taught Bass player and knew absolutely diddly squat about piano, chords etc, which was only slightly less than I knew. In the end I ended up adding a little repeated 8 bar piano phrase/riff that they liked so much, it had a refrain later in the edit.
I'm pretty sure it ended up sampled on some other Italian records of the period (BTW: Italian boy mix, different or is it the same one with a different name..I don't know?)

Sylvester - Do You Wanna Funk - Housey Housey Mix - Domino Records - 1988

[SandraDee]

Oh my gawd, I've actually got that house remix of 'DYWF' on a domino records 12" from '88 (I remember that this label was based in Portsmouth or Southampton, right?) I can't play it as its at my old man's place but next time I visit I'm going to sample your keyboard talents Q! :P I never played it much so I probably didn't like it but that's 15 years ago so I may have changed my opinion, but then again, as I've mentioned b4 here i'm not generally a fan of remixes. Well, what a revelation Quinnique!

[QUINNY]

Steely: Don't hold your breath. I did say to the other guy "it needed a cheesey piano riff"!!
All in all I think the record worked as such ( a cashing in on the track's long term popularity and update for the House era), but I'd still go for the original myself. How enlightening is that, eh?
One thing though "where's ma money!!"
P.S. I had to buy my copy of the record and I've probably only played it half a dozen times at most. I wish I'd still been a DJ, so I could have played it 'in anger'.

[SandraDee]

Well, Quinnique, I played it & it isn't as bad as i remember! you talented old thing you!

[QUINNY]

Steely: Oh well, perhaps maybe it was better than I remember. I'll have to give it another listen one day, or take piano lessons!

[nrgbeat]

Quinny you mentioned the Italian Boy mix.

I have this mix and it states it was recorded in Italy. I can't remember who the remixer was, I can check later.