'70s Club Hits

With its white suits and black lights, divas and DJs, mega-mixes and mirror balls, the '70s club scene was the pinnacle of the dazzling — if somewhat manic — party that turned America into a rainbow-colored Disco Nation. Sylvester's gender-bending falsetto floated over a jammin' staccato synth in "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)," his chart-topping hit from 1978. If '70s disco had a mission statement, Chic's funky, hand-clapping "Good Times" would've been it. And it was diva vs. diva, toe to toe, when Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand teamed up in 1979 for their slow-burn, man-blasting anthem, "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)."

In Next Steps, a 1939 hit from south of the border gets a facelift, a crooner declares his fondness for la dolce vita, and more.

Jazz horns, funk guitar, and a steam-hammer rhythm section power Kool & The Gang's "Open Sesame." The edited single appears on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, but we have a nearly nine-minute mix here. Barry White, the late honey-and-molasses-voiced leader of Love Unlimited Orchestra, adds a dash of salsa flavor to his disco groove in "Your Sweetness Is My Weakness." And the Ritchie Family take the Latin style one step beyond, retooling Ary Barroso's often-covered 1939 samba, "Aquarela do Brasil," into a #1 disco hit entitled simply "Brazil."

In Deep Cuts, a '60s-era instrumental hit-maker takes the disco plunge, a Nuyorican vocalist creates a buzz, and more.

Willie Hutch is probably best known for writing such smashes as "I'll Be There" for the Jackson 5. But he turned his mad performance skills loose on the soundtrack to the Blaxploitation film The Mack, with a superfly chunk of funk called "Brother's Gonna Work It Out." On "Superman," Puerto Rican transplant Celi Bee laid a disco wreath at the Man of Steel's feet years before Laurie Anderson discovered him, bumping and grinding out a steamy disco valentine for the "strange visitor from another planet." And who says you can't teach an old cat new tricks? Stax instrumental wizards Booker T. & the MG's split the difference between dance and jam, keeping the funk at a long, low boil in their title track from Melting Pot.

It seemed like the entire country was in the throes of Saturday Night Fever: three-piece white polyester suits everywhere, glowing almost supernaturally under the disco's black lights and mirrored ball. String players hadn't had this much work since Mozart toured Vienna, and the hi-hat percussion riffs turned the beat around at a pulse-peaking pace. Studio 54 was ground zero for all-night-party celebutantes marching to unmistakably hi-NRG Bolivian rhythms, and only the most glamorous, the most beautiful, the most fabulous people were allowed to cross beyond the velvet rope. From the bottomless bass rumblings of schmoove-mover Barry White to the sky-high trilling of queen-bee diva Donna Summer, we'll put you on the list and take you into the rarefied atmosphere that launched a thousand hips during those heady, carefree, innocent days of the '70s.