May The Funk Be With You, Always !

Chic is regarded by many as a great disco band, but in reality, the smooth baselines from producer Nile Rodgers actually were the beginnings of the funk era.

Nile first picked up a guitar while still in school and there was no stopping the evident talent that quickly emerged. At the age of 19, Nile not only worked for Sesame Street, but was performing nightly as part of the house band for the world renowned Apollo Theatre in Harlem, playing with luminaries such as Aretha Franklin, Parliament Funkadelic, Ben E. King, and The Cadillacs. Pretty amazing for a skinny kid with glasses from New York City, but he wanted more. Nile Rodgers wanted a band of his own. - www.nilerogers.com

There can be little argument that Chic was disco’s greatest band; and, working in a heavily producer-dominated field, they were most definitely a band. By the time Chic appeared in the late ’70s, disco was already slipping into the excess that eventually caused its downfall. Chic bucked the trend by stripping disco’s sound down to its basic elements; their funky, stylish grooves had an organic sense of interplay that was missing from many of their overproduced competitors.

Chic’s sound was anchored by the scratchy, James Brown-style rhythm guitar of Nile Rodgers and the indelible, widely imitated (sometimes outright stolen) bass lines of Bernard Edwards; as producers, they used keyboard and string embellishments economically, which kept the emphasis on rhythm. Chic’s distinctive approach not only resulted in some of the finest dance singles of their time, but also helped create a template for urban funk, dance-pop, and even hip-hop in the post-disco era. Not coincidentally, Rodgers and Edwards wound up as two of the most successful producers of the ’80s.

Rodgers and Edwards first met in 1970, when both were jazz-trained musicians fresh out of high school. Edwards had attended New York’s High School for the Performing Arts and was working in a Bronx post office at the time, while Rodgers’ early career also included stints in the folk group New World Rising and the Apollo Theater house orchestra. Around 1972, Rodgers and Edwards formed a jazz-rock fusion group called the Big Apple Band.

This outfit moonlighted as a backup band, touring behind smooth soul vocal group New York City in the wake of their 1973 hit “I’m Doin’ Fine Now.” After New York City broke up, the Big Apple Band hit the road with Carol Douglas for a few months, and Rodgers and Edwards decided to make a go of it on their own toward the end of 1976. At first they switched their aspirations from fusion to new wave, briefly performing as Allah & the Knife Wielding Punks, but quickly settled into dance music. They enlisted onetime LaBelle drummer Tony Thompson and female vocalists Norma Jean Wright and Alfa Anderson, and changed their name to Chic in summer 1977 so as to avoid confusion with Walter Murphy & the Big Apple Band (who’d just hit big with “A Fifth of Beethoven”).

Augmented in the studio by keyboardists Raymond Jones and Rob Sabino, Chic recorded the demo single “Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)” and shopped it around to several major record companies, all of which declined it. The small Buddah label finally released it as a 12″ in late 1977, and as its club popularity exploded, Atlantic stepped in, signed the group, and re-released the single on a wider basis. “Dance, Dance, Dance” hit the Top Ten, peaking at number six, and made Chic one of the hottest new groups in disco. Chic scrambled to put together their self-titled first album, which spawned a minor follow-up hit, “Everybody Dance,” in early 1978.

At this point, Wright left to try her hand at a solo career (with assistance from Rodgers and Edwards), and was replaced by Luci Martin. It was a good time to come onboard; “Le Freak,” the first single from sophomore album C’est Chic, was an out-of-the-box smash, spending five weeks on top of the charts toward the end of 1978 and selling over four-million copies (which made it the biggest-selling single in Atlantic’s history). Follow-up “I Want Your Love” reached number seven, cementing the group’s new star status, and C’est Chic became one of the rare disco albums to go platinum.

1979’s Risqué was another solidly constructed LP that also went platinum, partly on the strength of Chic’s second number one pop hit, “Good Times.” “Good Times” may not have equaled the blockbuster sales figures of “Le Freak,” but it was the band’s most imitated track: Queen’s number one hit “Another One Bites the Dust” was a clear rewrite, and the Sugarhill Gang lifted the instrumental backing track wholesale for the first commercial rap single, “Rapper’s Delight,” marking the first of many times that Chic grooves would be recycled into hip-hop records. Also in 1979, Rodgers and Edwards took on their first major outside production assignment, producing and writing the Sister Sledge smashes “We Are Family” and the oft-sampled “He’s the Greatest Dancer.” This success, in turn, landed them the chance to work with Diana Ross on 1980’s Diana album, and they wrote and produced “Upside Down,” her first number one hit in years, as well as “I’m Coming Out.”

The disco fad was fading rapidly by that point, however, and 1980’s Real People failed to go gold despite another solid performance by the band. Changing tastes put an end to Chic’s heyday, as Rodgers and Edwards’ outside production work soon grew far more lucrative, even despite aborted projects with Aretha Franklin and Johnny Mathis. Several more Chic LPs followed in the early ’80s, with diminishing creative and commercial returns, and Rodgers and Edwards disbanded the group after completing the lackluster Believer in 1983.

Later that year, both recorded solo LPs that sank without a trace. Hungry for acceptance and respect in the rock mainstream (especially after accusations that they had ripped off Queen instead of the other way around), both Rodgers and Edwards sought out high-profile production and session work over the rest of the decade. Rodgers produced blockbuster albums like David Bowie’s Let’s Dance, Madonna’s Like a Virgin, and Mick Jagger’s She’s the Boss. Edwards wasn’t as prolific as a producer, but did join the one-off supergr

oup the Power Station along with Tony Thompson as well as Robert Palmer and members of avowed Chic fa

ns Duran Duran; he later produced Palmer’s commercial breakthrough, Riptide. Edwards also worked with Rod Stewart (Out of Order), Jody Watley, and Tina Turner, while Rodgers’ other credits include the Thompson Twins, the Vaughan Brothers, INXS, and the B-52’s’ comeback Cosmic Thing.

Rodgers and Edwards re-formed Chic in 1992 with new vocalists Sylver Logan Sharp

and Jenn Thomas, and an assortment of session drummers in Thompson’s place; they toured and released a new album, Chic-ism. In 1996, the reconstituted Chic embarked on a tour of Japan; sadly, on April 18, Edwards passed away in his Tokyo hotel room due to a severe bout of pneumonia. Rodgers continued to tour occasionally with a version of Chic, and, in 1999, his Sumthing Else label issued a recording of Edwards’ final performance with the band, Live at the Budokan. ~ Steve Huey, All Music Guide

http://www.nilerodgers.com/

Electrifying Mojo radio  shows ran during the late seventies to mid eighties on various Detroit radio stations including, WGPR (Where the show started and ran for years) , WJLB, WCHB, WHYT, WMXD, WTWR (Toledo) and WDTR. had several segments each night.

Although they would vary throughout the years, a typical Mojo night was:

• 10:00pm - The Landing of the Mothership. This was the intro to each show with spaceship sound effects and related dialog. Sometimes the music heard during the first hour was indicative of what you’d hear that night; sometimes it would be completely random.
• 11:00pm - Awesome ‘84, ‘85. In the mid eighties, Mojo would play an hour of brand new music (hence the year in the title) and a lot of new songs were introduced.
• 11:30pm - Lover’s Lane. A half an hour of “slow jams” for lovers.
• 12:00am - The Midnight Funk Association. Consisted regularly of Parliament-Funkadelic, the Gap Band, Zapp and other funk bands of the era.

The Midnight Funk Association Call To Order:

“Will the members of the Midnight Funk Association please rise. Please go to your porch light and turn it on for the next hour to show us your solidarity. If you’re in your car please honk your horn and flash your lights, wherever you are. If you’re in bed, get ready to dance on your back, in Technicolor. And get ready for the MFA. The word is… Don’t say no, say triple-whammy-whoa. Hold on tight, don’t let go. Whenever you feel like you’re nearing the end of your rope, don’t slide off. Tie a knot. Keep hanging, keep remembering, that it ain’t nobody bad like you. This session of the International Midnight Funk Association is being called to order. Electrifying Mojo presiding. May the Funk be with you. Always…”

From 1:00am to 3:00am (2:00 am on Saturday nights), Mojo’s show was different every night. Sometimes, the MFA would stretch well beyond 1:00am, other times Mojo would introduce segments such as:

• Star Wars - A classic “artist vs. artist” set, where Mojo would alternate selections from two different groups or artists, and the listeners would call in to vote for their favorite.
• Journey - Sometimes a multi-night segment, where Mojo would play songs by a single artist or group, spanning their entire career. This usually included a mix of hits and obscure songs by that artist.
• Shout-out - Everyone that called into the station during his show was the recipient of a “shout-out”. He would go on for as long as it took rattling off the first names of every single person who had called in to the show.
• 35-35-35 - Mojo would take suggestions from listeners about their favorite artists and bands. He then would choose the three most popular groups that night and play thirty-five minutes, commercial-free, of each group. This segment often gave airtime to groups that no other radio station in Detroit would play.

At other times, Mojo would spend the last 2 hours of his show showcasing live mixes on two turntables, by bringing in local DJs to do the same. One such DJ, Jeff Mills, began his career with Mojo as “The Wizard.” Mojo also would air music by local groups at this time.