Chic (band)
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| Chic | |
|---|---|
| Origin | New York City, USA |
| Genre(s) | R&B, Funk, Disco, Dance, Rock, Jazz, Reggae |
| Years active | 1976–1983 1990–1992 1996 1998–present |
| Label(s) | Buddah Records Atlantic Records Warner Bros. Records Sumthing Else |
| Associated acts | Sister Sledge Diana Ross Sheila B. Devotion Deborah Harry Luther Vandross Carly Simon The Honeydrippers |
| Members | |
| Nile Rodgers Sylver Logan Sharp Jessica Wagner Richard Hilton Jerry Barnes Omar Hakim Bill Holloman Cherie Mitchell Gerardo Velez Curt Ramm |
|
| Former members | |
| Bernard Edwards Alfa Anderson Luci Martin Tony Thompson Norma Jean Wright Fonzi Thornton Robert Sabino Raymond Jones Andy Schwartz Sammy Figueroa Michelle Cobbs Karen Milne Cheryl Hong Valerie Haywood |
|
Chic (pron. IPA: /ˈʃiːk/, sometimes fully capitalized as CHIC) is an American disco and funk band that was formed in 1976 by guitarist Nile Rodgers and bassist Bernard Edwards. It is best-known for its commercially successful disco songs, including "Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)" (1977), "Everybody Dance" (1977), "Le Freak" (1978), "I Want Your Love" (1978), "Good Times" (1979), and "My Forbidden Lover" (1979).
Contents |
[edit] History
[edit] 1976–1978: Origins and early singers
Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards met in 1970. They formed a rock band called the Boys (later the Big Apple Band) and played numerous gigs around New York City, but despite interest in their demos, they could not get a record contract when the music companies discovered they were African-American; the discrimination of the day said black artists couldn't play rock music.
Undeterred, in 1977, Edwards and Rodgers had former LaBelle and Ecstasy, Passion, & Pain drummer Tony Thompson join the band. It performed as a trio, doing covers at various gigs for a while. The trio needed a singer to front the band. That singer was Norma Jean Wright, who sang lead on their demo tape and on all the songs on its first, self-titled album (1977), but before that, the immediate success of its debut album Chic and the hits "Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)" and "Everybody Dance" sent Chic out on the road. It performed as a quartet until February 1978, but Rodgers and Edwards thought that their live performances would improve both in sound and visuals if they added another girl to front the band. Wright suggested her friend Luci Martin, who became a member in late winter/early spring of 1978.
Right after the sessions ended for its debut album, the band members began to work on Wright's self-titled debut solo album Norma Jean, released in 1978. This album contained club hit "Saturday." To facilitate Wright's solo career, intended to be parallel to her Chic career, the band had agreed to sign her to a separate contract and label. Unfortunately the legalities of this contract eventually forced Wright to leave the band in mid-1978, but not before she took part in the sessions for Chic-produced Sister Sledge album We Are Family. She was replaced by Alfa Anderson, who had been on back up vocals on the band’s debut album. For the Sister Sledge project, Edwards and Rogers wrote and produced "He's the Greatest Dancer" (originally intended to be a Chic song) in exchange for "I Want Your Love" (originally intended to be performed by Sister Sledge).
[edit] 1978–1979: "Le Freak" and "Good Times"
In late 1978, the band released C'est Chic, containing one of its best-known tracks, "Le Freak". The famous refrain "Aaa, freak out" was originally intended to be "Aaa, fuck off," conceived as an impromptu protest song after Edwards and Rogers had once tried unsuccessfully to get into the exclusive New York nightclub Studio 54. The title was changed for obvious reasons after they realized they had a hit on their hands. The single was a massive success, topping the US charts and selling over 6 million copies. It is still the biggest-ever selling single ever of Atlantic's parent company, Warner Music.
The following year, the group released the Risqué album and the lead track "Good Times," one of the most important and influential songs of the era. The track formed the backbone of Grandmaster Flash's "Adventures on the Wheels of Steel" and the Sugarhill Gang's breakthrough hip-hop single, "Rapper's Delight", and it has been endlessly sampled since by many dance and hip-hop acts, as well as being the inspiration for Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust".
At the same time, Edwards and Rodgers composed, arranged, performed, and produced many influential disco and R&B records for both established artists and one-hit wonders, including Sister Sledge's albums We Are Family (1979) and Love Somebody Today (1980); Sheila and B. Devotion's "Spacer"; Diana Ross's 1980 album diana, which included the hit singles "Upside Down", "I'm Coming Out" and "My Old Piano"; Carly Simon's "Why" (from 1982 soundtrack Soup For One); and Deborah Harry's debut solo album.
Chic also helped introduce the world to an up-and-coming young vocalist named Luther Vandross, who sang on several of Chic's albums, and helped define the distinctive vocal style of Chic. That style he used on his big breakthrough, the disco band Change's debut album "The Glow of Love" in 1980.
[edit] 1980s–1990s: Disbanding, other projects, a brief reunion
In the early 1980s, in the aftermath of the anti-disco backlash, the band struggled to obtain both airplay and sales, and it eventually disbanded. Rodgers and Edwards produced records for a wide variety of artists separately. Together, they produced the hugely successful Diana album for Diana Ross in 1980, which yielded the number-one single "Upside Down" and the Top-Ten hit "I'm Coming Out." "My Old Piano" was also a Top-Ten single for Ross in the United Kingdom. Rodgers co-produced David Bowie's 1983 album Let's Dance and was also largely responsible for the breakthrough success of Madonna Ciccone in 1984 with her Like a Virgin album. Madonna's first proper hit single, 1983's "Holiday," was just like Blondie's "Rapture" and the Sugar Hill Gang's "Rappers Delight," both heavily influenced and a tribute to the Chic sound in general and "Good Times" in particular. Though it is seldom noted, "Like a Virgin" might be considered a Chic album of sorts in that it reunited Rogers, Thompson, Edwards, keyboardist Rob Sabino, and collaborators Jeff Bova and Jimmy Bralower. In 1984, Rodgers was involved with Robert Plant’s Honeydrippers project and helped produce that band's only EP. Thompson and Edwards worked with the super group Power Station on its 1985 hit album, as well as Power Station lead singer Robert Palmer's solo smash Riptide that same year (both of which Edwards produced). In 1986, Rodgers produced Notorious, the fourth album from Duran Duran.
After a 1992 birthday party where Rodgers, Edwards, Paul Shaffer, and Anton Fig played old Chic hits to rapturous response, Rodgers and Edwards organized a reunion of the old band. They recorded new material—a single, "Chic Mystique" (remixed by Masters at Work) and subsequent album Chic-Ism, both of which charted—and played live all over the world, to great audience and critical acclaim.
In 1996 Rodgers was honored as the Top Producer in the World in Billboard Magazine, and was named a JT Super Producer. That year, he performed with Bernard Edwards, Sister Sledge, Steve Winwood, Simon Le Bon, and Slash in a series of commemorative concerts in Japan, which provided a career retrospective. Unfortunately, his longtime musical partner Edwards died of pneumonia at age 43 during the trip on April 18, 1996. His final performance was recorded and released as Live at the Budokan. Chic continued to tour with new musicians.
Thompson died of kidney cancer on November 12, 2003, at age 48.
[edit] 2000s - CHIC
CHIC has been nominated for inclusion in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame four times—2003, 2006, 2007 and 2008. Rodgers and CHIC continue to perform to sold-out venues worldwide.
[edit] Influences and awards
Chic influenced the vocal and music style of the Italian-American disco band Change, which had a string of hits in the early 1980s.
In addition to refining a relatively minimalist take on the disco sound, Chic helped to inspire other artists to forge their own sound. For example, The Sugarhill Gang used "Good Times" as the basis for its hit "Rapper's Delight", which helped launch the hip hop recorded music format as we know today. Later that year, Vaughn Mason and Crew sampled "Good Times" on its song "Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll." "Good Times" was also used by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five on its hit "..On the Wheels of Steel," which was used in the end sequence of the first hip-hop movie, Wild Style, from 1982. Blondie's 1980 US number-one hit "Rapture" was not only influenced by "Good Times" but was a direct tribute to Chic, and lead singer Deborah Harry's 1981 debut solo album Koo Koo was produced by Edwards and Rodgers.
Chic was cited as an influence by the majority of successful bands to emerge from Great Britain in the 1980s. Even Johnny Marr of The Smiths has cited the group as a formative influence. Rodgers guitar work has been so emulated as to become commonplace, and Edwards' lyrical bass is also much-cited in music circles, as is Thompson's steady and hard-hitting recorded drumwork. Queen got the inspiration for its hit single "Another One Bites the Dust" from Bernard Edwards' familiar bass guitar riff on "Good Times" after John Deacon met the band in The Power Station recording studio. (Source: "Everybody Dance: Chic and the Politics of Disco")
Chic's do-it-yourself attitude served as an uptown version of punk rock's fundamental tenets (while remaining upwardly mobile) and represented a new way for R&B acts to approach their own careers. (The group very quickly grabbed the production reins for its own records, wisely shielded themselves in business matters by forming an umbrella organization from which to administer their services, conceived and formulated their own image, and wrote their own material while holding tight to their publishing rights.)
On September 19, 2005, the group was honored at the Dance Music Hall of Fame ceremony in New York when they were inducted in three categories: 1) Artist Inductees, 2) Record Inductees for "Good Times," and 3) Producers Inductees, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards.
[edit] Discography
[edit] See also
- List of number-one hits (United States)
- List of artists who reached number one on the Hot 100 (U.S.)
- List of number-one dance hits (United States)
- List of artists who reached number one on the U.S. Dance chart
[edit] References, sources and external links
- "Everybody Dance: Chic and the Politics of Disco", book by Daryl Easlea, Helter Skelter Publishing (24 Oct 2004), ISBN 1-900924-56-0 [1]
- Rolling Stone Magazine biography
- Billboard Magazine biography
- All Music Guide Chic biography
- nilerodgers.com Nile Rodgers' official website
