The Early Years
The star we all know as Donna Summer was born as LaDonna Adrian Gaines on New Year's Eve, 1948 in the Boston neighborhood of Mission Hill. Her family's address at the time was listed as 25 Woodrow Wilson Court in the 1948 Boston City Directory, putting the home by Orchard Park in that neighborhood. The family later moved to a three-family home at 16 Parker Hill. She started singing at a very young age, and her first public appearance was at her family's church, Grant AME Church in Roxbury, when she was 10 years old. She continued to sing in the church while growing up, but by the time she was a teenager, she discovered Motown and musical theater.
Summer attended the then all-girls Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Dorchester, where she sang in the school's glee club. When she was 17 years old, she auditioned for a new band's vocalist position and got the job. The other seven band members were White, which was especially unusual for the time. In 1999, Summer told the writer Brett Milano that they named the group "The Crow" in her honor because she was Black. She quit school in 1967 just a few months before she was supposed to graduate, and left Boston with the band for brighter lights in New York City. The band didn't meet with success, but Summer did.
In 1968, Summer became friends with the young actor Paul Jabara. He was working at the time as part of the cast for the hit musical Hair, and he was probably the reason that Summer learned that the musical was looking to recast some of the parts. She wanted the part of "Sheila," and while she did well at the audition, she only landed the part as an understudy, not the replacement performer. Rather than take that part, she asked if she could have the smaller role of "Dionne" if it meant she could have actual stage time. She was offered that role, but with the condition that she take it with the German production of the musical. This meant she had to leave New York in two weeks. Her small role as "Dionne" had her as one of the three singers in the song "White Boys," which was probably her most memorable production with the show. This production of the show closed in 1970, and she was then invited to perform that role with the Vienna Volksoper (Vienna People's Opera). While living in Vienna, she also appeared in productions of Showboat and Porgy and Bess. After a season of that, she was back in Germany, singing in productions of Godspell and The Me Nobody Knows. It was the latter musical that gave her a great solo with the song, "How I Feel."
In 1972, Summer met the actor Helmut Sommer, and the two of them soon started a romantic relationship. Early into this relationship, Summer got pregnant, and she and Sommer decided to get married. The marriage was very short-lived. The couple moved into Sommer's parents' home, but a few months after her daughter Mimi was born, Summer moved out. It was supposed to be a temporary move until the couple got back on their financial feet again. Unfortunately, these two individuals found that they had different goals in mind, ones that made continuing the relationship untenable and the couple split up for good. In late 1973, Summer met another White European man who caught her fancy: Peter Muldorfer. He was a painter and introduced Summer to the art, encouraging her to use paints as another way to express herself. In early 1974, Summer and Mimi spent several weeks in Boston with her family but moved back to Munich to be with Muldorfer.
In Munich in the early 1970s, Summer appeared in music studios twice as a solo artist (recording under the name "Donna Gaines") and then as a backup singer, which is when she was discovered by the production team of Pete Bellotte and Giorgio Moroder. This is when Summer's career really took off. Things started out slowly, with the single "Denver Dream," which was released only in the Netherlands. This song was meant to compete with the songs being released at that time by Cher: a story song, filled with melodrama. It was a moderately successful hit, so the production team had her sing another story song: "The Hostage." And even though Summer called it "an awful song" in a 1995 interview, it ended up as a #1 hit in Holland and Belgium, and a top 10 hit in France, Spain, and Scandinavia. The third release by the Bellotte-Moroder team was "The Lady of the Night," which became the title of her first album.
The Disco Era
Disco started in New York City dance clubs that catered to an audience of primarily Black, Latino, and gay patrons. The music combined elements of the "sweet" soul sound from Motown with Latin and funk elements. The range of songs played was diverse in the beginning, but by 1973 the sound coalesced around the "sweet" soul sound with lush orchestrations, as in "Love's Theme." By 1976, there were two distinct types of disco music: rhythm and blues disco and eurodisco.
Rhythm and blues disco came out of funk and soul with a heavy bass line and often featured horns, as in K. C. and the Sunshine Band's "Get Down Tonight." Lyrics were reduced to a few simple phrases, and the music was moved by that syncopated bass. Eurodisco, on the other hand, relied heavily on orchestral instruments and synthesizers. These lyrics were also simple, and these songs relied heavily on the producers of the music rather than the songwriters and performers. Enter "Love to Love You Baby." The producers Bellotte and Moroder had a huge hit with Donna Summer singing and moaning her way through this song in 1975. Her voice is in a higher register than earlier singles, and this became the sound she was most associated with for a time.
Summer wasn't to have another hit for two more years, and then "I Feel Love" was released in 1977. The song was a big shift from the lushly orchestrated, string-heavy arrangements of years past and had an entirely synthesized backing track. It was Summer's second top-ten hit, and at this point, journalists started to refer to her as "The Queen of Disco." 1978 saw her rendition of "MacArthur Park" become a number-one hit, 10 years after it was an unlikely hit for the actor Richard Harris. In her rendition, she plays it straight in the beginning, but then when she hits the high note in "Oh No!" the synthesizer comes in, soon followed by the driving disco beat. That year she also appeared in the disco film Thank God It's Friday with the hit song "Last Dance," which won her a Grammy for Best Female R&B Singer. Her second Grammy award came in 1979 with "Hot Stuff," which won her the award for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female, a break from her disco-heavy releases.
Disco is Dead, Long Live Disco
The late 1970s may have been good for Donna Summer and disco music in general, but its time was coming to a close. On July 12, 1979, a radio station sponsored a "Disco Demolition Night" at Chicago's Comiskey Park. The radio station promised $.98 tickets for the Chicago White Sox vs. the Detroit Tigers doubleheader game in exchange for a disco album. They would blow up the albums collected with dynamite in the gap between the games. 50,000 fans attended, with thousands more outside, and the event caused a riot. It also caused a small crater to appear in the field after the huge crate full of records was blown up, leaving the field in unplayable condition. The White Sox had to forfeit the second game as a result of the destruction. Much has been written about this event, with the upshot being that it wasn't so much the music that was the problem but the gay, Black, and Latino subcultures that supported the music.
1979 also saw changes for Summer. She left the Casablanca label that had released so many hits for her for the newly formed Geffen. And she became a born-again Christian in October of that year. Her first album for Geffen, The Wanderer, included two overtly religious songs, including "I Believe in Jesus," which got nominated for a Grammy for Best Inspirational Performance. The release of the title song, "The Wanderer," was a pop tune in the new wave style and reached #3 on the Billboard charts. It doesn't sound much like the voice people associate with Donna Summer, though. The rest of the album had rock, pop, and R&B songs. No disco, even though she was still working with Moroder and Bellotte as producers. That duo didn't last past this album, though, as she left them for Quincy Jones for her next album, Donna Summer. That album didn't feature any dance music at all, relying instead on mostly R&B. The album was a modest success, reaching #20 on the Billboard album charts, but it was far from Summer's best effort. It featured a couple of interesting tracks: the jazz standard "Lush Life" and the Bruce Springsteen-penned "Protection." The latter song got her a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Vocal, Female category.
For years, Summer's largest fan group was in the gay community. But all that changed in 1983 when she was reported to have said at her June 20 concert in Atlantic City, "Remember, it's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve . . . but I love you anyway." This started an unofficial boycott of her music in that community. Gay bars and discos would no longer play her music. People would leave stickers on albums in stores that read, "This is an Anti-Gay Recording." Rumors spread about other disparaging remarks she is supposed to have made to fans after concerts. In 1985, she made a statement to the leading gay publication, The Advocate: "Since the very beginning of my career, I have had tremendous support and friendship from the gay community. It is a source of great concern to me that anything I may have said has cast me as homophobic. All I can ask for is understanding, as I believe my true feelings have been misunderstood." Throughout the 1980s, Summer tried to correct what she believed to be a misunderstanding, but the boycott continued. She was still trying to repair the relationship in the 1990s. One such olive branch that was never extended was the song "One World," written for Summer by Paul Jabara. The song was about the AIDS crisis, and for reasons unknown, Summer decided against releasing it. Jabara died of complications from AIDS in September of 1992.
The single "She Works Hard for the Money" garnered Summer lots of success on the radio and television with its music video in 1983. Her 1984 album, Cats Without Claws, was a disappointing follow-up. It never even reached Gold status and was the lowest-selling album so far for Summer. 1987's All Systems Go was also a financial and artistic failure, only reaching #130 on the Billboard album charts. Another Time and Place came out in 1989 and included a couple of modest hit singles, "This Time I Know Its Real" and "I Don't Wanna Get Hurt," both hits on the dance floor. Donna Summer really staged a revival with that album.
She revisited her disco years in the 1990s with re-releases and greatest hits anthologies, as well as some new music. She released The Donna Summer Anthology in 1993 and a Christmas album, Christmas Spirit, in 1994. One of its tracks, "Carry On," was re-released in 1997 and it made it to #22 on the dance charts and won Summer her first Grammy in thirteen years for Best Dance Recording. In 1999, VH1 Presents: Live and More Encore featured a new song, "I Will Go with You (Con Te Partiro)," which became another dance hit for Summer. It was previously a hit duet for Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman as "Time to Say Goodbye." Her next and final full album was Crayons in 2008. In 2010, she released her final single, "To Paris With Love," another #1 hit on the Billboard dance charts. Lung cancer claimed Summer's life on May 17, 2012. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.
Donna Summer is the "Queen of Disco." Summer began her career singing Gospel in Dorchester churches. From Boston, Summer went to Europe, where she found international success. Listed below are a collection of books that touch on themes from Summer's life and music. From feminism and sexuality to the rise of disco to life as an expat, there is something for everyone. Time to "Dim All the Lights" and dive into a good book.
is an erotic folklore of short stories shot by Petra Collins starring Alexa Demie. Each of the nine tales are set in unique spaces, ranging from suburban homes and parking lots to fantastical sets. Petra and Alexa's chapters of elves, mermaids, sirens, water sprites, fallen angels, fairies, witches, and banshees blend their own stories with retold fairy tales. The photos combine elements of camp, prosthetics, and shibari in a surreal update to the imagery of the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson, Charles Perrault, and others.
is one of the most important records in music history, and one of the most influential. This book tells not only the story of the song but also the story of its all-pervading impact upon the world of popular music.
is legendary singer-songwriter Donna Summer's delightfully candid memoir about her journey from signing in a Boston church to her unexpected reign as the Queen of Disco, and the tragedy and spiritual rebirth that followed.
The Record Players allows a rare glimpse into the sound, culture, and craft that developed into a worldwide industry.
Working It is an intimate portrait of the lives of sex workers. A polyphonic story of triumph, survival, and solidarity this collection showcases the vastly different experiences and interests of those who have traded sex.
hopes to illuminate readers on the complexities of existence for Black women and create a digestible, thought-provoking book that will help readers to learn, empathize, reflect, and act. A personal history, a work of criticism, a piece of reporting, and a call to action, In Our Shoes is a timely exploration of race and womanhood that aims to entertain and inform.
Beyond the Shores reveals poignant histories of a diverse group of African Americans who have left the United States over the course of the past century. The interwoven stories highlight African Americans' complicated relationship to the United States and world at large.
After Dark, a first-hand account of the birth and growth of the disco movement in the 1970s.
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