I have to admit, I was not a fan of KC and the Sunshine Band back in the ’70s. I thought their music simplistic and derivative, not something an erstwhile jazzer like me would be caught dead listening to. I also despised disco music, so there’s that, too.
That said, a lot of people disagreed with me and gave KC and his band a lot of radio play and some pretty big hits, including today’s classic song of the day. “Get Down Tonight” was released as a single in February of 1975, during my junior year in high school, and was a smash. It went all the way to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, Cash Box Top 100, and Billboard Hot Soul Singles charts. Surprisingly, the tune peaked at just #6 on Billboard’s Hot Disco Singles chart, even though it was a heavy dance track.
KC was Harry Wayne Casey, the “KC” coming from his last name (“Casey” sounds like “KC.”). Mr. Casey was a part-time employee at the TK Records label in Hialeah, Florida, when he and his friend/producer/bassist Richard Finch put together the Sunshine Band, incorporating former members of another local band, the Miami Junkaroo Band. They released their first single in 1973 but didn’t hit it big until their second self-named album, released in 1975, which contained “Get Down Tonight” along with two other huge hits—”That’s the Way (I Like It)” and “Boogie Shoes.”
“Get Down Tonight” was written by misters Casey and Finch. They also wrote several other songs for the Sunshine Band, as well the song “Rock Your Baby,” a number-one hit for singer George McCrae.
And here’s my KC and the Sunshine Band story. The little band I was in back then played a lot of dances and wedding receptions, and we were inevitably asked to play at least one KC and the Sunshine Band song each gig, which always got everybody up and dancing. Don’t ask me which song it was we played; it may have been “Get Down Tonight,” it may have been something else. In any case, we were playing one such gig with a guest vocalist, my friend Clif Payne, when we got the inevitable request for a KC and the Sunshine Band tune. Turns out Clif knew one of their songs, but it wasn’t the one we knew. After putting our heads together for a few short minutes, we discovered that all the Sunshine Band songs were pretty much the same, so we were able to play the song we knew and Clif sang the one he knew and it fit together perfectly. Nobody knew the difference as long as we kept playing that disco beat.
To that point, here’s today’s daily bonus video of the day. It’s KC and the Sunshine Band playing an extended version of “Get Down Tonight” live on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert in April of 1977. It’s all about the beat, folks.
