Today’s classic song of the day is that early disco track, “Rock the Boat” by the Hues Corporation. This one one of the first disco tunes to go mainstream, charting at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1974. (Interestingly, it only hit #5 on Billboard’s Dance Club Songs chart.)
“Rock the Boat” was written by a guy named Waldo “Wally” Holmes, an Los Angeles-based songwriter who also put together and managed the Hues Corporation group. The tune first appeared on the group’s debut album, Freedom for the Stallion, and was released as that album’s third single. (Don’t worry; you never heard of the first two.) “Rock the Boat” looked like a flop, as well, until it gained traction in New York’s then-new disco scene. That got the single some mainstream airplay and you know the rest.
The backing musicians on this track came primarily from the band the Jazz Crusaders—Larry Carlton on guitar, Joe Sample on piano, and Wilton Felder on bass, augmented by studio cat Jim Gordon on drums. Wally Holmes himself played trumpet.
The Hues Corporation was a trio of singers (St. Clair Lee, Fleming Williams, and H. Ann Kelley) from Santa Monica. Their name was a play on Howard Hughes’ company the Hughes Corporation, but more colorful. (They originally wanted to call themselves the Children of Howard Hughes but their record label wisely nixed that idea.) The group had one more moderately successful single (“Rockin’ Soul,” which went to #18 later in 1974) but disbanded in 1980.
In any case, “Rock the Boat” was a fun little tune that was easy to dance to. I particularly like Jim Gordon’s drumming; it wasn’t straight up disco but had more of a Latin-influenced groove with that distinctive tom hit on the “and” after two and four. Don’t rock the boat, baby!
