On this date in 1964 Whisky-A-Go-Go, US Discotheque, opened in Los Angeles. 10 facts about disco music.
Disco is a genre of dance Music that emerged in the late 1960s from the United States' urban nightlife scene, especially among the African-American, Latino and gay communities.
The music is characterised by a beat known as Four-on-the-floor, which is played in 4/4 time and the bass drum is hit on every beat. Earl Young, drummer for the Trammps, is credited to have invented the disco beat.
Disco is short for discothèque, a French word which means "library of phonograph records". The word as a name for a type of dance club dates back as far as the 1940s when clubs often had to resort to playing records during the war rather than having live music.
The name Whisky-A-Go-Go comes from the French à gogo, meaning "in abundance", "galore".
The disco era is said to have started on Valentine's Day 1970 when a wealthy man in New York, David Mancuso, opened a club called The Loft.
Prior to disco, in order to have a night out dancing, it was necessary in most clubs to have a partner, and given this was the 50s and 60s, that partner would have to be of the opposite sex. People could dance to disco music by themselves or in a group – revolutionary at the time.
The first disco hit was Gloria Gaynor’s Never Can Say Goodbye in 1974, it being one of the first records mixed specifically to be played in a club.
The clubs themselves created a fun, buzzing energy by using strobe lights and disco balls, which have actually been around a lot longer than the music. Louis Bernard Woeste patented the “Myriad Reflector” in 1917, but the idea had possibly been around since the US civil war.
The genre wasn’t popular with everyone. Steve Dahl, a DJ at a rock radio station in Chicago, incited an anti disco event in 1979. He urged rock fans to bring disco records to a baseball match between the Chicago White Sox and Detroit Tigers, promising money off the price of the tickets to all who complied. The records were collected on the field and blown up to anti-disco chants.
Other famous names on the disco scene included Hot Chocolate, Donna Summer, Chic, Heatwave, The Village People, Yvonne Elliman and Thelma Houston. And not forgetting Rick Dees, who wrote the song Disco Duck and provided the voice of the duck. This record sold more than six million copies but Dees was paid a mere $50 for his contribution.
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