In 2001, I went to an exhibit of record album art at a gallery in New York. The walls were papered from floor to ceiling with covers of every description. The crowd was enthralled, pointing at familiar pop stars, reminiscing about where they were when they first heard a certain song, or connecting again with an album that seemed to never stop spinning all through college. I wondered what it was about a twelve-by-twelve-inch album cover that could engage just about anybody.

The curators of the show were people like me — so dedicated to records it’s almost as if free will doesn’t count. I envied their ability to express their devotion and dreamed about what I could do to celebrate album art. As my wheels turned, I realized that conspicuous by its absence was any spotlight on the disco era, a particular favorite of mine, and I decided at that moment that I had a mission, a calling, to change that. To Disco, With Love is the result.

I thought I knew this history because I had lived and loved it. But as I started to research, I realized what I knew was far from the whole story. Studying the “Disco Action” charts found in scratchy, microfilmed issues of Billboard magazine at Lincoln Center’s library was an eye-opener. The first disco chart appeared in November 1974, with record positions calculated by audience response, as reported by a few New York DJs, and by sales reported by select New York record shops that specialized in this new music. It was barely enough to fill two skinny columns. But by September 1976, a little less than two years later, the magazine was devoting an entire page to what was being played in fifteen major cities across the country.

Billboard magazine, the music industry bible, was telling the country that disco had arrived. Each city, unsurprisingly, had its own personality. Philadelphia was to disco what Detroit was to Motown, with the City of Brotherly Love’s signature sound of smooth orchestral soul. Miami had its own sound, exemplified by K.C. and the Sunshine Band’s catchy beats, breezy hooks and tempered by the endless summer and miles of beaches. Los Angeles often danced to a song that wasn’t being played in any other city — it should come as no shock that David Bowie’s “Fame” made disco playlists there and nowhere else. By September 1979, there were so many tracks that disco had its own National Top 100.

As demand for music specifically designed for dancing increased, a new aesthetic emerged. Nothing like it had been heard before. In the three years between the debut Disco Action column and the release of Saturday Night Fever in November 1977, the amount of original disco music released was staggering. Each week a new stack of singles and albums would come on the scene. A door had opened and the new sound of disco allowed established artists such as Patti LaBelle, the Jackson Five and Frankie Valli to reinvent themselves, as well as great new talent like the Trammps, Donna Summer and Paul Jabara to rush onto the scene and express themselves.

Disco distinguished itself from traditional Top 40 songs by experimenting with the length of its tracks. Disco dancers wanted to be fully involved in a song, wrapped up in it. No one knew this better than Tom Moulton, who is universally credited with inventing the extended “Disco Mix” with his work on early, longer tracks like “Peace Pipe” by B.T. Express. It became common for a song to be seven or eight minutes long, during which it would break down and then build itself back up to another climax. Eurodisco took it a step further—exploring variations on one song’s theme for an entire side of the disc was not unusual. Dancers loved this! Often the floor erupted in screams of joyful approval as the songs progressed. Furthermore, disco benefited from strides in sound reproduction. The better discos were installing state-of-the-art sound systems. Grinding bass lines, crash cymbals, soaring violins, and tinkling keyboards played at rock concert volume took dancers inside the sound.

By the mid-1970s, album art for the 12-inch record had evolved into a mirror of social values, and the covers of disco — possibly pop music’s most notorious — are no exception. The classic disco era, a period ranging from mid-1974 through the early 1980s, evolved into an international obsession and an enormous body of music was created to support the demand. The music provided the soundtrack and the album art promoted the package.

It is easy to dismiss much of this art with an eyeroll, but that would be a mistake. The album art established its own vocabulary in much the same way as the music. If it wasn’t for disco, would we have had paintings of dancing aliens in a transparent spaceship streaking through space? Or photographs of a girl-group dressed up as motorcycle riding dominatrices surrounded by Speedo-wearing body builders? Looking at these covers is like catching Saturday Night Fever all over again. We are reminded how good it feels to shake off our worries and just dance.

Much, too, has been made of the last days of disco. Disco did not die. Disco didn’t end because the general public got sick of it and staged a symbolic funeral pyre at Comiskey Park. This disco dancer and DJ has no personal recollection of that event. It made no impression on me while I was grooving to the fresh releases of summer 1979, like “The Boss” by Diana Ross, and “Good Times” by Chic. Disco, like it did from the beginning, continued to evolve. Disco was the springboard that launched rap, hip-hop, and break dancing into the mainstream. Michael Jackson, Madonna, Prince, Boy George and other mega-stars of the 1980s owe a huge debt to disco and the dancefloors that were still in full swing. To this day there are numerous venues where patrons gather to dance, dance, dance the night away.

Disco is alive and the beat goes on and on…

Photography: Frank Laffitte

Wild Cherry, Wild Cherry [Epic]

Of all the records collected for To Disco, With Love, the photograph on Wild Cherry’s debut album sums up the over-the-top quality of the disco era best. Photographer Frank Laffitte’s stunning capture of lips smeared in bulletproof gloss about to pop a juicy cherry is pure sex, but somehow not vulgar. Laffitte was sought after to bring his flair for the ultra-hot to the business of album art, and this album contains the legendary “Play That Funky Music” which told of the once stubborn singer’s joyful discovery of funk, and his eventual surrender to the groove, a feeling shared by the masses in the fall of 1976.