The mother of discos is Régine Zylberberg, a Belgian native of Polish Jewish ancestry. She managed Whisky-a-Go-Go in Paris in 1953 and later in 1957 owned and successfully operated Chez Regine’s in Paris’ Latin Quarter. By the 1970s, Regine’s made it to Manhattan, which at the time was the epicenter of dance.

The hippies of the ‘60s burned out and lost some significant rock icons, like Jimi, Janis and Jim. The Big Apple was chock-full of alternates — namely disenfranchised Latinos and African-Americans. The United States had become more overtly ethnic; baby boomers were more comfortable with their hyphenated American status. As minorities grew louder and prouder, an entire generation of Americans was challenging rigid gender definitions, restrictions and downright sexism and homophobia. Straight women, lesbians and gay men were gaining space in the American tapestry, wanting (like all the other marginalized groups) to be treated equally and respected as human beings. Disco became their soundtrack and discotheques were their sanctuaries.

In a piece describing the impact of disco on pop culture, The Los Angeles Times cited gay men as “disco’s most loyal fan base.” The article goes on to highlight that “when the Firehouse, the first New York gay disco, opened in 1971, two years after the Stonewall riots, it revolutionized the way gays mingled.”

As the clubs spread in the U.S. (mostly in cosmopolitan cities) a musical genre was built around the disc jockey culture. Though Motown and the sounds coming from Philadelphia — which produced the duo Gamble and Huff — had already morphed into what sounded like more flowery, lush funk (i.e. Teddy Pendergrass, The Ojays, Eddie Kendricks, The Jackson 5) disco did not officially become the music’s official name until 1974. That is when Barry White hit the charts with “Love’s Theme” and “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe,” the Hues Corporation put out “Rock the Boat” and R&B studio session singer George McRae, recorded the number one smash, “Rock Your Baby” out of a little warehouse studio in Hialeah named TK Records.

“Rock Your Baby” was written by Harry Wayne Casey and Rick Finch, who later went on to front K.C. and the Sunshine Band, a Miami-based band which stemmed from a former junkanoo/funk band named Band Ocean Liners and went on to record a string of top-five hits between 1975 and 1977, including “Get Down Tonight”, “That’s the Way (I Like It)”, “Shake Your Booty”, “I’m Your Boogie Man”, and “Keep it Coming Love”.

“I wasn’t recording disco music. We were making good dance music, happy music that combined all the rhythms I grew up around in South Florida,” said Harry Casey, returning to an idea he’s expressed to me several times in various interviews. “The name ‘disco’ came later. It was a name used to market the music.”

The legendary cofounder (along with Steve Alaimo) of TK Records, Henry Stone had long been in what he called the “race music” game. “I settled in South Florida in 1948 and I ran around recording and distributing predominantly black artists,” Henry recalled. He was certainly no stranger to the blues and R&B. In the early 1950s, he recorded performers such as Ray Charles (“St. Pete Blues”) and James Brown (“Please, Please, Please”).

“In those days I used to crisscross the state with blues records in my trunk, trying to distribute them to stores and radio stations. You didn’t want to get caught in the wrong part of the state with that stuff in your car, it was considered subversive material by some back then,” Henry explained in an interview I filmed in 2009. He passed away at age 93 in 2014.