Webster

The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions." --American Statesman Daniel Webster (1782-1852)


Monday, April 20, 2020

Monday Music "Disco Duck" By Rick Dees


I have been busy working the house for the past few days so I was unable to post, I had enough time to read my blogroll in the morning as I drank my coffee, before I started working on the house.
I have been enjoying the run of songs, I never had a theme last this long, and I am  really enjoying it in a weird sort of way,   I have several more weeks in mind, perhaps longer.  As long as I can flog er work the muse, I will,
     I am continuing my string of "bugaloo" songs.  This discussion was started in the "Monster Hunter Nation, Hunters Unite", back in December? it is a Facebook group with enthusiast of the ILOH "International Lord of Hate" A.K.A Larry Correia.  We were talking about what song would we use if we looked out of our window or glanced at our security camera and saw this.....

One of the alphabet bois lining up to take down your house...What would be your "Valhalla" song and you would set it up to play as you load up magazines and prepare yourself.
 I figured it would scar the alphabet boys if they come busting in and hearing a song that is related to Disco and Porn in the 1970's.  What can I say, My humor is warped....just a bit. Next week will be "Night on Disco Mountain by David Shire",  Now that should really cause some psych evals., hehehe, some poor ATF guy trying to explain the attraction to his mother because of Disco.

I was on the way to work and this song came on my 70's channel on my Sirius XM in my truck and I had totally forgotten about this song.  I enjoyed the trip down memory lane.  I remember when this song came out and it was huuuuge.  When I was a kid I really liked this song and I kept imaging it was Donald Duck singing the song.

  What can I say, I was 10 years old back then and there was no internet to research things. 

"Disco Duck" is a satirical disco novelty song performed by Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots. At the time, Dees was a Memphis disc jockey. It became a number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 for one week in October 1976 (and ranked #99 out of the 100 most popular songs of the year according to Billboard magazine). It also made the top 20 on the Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart, peaking at number 15. "Disco Duck" was initially released in the south by Estelle Axton's Fretone label, but it was later released by RSO Records for national and international distribution.

Written by Dees, "Disco Duck" was inspired by a 1960s novelty dance song called "The Duck," recorded by Jackie Lee (Earl Lee Nelson in 1965. According to Dees, it took one day to write the song, but three months to convince anyone to perform it.
Combining orchestral disco styles with a Donald Duck–esque voice as the main plot point, the story within "Disco Duck" centers around a man at a dance party who is overcome by the urge to get up and "get down" in a duck-like manner. When the music stops, he sits down, but when he decides to get up and dance again, he finds that everyone in the room is now doing his dance.

A misconception about "Disco Duck" is that the voice of the duck itself was provided by Clarence Nash, the original voice of Donald Duck in many Walt Disney cartoons, but on several occasions the Disney Company maintained that Nash never contributed to the song. The voice of the duck was performed by Ken Pruitt, an acquaintance of Dees, as stated on the label of the RSO release. For the live tour, the duck vocals were handled by Michael Chesney, another acquaintance of Dees.
This video is a tongue in cheek humor of the Disco era, it is campy but a fun song and video
"Disco Duck" became a nationwide hit in the United States by September 1976. On the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, it peaked at number one on October 16, 1976, for one week, held the number-two spot for the following four weeks and remained in the Top 10 for a total of 10 weeks.
For all its success, "Disco Duck" was shunned by radio stations where Dees was living in Memphis, including WMPS-AM, the station Dees worked for at the time. Station management forbade Dees from playing the song on his own show and rival stations in the city refused to play it for fear of promoting the competition. When Dees talked about (but did not play) the song on his show one morning, his boss fired him citing conflict of interest. After a brief mandatory hiatus, Dees was hired by station WHBQ-AM, WMPS's primary competition in Memphis.
By the time "Disco Duck" had become a hit, Dees and his "Idiots" started making the rounds of the popular TV music shows to promote the song. On American Bandstand (and similar shows), Dees lip-synched to the recording, alone on stage with puppeteer Rickey Provow animating a duck puppet that he had made. Ironically, this appearance was never seen in the Memphis area due to then-ABC affiliate WHBQ-TV pre-empting Bandstand for wrestlin at the time and for the aforementioned

4 comments:

  1. I attended air traffic control "AC" school at NATTC Millington, Tennessee late 1976 to early 1977. I recall Disco Duck being played on the radio, as we listened to it in our barracks room. Do recall Rick Dees on the radio, but vaguely. Also remember receiving the swine flu shot, probably with one of those pneumatic devices. Jim

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hey Jim;

      Yeah it was a strange song, I recall hearing it when I was in Germany on AFN out of Frankfurt but I was a kid though.

      Delete

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