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Chic (band)

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Chic
Musical artist For other uses, see Chic.

Chic (pron. IPA: [ʃiːk]) is an American disco/funk band that was formed in 1976 by guitarist Nile Rodgers and bassist Bernard Edwards. They are best known for their commercially successful disco songs, including "Dance Dance Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)" (1977), "Everybody Dance" (1977), "Le Freak" (1978), "I Want Your Love" (1978), "Good Times" (1979), and "My Forbidden Lover" (1979).

History

1976–1978: Origins and early singers

Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards met in 1970. They formed a rock band called The Boys (later the Big Apple Band) and played numerous gigs around New York City, but despite interest in their demos, they could not get a record contract when the music companies discovered they were black; the discrimination of the day said black artists couldn't play "rock".

Undeterred, in 1977 Edwards and Rodgers had former LaBelle and Ecstasy, Passion & Pain drummer Tony Thompson join the band. They performed as a trio, doing covers at various gigs for awhile. The trio needed a singer to front the band. That singer was Norma Jean Wright, who sang lead on their demotape and on all the songs on their first, self-titled album (1977).

But before that, the immediate success of their debut album and the hits "Dance Dance Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)" and "Everybody Dance" sent Chic out on the road. They performed as a quartet until February 1978, but Rodgers and Edwards thought that their live performances would improve both in sound and visuals if they added another girl to front the band. Norma Jean suggested her friend Luci Martin, who became a member in late winter/early spring of 1978.

Right after the sessions ended for their debut album, Chic began to work on Norma Jean's self-titled debut solo album, released in 1978. This album contained club hit "Saturday". Unfortunately, to facilitate Norma Jean's solo career, intended to be parallel to her Chic career, the band had agreed to sign her to a separate contract and label. Unfortunately the legalities of this contract eventually forced Norma Jean to leave the band in mid-1978, but not before she took part in the sessions for Chic-produced Sister Sledge album We Are Family. She was replaced by Alfa Anderson, who had been on back up vocals on Chic's debut album.

1978–1979: "Le Freak" and "Good Times"

In late 1978 the band released C'est Chic, containing one of their best known tracks, "Le Freak". The famous refrain "Aaa, freak out" was originally intended to be "Aaa, fuck off", but was changed due to obvious reasons. The single was a massive success, topping the U.S. charts and selling over six million copies. It is still the biggest selling single, ever, of Atlantic's parent company Warner.

For the Sister Sledge project, Chic swapped songs with "He's the Greatest Dancer" (originally intended as a Chic song) exchanging for "I Want Your Love" (originally due to be performed by Sister Sledge).

The following year the group released the Risqué album and the lead track "Good Times", one of the most important and influential songs of the era. The track formed the backbone of Grandmaster Flash's "Adventures on the Wheels of Steel" and the Sugarhill Gang's breakthrough hip-hop single, "Rapper's Delight", and has been endlessly sampled since by many dance and hip hop acts and was the inspiration behind the Queen hit "Another one bites the dust".

At the same time, Edwards and Rodgers composed, arranged, performed, and produced many influential disco and R&B records for both established artists and one-hit wonders, including Sister Sledge, Sheila and B. Devotion, Diana Ross, and Debbie Harry.

Chic also helped introduce the world to an up-and-coming young vocalist named Luther Vandross, who sang on several of Chic's albums, and helped define the distinctive vocal style of Chic. That style he used on his big breakthrough, the disco band Change's debut album "The Glow of Love" in 1980.

1980s–1990s: Disbanding, other projects, a brief reunion

File:Chic92bsmall.jpg
Chic in 1992: Sylver Logan Sharp, Bernard Edwards, Nile Rodgers, Jenn Thomas

In the 1980s, the band struggled to obtain airplay and sales, and they eventually disbanded. Rodgers and Edwards separately produced records for a wide variety of artists. Rodgers was largely responsible for the breakthrough success of Madonna in 1984 with her Like a Virgin album. Though it is seldom noted, "Like a Virgin" might be considered a Chic album of sorts in that it reunited Rogers, Thompson, Edwards, and collaborators Bova and Bralower. Thompson and Edwards worked with the super group Power Station on its 1985 hit LP as well as Power Station lead singer Robert Palmer's solo smash Riptide that same year (both of which Edwards produced).

After a 1992 birthday party where Rodgers, Edwards, Paul Shaffer and Anton Fig played old Chic hits to rapturous response, Rodgers and Edwards organized a reunion of the old band. They recorded new material — a single, "Chic Mystique" and subsequent album Chic-ism, both of which charted — and played live all over the world, to great audience and critical acclaim.

In 1996 Rodgers was honored as the "Top Producer In the World" in Billboard Magazine, and was named a JT Super Producer. That year, he performed with Bernard Edwards, Sister Sledge, Steve Winwood, Simon Le Bon and Slash in a series of commemorative concerts in Japan which provided a career retrospective. Unfortunately, his longtime musical partner Edwards, died of pneumonia at age 43 during the trip on April 18. His final performance was recorded. The recording was released as "Chic Live At The Budokkan" Chic continued to tour with new musicians.

Thompson died of kidney cancer on November 12, 2003 at age 48.

Influences and awards

Chic influenced the vocal and music style of the Italian-American disco band Change, who had a string of hits in the early 1980s.

In addition to refining a relatively minimalist take on the disco sound, Chic helped to inspire other artists to forge their own sound. For example, The Sugarhill Gang used "Good Times" as the basis for their hit "Rapper's Delight", which helped launch the rap/hip hop music format as we know today. "Good Times" was also used by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five on their hit "..On The Wheels Of Steel" which was used in the end sequence of the first Hip Hop movie "Wild Style" in 1982.

Queen got the inspiration for their hit single "Another One Bites the Dust" from Bernard Edwards' familiar bass guitar riff on "Good Times" after John Deacon met the band in The Power Station recording studio..

Chic was cited as an influence by the majority of successful bands to emerge from Great Britain in the 1980s. Even Johnny Marr of the Smiths cited the group as a formative influence. Rodgers guitar work has been so emulated as to become commonplace, and Edwards' lyrical bass is also much-cited in music circles, as is Thompson's steady and hard-hitting recorded drumwork.

Chic's "DIY" attitude served as an "uptown" version of punk rock's fundamental tenets (while remaining upwardly mobile) and represented a new way for R&B acts to approach their own careers. (The group very quickly grabbed the production reins for their own records, wisely shielded themselves in business matters by forming an umbrella organization from which to administer their services, conceived and formulated their own image, and wrote their own material while holding tight to their publishing rights.)

On September 19, 2005 the group was honored at the Dance Music Hall of Fame ceremony in New York when they were inducted in three categories: 1) Artist Inductees, 2) Record Inductees for "Good Times," and 3) Producers Inductees, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards.

Chic has been nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three times (in 2003, 2006, and 2007) but has not yet received the requisite number of votes for induction.

Discography

For a detailed discography, see here

Chic albums

NOTE:

  • In late 1979, a Chic compilation album also charted in both the US and UK. In the US, the compilation reached #88 as Les Plus Grands Succes de Chic: Chic's Greatest Hits. In the UK, where it was titled simply The Best Of Chic, it peaked at #30.

See also

References

  • "Everybody Dance: Chic and the Politics of Disco", book by Daryl Easlea, Helter Skelter Publishing (24 Oct 2004), ISBN 1-900924-56-0


External links

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