|
 There can be
little argument that Chic was disco's greatest band; and, working
in a heavily producer-dominated field, they were most definitely a
band. By the time Chic appeared in the late '70s, disco was
already slipping into the excess that eventually caused its
downfall. Chic bucked the trend by stripping disco's sound down to
its basic elements; their funky, stylish grooves had an organic
sense of interplay that was missing from many of their
overproduced competitors. Chic's sound was anchored by the
scratchy, James Brown-style rhythm guitar of Nile Rodgers and the
indelible, widely imitated (sometimes outright stolen) bass lines
of Bernard Edwards; as producers, they used keyboard and string
embellishments economically, which kept the emphasis on rhythm.
Chic's distinctive approach not only resulted in some of the
finest dance singles of their time, but also helped create a
template for urban funk, dance-pop, and even hip-hop in the
post-disco era. Not coincidentally, Rodgers and Edwards wound up
as two of the most successful producers of the '80s.
Rodgers and Edwards first
met in 1970, when both were jazz-trained musicians fresh out of
high school. Edwards had attended New York's High School for the
Performing Arts and was working in a Bronx post office at the
time, while Rodgers' early career also included stints in the
folk group New World Rising and the Apollo Theater house
orchestra. Around 1972, Rodgers and Edwards formed a jazz-rock
fusion group called the Big Apple Band. This outfit moonlighted
as a backup band, touring behind smooth soul vocal group New
York City in the wake of their 1973 hit "I'm Doin' Fine Now."
After New York City broke up, the Big Apple Band hit the road
with Carol Douglas for a few months, and Rodgers and Edwards
decided to make a go of it on their own toward the end of 1976.
At first they switched their aspirations from fusion to new
wave, briefly performing as Allah & the Knife
 Wielding
Punks, but quickly settled into dance music. They enlisted
onetime LaBelle drummer Tony Thompson and female vocalists Norma
Jean Wright and Alfa Anderson, and changed their name to Chic in
summer 1977 so as to avoid confusion with Walter Murphy & the
Big Apple Band (who'd just hit big with "A Fifth of Beethoven").
Augmented in the studio
by keyboardists Raymond Jones and Rob Sabino, Chic recorded
the demo single "Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)"
and shopped it around to several major record companies, all
of which declined it. The small Buddah label finally released
it as a 12" in late 1977, and as its club popularity exploded,
Atlantic stepped in, signed the group, and re-released the
single on a wider basis. "Dance, Dance, Dance" hit the Top
Ten, peaking at number six, and made Chic one of the hottest
new groups in disco. Chic scrambled to put together their
self-titled first album, which spawned a minor follow-up hit,
"Everybody Dance," in early 1978. At this point, Wright left
to try her hand at a solo career (with assistance from Rodgers
and Edwards), and was replaced by Luci Martin. It was a good
time to come onboard; "Le Freak," the first single from
sophomore album C'est Chic, was an out-of-the-box
smash, spending five weeks on top of the charts toward the end
of 1978 and selling over four-million copies (which made it
the biggest-selling single in Atlantic's history). Follow-up
"I Want Your Love" reached number seven, cementing the group's
new star status, and C'est Chic became one of the rare
disco albums to go platinum.
1979's Risquι
was another solidly constructed LP that also went platinum,
partly on the strength of Chic's second number one pop hit,
"Good Times." "Good Times" may not have equaled the
blockbuster sales figures of "Le Freak," but it was the
band's most imitated track: Queen's number one hit "Another
One Bites the Dust" was a clear rewrite, and the Sugarhill
Gang lifted the instrumental backing track wholesale for the
first commercial rap single, "Rapper's Delight," marking the
first of many times that Chic grooves would be recycled into
hip-hop records. Also in 1979, Rodgers and Edwards took on
their first major outside production assignment, producing
and writing the Sister Sledge smashes "We Are Family" and
the oft-sampled "He's the Greatest Dancer." This success, in
turn, landed them the chance to work with Diana Ross on
1980's Diana album, and they wrote and produced
"Upside Down," her first number one hit in years, as well as
"I'm Coming Out."
The disco fad was
fading rapidly by that point, however, and 1980's Real
People failed to go gold despite another solid
performance by the band. Changing tastes put an end to
Chic's heyday, as Rodgers and Edwards' outside production
work soon grew far more lucrative, even despite aborted
projects with Aretha Franklin and Johnny Mathis. Several
more Chic LPs followed in the early '80s, with diminishing
creative and commercial returns, and Rodgers and Edwards
disbanded the group after completing the lackluster
Believer in 1983. Later that year, both recorded solo
LPs that sank without a trace. Hungry for acceptance and
respect in the rock mainstream (especially after
accusations that they had ripped off Queen instead
of the other way around), both Rodgers and Edwards sought
out high-profile production and session work over the rest
of the decade. Rodgers produced blockbuster albums like
David Bowie's Let's Dance, Madonna's Like a
Virgin, and Mick Jagger's She's the Boss.
Edwards wasn't as prolific as a producer, but did join the
one-off supergroup the Power Station along with Tony
Thompson as well as Robert Palmer and members of avowed
Chic fans Duran Duran; he later produced Palmer's
commercial breakthrough, Riptide. Edwards also
worked with Rod Stewart (Out of Order), Jody Watley,
and Tina Turner, while Rodgers' other credits include the
Thompson Twins, the Vaughan Brothers, INXS, and the
B-52's' comeback Cosmic Thing.
Rodgers and
Edwards re-formed Chic in 1992 with new vocalists Sylver
Logan Sharp and Jenn Thomas, and an assortment of
session drummers in Thompson's place; they toured and
released a new album, Chic-ism. In 1996, the
reconstituted Chic embarked on a tour of Japan; sadly,
on April 18, Edwards passed away in his Tokyo hotel room
due to a severe bout of pneumonia. Rodgers continued to
tour occasionally with a version of Chic, and, in 1999,
his Sumthing Else label issued a recording of Edwards'
final performance with the band, Live at the Budokan.
ALBUM REVIEW - C'EST CHIC
Released in 1978, just as disco began to peak, C'est Chic and
its pair of dancefloor anthems, "Le Freak" and "I Want Your Love,"
put Chic at the top of that dizzying peak. The right album at the
right time, C'est Chic is essentially a rehash of Chic,
the group's so-so self-titled debut from a year earlier. That first
album also boasted a pair of floor-filling anthems, "Dance Dance
Dance" and "Everybody Dance," and, like C'est Chic, it filled
itself out with a mix of disco and ballads. So, essentially,
C'est Chic does everything its predecessor did, except it does
so masterfully: each side similarly gets its timeless floor-filler
("Le Freak," "I Want Your Love"), quiet storm come-down ("Savoir
Faire," "At Last I Am Free"), feel-good album track ("Happy Man,"
"Sometimes You Win"), and moody album capper ("Chic Cheer," "[Funny]
Bone"). Producers Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers were quite a
savvy pair and knew that disco was as much a formula as anything. As 
evidenced here, they definitely had their fingers on the pulse of
the moment, and used their perceptive touch to craft one of the few
truly great disco albums. In fact, you could even argue that
C'est Chic very well may be the definitive disco album.
After all, countless artists scored dancefloor hits, but few could
deliver an album this solid, and nearly as few could deliver one
this epochal as well. C'est Chic embodies everything
wonderful and excessive about disco at its pixilated peak. It's
anything but subtle with its at-the-disco dancefloor mania and
after-the-disco bedroom balladry, and Edwards and Rodgers are
anything but whimsical with their disco-ballad-disco album
sequencing and pseudo-jet-set Euro poshness. Chic would follow
C'est Chic with "Good Times," the group's crowning achievement,
but never again would Edwards and Rodgers assemble an album as
perfectly calculated as C'est Chic. |
