![]() ![]() (The Supremes started off as a Primes spinoff called the Primettes.) And when that group broke up, Kendricks and Williams joined forces with some other local singers and formed what would become the Temptations.īut after 11 years with the Temptations, Kendricks had had enough. They moved to Cleveland and then to Detroit, where they renamed themselves the Primes. Kendricks, Williams, and some others formed a doo-wop group called the Cavaliers. Kendricks had grown up in Alabama, where he and Paul Williams had sung in a church choir together. He’d been a Temptation since before the Temptations existed. Kendricks had been a Temptation for most of his adult life. ![]() That’s how we got “Keep On Truckin’,” arguably the first disco record ever to hit #1.īefore “Keep On Truckin’,” things weren’t going too well for Eddie Kendricks. And with “Keep On Truckin’,” he made the one that crossed over and spread the disco gospel to the rest of America, whether America knew it yet or not. Kendricks eventually noticed, and he made at least a couple of records with those dancefloors in mind. And they played a whole lot of Eddie Kendricks. They played records that flopped on the charts but sounded amazing when the evening was hitting its peak. But Mancuso also played a whole lot of rhythmic soul records, and so did his early-DJ peers. He’d play starry-eyed Beatles ballads, Astral Weeks deep cuts, African drum records. Mancuso’s tastes were famously all over the place. It must’ve been a hell of a thing to experience. At David Mancuso’s Loft, the prototypical club of the early disco era, dancers would sip LSD-spiked punch and lose their minds as Mancuso remixed records on the fly, tweaking bass levels or extending breaks. Using expensive newfangled stereo equipment and obsessive care, these DJs would lovingly move from one musical idea to the next. In early-’70s New York, DJs would play records in gay clubs or private parties, and they would take people on journeys. In any genre of music, one of the most exciting times is the moment right before the genre realizes that it’s a genre. In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. ![]()
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