Donna Summer

Disco singer

• Born: December 31, 1948
• Birthplace: Dorchester, Massachusetts
• Died: May 17, 2012

Summer was dubbed the Queen of Disco following a series of chart-topping disco hits in the 1970’s. An accomplished songwriter, Summer has been noted for her powerful vocal performances and her versatility, with hits in the genres of pop, rock, and rhythm and blues.

Early Life

Donna Summer was born LaDonna Adrian Gaines in Dorchester, near Boston, Massachusetts, to Andrew and Mary Ellen Gaines on New Year’s Eve, 1948. One of seven children, Summer was raised by devout Christian parents in a lower-middle-class, African American household. Summer began singing gospel music in church choirs at an early age, and by age seventeen she had become the lead singer of the Boston rock band Crow.

In 1968, Summer moved to New York. After a successful audition for the European production of Hair (1967), she relocated to Munich for a six-month engagement with the German cast. When Summer’s contract was up, she resigned. Eighteen months later she joined the Viennese production of the hit musical. Following Hair, Summer performed in the stage productions of Show Boat (1927), Porgy and Bess (1935), and Godspell (1970). In 1971, Summer released her first solo recording, “Sally Go Round the Roses,” as Donna Gaines.

While performing in the Hamburg production of The Me Nobody Knows (1970), Summer worked for a second time with actor Helmuth Sommer, whom she originally met during their brief time with the Berlin production of Hair. In 1972, the pair married and settled in Munich. Summer began to use an anglicized version of her husband’s last name. In February, 1973, Summer gave birth to their daughter, Mimi. In time, the new mother returned to singing, picking up work as a backup singer whenever the opportunity arose.

Life’s Work

After Summer auditioned for German-based producer-songwriter Giorgio Moroder in 1973, he became her mentor and started hiring her to sing backup on his demonstration sessions. Summer’s career officially began to get off the ground with the release of “The Hostage” (1974). Written and produced by Moroder and songwriting-production partner Pete Bellotte, the single made the charts in Europe. Following the success of “The Hostage,” the Summer-Moroder-Bellotte team recorded Summer’s debut European album Lady of the Night (1974). The album marked the beginning of a long and successful cowriting and production association for the trio.

In early 1975, Summer approached Moroder and Bellotte with the suggestion for a new song. Inspired by Summer’s idea to write a song based on the title “I’d Love to Love You,” Moroder immediately began to lay down the musical tracks. The title evolved into the sultry and controversial “Love to Love You Baby” (1975), and the song became Summer’s first worldwide hit. The single reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100, and the seventeen-minute extended mix was a dance-club smash.

When the song became a huge success in the United States, Summer returned home in triumph. Then came a string of international hit singles for the Queen of Dance, including the synthesized groundbreaker “I Feel Love” (1977); “Bad Girls” (1979); “MacArthur Park” (1979); “Dim All the Lights” (1979), written solely by Summer; and the Grammy- and Academy Award-winning theme from the film Thank God It’s Friday (1978), the dance floor classic “Last Dance” (1978). When Summer’s greatest hits collection, On the Radio (1979), reached the top of the charts, it would be the first time in recording history that an artist hit number one with three consecutive double albums.

In 1980, Summer became the first artist to sign with the newly formedGeffen label. She continued to work with producers-cowriters Mororder and Bellotte on the album The Wanderer, but with disco’s popularity on the decline, the trio decided to incorporate a fusion of pop, rock, and new wave into the release. The critically acclaimed album reached the U.S. Top 20, with its title track climbing to number three on the Billboard Hot 100.

In the years that followed, Summer teamed up with such producers as the legendary Quincy Jones, for Donna Summer (1982); Michael Omartian, for the Grammy Award-winning workingwoman’s anthem “She Works Hard for the Money” (1983); and British dance-pop producers Mike Stock, Matt Aitken, and Pete Waterman, who brought Summer’s music back into the dance clubs with the Top 10 hit “This Time I Know It’s for Real” (1989). Summer continued to record throughout the 1990’s, and in 1994 she scored Billboard’s number-one dance record of the year with “Melody of Love,” a new song featured on her greatest-hits retrospective Endless Summer (1994).

In 1998, a remixed Summer-Moroder collaboration “Carry On” (1997) garnered a Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording. Following the success of “Carry On,” Summer recorded her greatest-hits live album VHI Presents: Live and More—Encore! (1999) at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom. The live album featured a new recording, “I Will Go with You (Con Te Partiro),” which became a dance-club hit. In 2008, Summer enjoyed renewed chart success with her first full-length studio album in seventeen years, Crayons.

Significance

In a career full of “firsts”—including the first artist to win the Grammy for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Female, in 1980 and the first African American woman to have a music video played in heavy rotation on MTV with “She Works Hard for the Money”—Summer is regarded as a pioneering recording artist, songwriter, producer, and performer. A groundbreaking African American female performer, Summer has never feared to venture into new creative territory.

Bibliography

Echols, Alice. Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture. New York: W. W. Norton, 2010. Cultural insight into the disco era, with many references to Summer and her music.

Howard, Josiah. Donna Summer: Her Life and Music. Cranberry Township, Pa.: Tiny Ripple Books, 2003. Howard explores Summer’s life and career, including her years in Germany, and her collaboration with producers Moroder and Bellotte.

Summer, Donna, and Marc Eliot. Ordinary Girl: The Journey. New York: Villard, 2003. Summer’s frank memoir about her rise to fame as the Queen of Disco and her subsequent spiritual journey.