TOP 40 DEBUT: September 29, 1979
PEAK POSITION: #1 (January 5, 1980)
No one thought “Please Don’t Go” was the end. Not Harry Wayne Casey, the “KC” of KC and the Sunshine Band, and certainly not TK Records, the label that rose to prominence through the songwriting prowess of he and his partner, Richard Finch. If anything, “Please Don’t Go” seemed like a comeback for one of the most successful groups of the disco era: a fifth #1 single, a return to form after two years of commercial disappointment, and perhaps a newly mature sound that pointed the way forward. But it was all a mirage. Within three years, the union between Casey and Finch was irreconcilably broken and TK Records was bankrupt. And so, “Please Don’t Go” now feels like a goodbye: to disco, to the ‘70s, to the Sunshine Band itself.
Casey and Finch first met in 1973 at one of the TK Corporation’s many warehouses situated outside Miami. Casey worked in the shipping department, packing records; Finch was an engineer in the small recording studio housed in the back. They were white teenagers heavily influenced by both the black artists recording at TK during the day, and the dance hits they heard sneaking into local clubs at night. After hours, the duo would record their demos on leftover bits of tape left behind from previous sessions. One such demo, cut in a mere 45 minutes, eventually became their breakthrough track.
“Rock Your Baby” was a breezy, proto-disco number, partially inspired by the Hues Corporation’s “Rock The Boat.” Casey and Finch created the entire recording by layering all instruments over a primitive drum machine housed inside an old Lowry organ. Jerome Smith, another studio regular, came in later to overdub a guitar part. He was paid $15. When Casey had trouble hitting the high notes, the duo offered the track to Gwen McCrae, a recent signee to TK-distributed Alston Records. And when Gwen missed the session, her manager-husband George sang the lead vocal instead. George McCrae’s “Rock Your Baby,” written and produced by Casey and Finch, sold over 10 million copies and went to #1 in fifty countries. (It’s a 9.)
KC and the Sunshine Band became a small phenomenon after that. Four singles released between 1975 and 1977 went to #1 pop and #1 R&B; a fifth, “Keep It Comin’ Love,” topped out at #2. (It’s an 8.) Almost singlehandedly, the band kept TK Records afloat. (34 of the 44 singles released by TK came from either KC or McCrae.) The hits were short, punchy, and naggingly infectious, disco on an almost primal level. All were penned by Casey/Finch and recorded by the same core unit: Smith on guitar, Finch on bass, Casey on keys, and Robert Johnson on drums. For many listeners, the multi-racial Sunshine Band sound—fleshed out with additional horn players, percussionists, female backing vocalists, and eventually strings—was the sound of disco, big and shiny and effervescent, a candy-colored respite from soaring gas prices and a crashing U.S. economy. And by the late ‘70s, lots of other artists were doing it better.
1978 was disco’s watershed year. Saturday Night Fever grossed $94 million off a $3.5 million budget. The soundtrack stayed atop the album charts for 24 consecutive weeks. More than half the year’s #1 singles were disco or disco-influenced; four of them had been cut at Miami’s Criteria Studios, just down the road from TK. With the KC influence all over radio, expectations were high for the group’s fifth studio album. Who Do Ya (Love) was released in August 1978… and promptly tanked. The album peaked at #36; only one of its five singles cracked the Top 50. (“It’s The Same Old Song” made it to #35. It’s a Four Tops cover, and a 4.)
Casey and Finch, only in their early twenties, were staring down irrelevance and wondering how to reinvent their sound in a hurry. Tensions within the band escalated. On the road, members nearly got into a fist fight at Disneyland Park. Finch briefly quit, only to be cajoled back for one more album. The last song he created for the original KC and the Sunshine Band was “Please Don’t Go.”
In a 2009 interview with Songfacts, Richard Finch claims “the conviction in [Casey’s] voice” comes from him knowing “that was the absolute last song that I [would] produce… [before] I left.” Seeing how his name still appears as co-producer on the next three KC releases, I think Finch might be mythologizing his exit somewhat. But he’s right on several matters: Casey would go solo in 1981. The Sunshine Band would never hit the Hot 100 again. And the vocal performance Finch coaxed out of his soon-to-be-former partner is the best thing Harry Wayne Casey ever did.
“Please Don’t Go” doesn’t explode. It unfolds gradually, tentatively: a simple hi-hat pulse, a churchy organ. The shift from verse to chorus is subtle, one bleeding into the other, the chords barely changing. The entire song is a repeating loop, with new elements entering with each successive pass. It’s as though Casey and Finch stripped their sound down to its bare framework, only to rebuild it in real time. When the beat finally kicks in, more than halfway through the song, the effect is seismic.
Disco was a genre created in the studio, one of the last peak movements for session musicians. But whether by accident or on purpose, “Please Don’t Go” exhibits almost none of that studio gloss. This is a raw, occasionally sloppy recording; Casey’s multi-tracked vocals slip in and out of each other, as do the bass and kick drum. Around 3:12, Finch plays a counter-melody on the bass for two bars, only to abandon it halfway through. The entire thing feels messy and human, in a way previous KC records never did. And it makes the track significantly better. The early hits were aural cotton candy, all air and fluff; “Please Don’t Go” has actual weight.
I wonder how much of Casey and Finch’s deteriorating friendship factored into the composition of their final #1 single. Because “Please Don’t Go” is, on its surface, pleasantly straightforward: a simple appeal for reconciliation, an end-of-the-night slow dance. But history has a funny way of adding gravitas to the breeziest of pop concoctions. Knowing what’s about to come—the end of TK Records, the end of KC and the Sunshine Band as a chart presence, the end of disco, period—makes it impossible to now hear “Please Don’t Go” as anything but bittersweet, a last-ditch plea to hold onto a past that was already starting to crumble.
The Billboard charts never operate in perfect cycles, so disco didn’t just disappear once the ‘80s began. The genre would produce several more hits. Even a stray #1 or two. And many of the movement’s biggest artists would return to the charts, in some form or fashion, as the decade continued—including KC himself. But the end was coming. And long before disco truly died, “Please Don’t Go” had already provided its requiem.
GRADE: 8/10
BONUS BITS: Here’s the version of “Please Don’t Go” that I (and probably the bulk of my generation) heard initially. British group KWS hit #1 in the U.K. (and #6 in the U.S.) in 1992 with this “hi-energy” remake, effectively turning KC’s one real ballad into yet another club song.
I WANT MY MTV: We’re gonna be seeing a lot of very low-budget, very bad videos in this spot, especially during the years of 1980 and 1981. Don’t say you weren’t warned.