TOP 40 DEBUT: November 10, 1979
PEAK POSITION: #8 (January 12, 1980)
“It was a rough time.” That’s Robert “Kool” Bell’s brief, but accurate, summation of the three-year period (1976-78) during which his namesake outfit sank into commercial oblivion. Kool & The Gang were one of the great party funk bands of the early ‘70s, all horn riffs and chanted vocals, successful enough to cross over to the pop charts on numerous occasions. (Their highest charting effort from this period, “Jungle Boogie,” peaked at #4 in early 1974. It’s a 10.) But disco cut the group’s legs out from under them. By 1976, the hit singles dried up, and three albums in a row failed to break the top half of the Billboard 200. When a record clerk at a disastrous in-store promotion called Kool & The Gang “old hacks,” Bell and associates decided to perform an act of major, massive upheaval. “Ladies’ Night” is the end result, the sound of a veteran group recalibrating their entire aesthetic in an unabashedly craven bid for commercial acceptance. And the whole thing worked like a charm.
Bassist Robert Bell started Kool & The Gang with his brother, keyboardist and saxophonist Ronald, way back in 1964 in Jersey City, New Jersey. Neighborhood friends filled out the seven-piece lineup; the group, then called the Jazziacs, cut their teeth backing up jazz legends like McCoy Tyner and Pharoah Sanders. Several years and name changes later, Kool & The Gang released their all-instrumental debut on tiny De-Lite Records in January 1970. They were still with De-Lite when their tenth album, 1978’s Everybody’s Dancin’, peaked at #207 and prompted a collective crisis of consciousness.
James “J.T.” Taylor was a New Jersey school teacher making $40 a night singing in local clubs. Eumir Deodato was a Brazilian-born, Grammy-winning composer and producer who'd reached #2 in March 1973 with a Latin-jazz version of the classical opus “Also Sprach Zarathustra.” (It’s a 6.) The two men couldn’t have less in common. Yet together, both reshaped Kool & The Gang into a sleek, hit-driven machine.
Taylor’s hiring came at the prompting of SOLAR Records founder Dick Griffey, who suggested a dedicated lead vocalist would help the group compete on the pop charts. Meanwhile, Deodato was fresh off handling horn arrangements for Earth, Wind & Fire’s 1978 smash All N’ All and eager to try his hand at a full-scale, mainstream production. EWF’s multi-layered sound became the new template, the Commodores’ crossover success the new goal. Drum parts were tracked to precise BPMs to accommodate deejays. One-take recordings disappeared in favor of songs recorded a piece at a time. Overnight, Kool & The Gang traded in years of greasy funk for precision-engineered R&B-lite. Depending on your vantage point, Ladies’ Night is either an amazing piece of career rejuvenation or the worst kind of sellout imaginable.
No one track better encapsulates the shotgun marriage of Kool & The Gang’s organic roots and their newfound pop cravings than “Ladies’ Night” itself. The music sprang out of long improvisations in the studio, with writing credits split among all ten members. Drummer George “Funky” Brown composed the actual lyrics, adding buried references to Johnnie Taylor (“Come on you disco lady”), the Dells (“Oh, what a night”), and Parliament (“If you hear any noise, it ain’t the boys”) to compliment the song’s house party atmosphere. Taylor ad-libbed the closing vocal hook (“This is your night/ Tonight!”) during a particularly fruitful jam session. Robert Bell seized on the crossover appeal of referencing a popular club promotion catering to female clientele. And Deodato, crucially, buffed every last element to a glossy sheen.
You could argue that “Ladies’ Night” is pure, naked calculation in six-minute form, and you wouldn’t be wrong. So why does it still hold up so well? Hooks, hooks, and more hooks. Deodato’s production eliminates the grit, but it also filters the group’s messy energy into easily digestible packets, a cascading series of interlocking riffs building on one another. Each vocal phrase becomes another earworm, each chant a mantra. By song’s end, Taylor and Something Sweet—a trio of female backup singers left over from the previous two albums—are both volleying melodies back-and-forth while the groove spins out into infinity. “Ladies’ Night” might’ve been classified as disco-funk in 1980, but today it feels more like a forerunner of 21st century pop construction: Teenage Dream Katy Perry with a horn section.
Any doubts Kool & The Gang had about their sudden artistic overhaul were alleviated, almost instantly, by cold, hard numbers. “Ladies’ Night” peaked at #8, the band’s biggest hit in nearly six years, while also topping the R&B charts for three weeks. The corresponding album became Kool & The Gang’s first to achieve platinum certification. And any disgruntled remnants of their former fanbase were quickly swallowed up by an influx of new consumers, eager for more streamlined dance-floor concoctions. For better or worse, the era of Kool & The Gang V2.0 was just beginning.
GRADE: 6/10
I WANT MY MTV: Do you like colorful shirts open to the navel, horn sections doing synchronized dance moves, and one magnificent Afro? Because boy, do I have a promo clip for you…
BONUS BITS: Heavy D incorporated elements of both “Ladies’ Night” and George Benson’s “Give Me The Night” (a future entry on this site) for his 1994 single “This Is Your Night.” Here’s the video.