TOP 40 DEBUT: December 22, 1979
PEAK POSITION: #2 (March 1, 1980)
Connections can take you a long way in the music industry. (And every other industry, for that matter.) Maybe you’re Carole King’s babysitter. Maybe your dad is the record company president and your childhood friend is the biggest pop star on the planet. Or, perhaps you’re Teri DeSario, and you attended high school with a guy who released four #1 singles in less than two years.
With some help from a famous connection, DeSario jumped from obscurity into scoring one of the biggest pop hits of 1980. But “Yes, I’m Ready” only happened after the earlier hit everyone predicted never materialized. And her longtime friend only entered the picture after a different Seventies superstar departed. Teri DeSario took a long and circuitous route around the music business before winding up where she started, recording a gently lovestruck duet with a boy she’d known since the seventh grade, a boy who grew up to be the prom king of disco.
Teri DeSario grew up just outside Miami in the 1950s. As a child, she displayed enough early talent to begin taking classical voice lessons at age thirteen, roughly the same time she befriended Harry Wayne Casey. Casey was an up-and-coming singer as well, and the two stayed close throughout their years at Hialeah High School in south Florida, finally parting ways after graduation.
DeSario spent her twenties on a variety of ventures: studying jazz voice at the University of Miami, performing her own folk songs in coffeehouses, and playing harp and recorder for a group specializing in medieval Renaissance music. She also married fellow musician Bill Purse, and together they started a jazz-fusion band called Abacus. (Abacus didn’t survive. Their marriage is still going strong.) Meanwhile, Casey teamed up with Richard Finch, took the stage name K.C., and proceeded to bring disco to the masses. For most of the decade, the former classmates existed in—to put it mildly—slightly different musical orbits. Those orbits would cross again before too long.
The mid-Seventies were a boom time for Miami recording studios. Casey had set up shop in Sunshine Sound with Finch and the rest of the Sunshine Band, churning out #1 singles at a dizzying pace. Down the road at Criteria Studios, the Bee Gees were starting to do the same. 1976’s Children Of The World became the group’s second album to be recorded mostly in Miami, and the first with Criteria engineer Albhy Galuten upgraded to co-producer. Living in the area for years meant Gaulten knew the local music scene; during the overdub stage, he brought in local players to fill out the album’s various horn parts. One of those players was Bill Purse.
According to several online sources, Teri DeSario was “discovered” when Galuten just “happened” to catch her singing in a local Miami club and, dutifully impressed, passed along her demo tape to Barry Gibb. That’s a great story, and I’m not entirely buying it. For starters, I fully suspect Purse talked up his wife to Galuten beforehand, like any good husband would. Secondly, I doubt one of the most in-demand producers of the era drives all the way to Coconut Grove to catch a jazz-fusion show without a personal invite. In whatever way events really unfolded, Barry Gibb did, eventually, wind up with a copy of DeSario’s demo. And he loved it. He loved it enough to help her secure a recording contract, and he loved it enough to write her a song.
In 1978, recording a song written by Barry Gibb was akin to finding a winning lottery ticket on the sidewalk. Yvonne Elliman took a Gibb track to #1 in May with “If I Can’t Have You.” Frankie Valli hit #1 three months later with “Grease.” Samantha Sang took “Emotion” to #3. And Andy Gibb (who obviously had the inside track on Barry co-writes) landed the biggest song of the whole year with “Shadow Dancing.” Andy’s monster single spent seven total weeks at #1; it was enjoying its third at the top when DeSario debuted on the Hot 100 with her own Gibb composition, “Ain’t Nothing Gonna Keep Me From You.”
“Nothing” ain’t top-shelf Barry Gibb, but it’s not half bad; mostly it sounds like a typical Bee Gees number with Teri’s lightweight soprano substituting for Barry’s falsetto. DeSario was never going to be mistaken for a disco diva, so I appreciate how she takes the opposite approach: holding back, singing the melody straight, and letting that gleaming, string-laden production do the heavy lifting. In early 1978, with the Gibb brand of disco proving irresistible to radio programmers, her strategy probably seemed like a smart one.
“Ain’t Nothing Gonna Keep Me From You” was the one track on DeSario’s debut album assembled by the Bee Gees production team. All the session musicians had previously played on Andy Gibb’s Shadow Dancing, not to mention “Emotion” a few months prior (and “Grease” immediately afterwards). Barry Gibb provided prominent background—and occasional lead—vocals, just like he did on “Shadow Dancing” (and “Grease,” and “Emotion”). Everything about this song was designed to replicate the success of “Shadow Dancing” (and… well, you know). Instead, “Ain’t Nothing” stalled out at #43. Not bad for a debut single, but a near-disaster when stacked up against the rest of Barry’s world-conquering year. For DeSario, watching as her "can't miss" single missed entirely, it must've felt like her career was over before it began.
The one place “Nothing” connected was in the clubs, where deejays latched onto the extended 12” mix and made the song a cult favorite. (It’s now considered a lost classic in certain disco revival circles.) DeSario’s old friend Harry Casey was one such supporter; she reached out to thank him, and the two reacquainted after almost ten years. Casey suggested they work together. Then he offered to produce her next project. So for the second time in as many albums, DeSario agreed to let a huge pop star take the reins.
Prior to working with Teri, Casey had never produced anything without the assistance of Richard Finch. And nearly all those recordings (with the exception of one-off’s like Florida R&B singer Jimmy “Bo” Horne, later a ‘90s sample favorite) involved the same core of “Sunshine Band” session players. But those core musicians—namely guitarist Jerome Smith and drummer Robert Johnson—weren’t present for the DeSario sessions. Neither was Finch. So the difference in quality between the full-Bee-Gees-treatment of “Ain’t Nothing Gonna Keep Me From You” and K.C.’s solo production of Moonlight Madness isn’t just a gap. It’s a damn chasm.
Moonlight Madness consists almost entirely of by-the-numbers disco, light and frothy and instantly forgettable. It's less bad than aggressively bland: the kind of LP that peaks at #80 even with a giant hit propelling it, the kind of LP that clogs the bargain bins and gets reissued on CD once, in Japan, for about six months. The album’s second single, a duet between DeSario and K.C. on the Motown perennial “Dancin’ In The Streets,” sinks to the level of cruise ship entertainment. It feels like a trial run for the soon-to-debut television series Solid Gold. (Still not as bad as Bowie and Jagger, though.) The first single, another duet, had no business being any better. Miraculously, it was. By a lot.
Over the course of assembling possible material for Moonlight Madness, Casey suggested one of his favorite singles from junior high, Barbara Mason’s “Yes, I’m Ready.” Mason, a soul singer from Philadelphia, had composed the song herself (a rarity for any female vocalist of the time, much less one of color) and recorded it while still in high school. The backing musicians would later form the nucleus of MFSB, the house band for Philadelphia International Records; legendary Philly soul producer Kenny Gamble sings backup. (You could argue that “Yes, I’m Ready” is Philly soul's Patient Zero.) The entire track, including Mason’s vocal, was cut live in one take. "Yes, I'm Ready" peaked at #2 R&B and #5 pop in the summer of 1965, one of the purest distillations of first-crush heartache ever committed to wax, and a miniature miracle in so many ways. (It’s also a 9.)
Casey and DeSario would’ve been fourteen and thirteen, respectively, when “Yes, I’m Ready” hit radio airwaves. That’s the perfect age to hear a teenage love song written and performed by an actual teenager. No wonder they felt inspired to create their own homage. And since there’s no possible way to replicate the symphonic sweep of the original, Teri and K.C. don’t even try. Instead, they aim for the song’s wide-open innocence and sweet simplicity—and damn if they don’t almost get there.
The vast majority of male-female duets feed off sexual tension; that’s kind of the selling point. “Yes, I’m Ready” upends all that. It’s a duet where the absence of sexual tension is the only reason the track works at all. For the longest time, I didn’t understand the logic behind that decision, simply assuming the whole “middle school dance” vibe was an accident, a thing to be mocked. (It’s so easy to be cynical about this song. Please don’t be cynical about this song.) Turns out that vibe was on purpose. Recapturing the rush of young love, in all its silly-in-hindsight, momentous-in-the-moment glory, was the point all along.
Casey and DeSario bonded as kids. They fell for this song as kids. And when they decided to tackle “Yes, I’m Ready” themselves, they realized the only way to do it justice was to inhabit the spirit of those two kids. So that’s what this duet attempts to replicate: a pair of awkward teenagers, caught up in feelings they don’t quite understand, feeling every nervous pinprick of adrenaline for the very first time. I can’t imagine trying to convey those feelings on the cusp of thirty. I love that Teri and K.C. decided to try.
“Yes, I’m Ready” hinges on two twin elements: sweetness and simplicity. Its arrangement is Fifties doo-wop seen through a glitter ball prism, the discotheque momentarily transformed into a high school gymnasium. The backing band strikes up a gentle lilt, all sighs and grace notes, then gets out of the way. Harry Wayne Casey’s vocal is pure restraint; you can hear delicacy in every line, which is frankly amazing coming from a man who once turned “that’s the way, uh-huh, uh-huh/ I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh” into a sexual come-on.
On the other side of the microphone, the innocent, almost adolescent purity of DeSario’s singing style—too often a disadvantage on her previous up-tempo numbers—finds its natural home here. She radiates wholesomeness, sure, but also the kind of easy tenderness that’s near impossible to fake and just as tough to resist. (Somewhere in Glasgow, a young Scottish lass named Sheena Easton was furiously taking notes.)
I love how she blends with K.C. on every repeat of “to fall… in… loooove.” I love how Casey waits forever before finally, finally unleashing his upper register. And I especially love the way the pair volley lines back and forth in the song’s final minute, with a giddiness too cute for words: “To love you/ Hold you/ Kiss you/ Want you/ Squeeze you/ Need you/ Oh, I’m ready!/ Yes I’m ready!” Pure chemistry, but not the sexual kind. It’s closer to platonic puppy love, a first crush rendered in overwhelming Technicolor.
“Yes, I’m Ready” turned out to be a surprise hit in the spring of 1980, breaking into the Top 10 only a month after K.C. (along with the rest of the Sunshine Band) hit #1 with their chart comeback, "Please Don't Go." Just like that other ballad, "Yes, I'm Ready" contained little sonic connection to disco, which might explain why it rose to #2 in the midst of a very public backlash against the genre. But Teri DeSario got punished for the crimes of disco anyway. She never had another Top 40 hit; by 1984, she had left Casablanca Records for the contemporary Christian market. A couple years later, she landed her first Grammy nomination.
Her duet partner didn't fare much better. Following "Yes, I'm Ready," Casey spent years in the cultural wilderness, as successive singles and albums—eventually credited just to "KC" rather than "KC and The Sunshine Band"—failed to chart at all in America. He would only return to the Top 40 once more, and even that insanely great single (which we'll discuss in a few years) couldn't overcome the stigma of his disco-centric past. And so, the man who built his reputation on the dance floor bowed out with back-to-back ballads, and his last Top 5 appearance turned out to be a support role . That’s an ending almost as unexpected—and sentimentally sweet—as “Yes, I’m Ready” itself.
GRADE: 7/10
I WANT MY MTV: There’s about two minutes of unidentified DeSario and K.C. footage currently circulating on YouTube where the duo simply lip-sync “Yes, I’m Ready” on a lighted set. I can’t confirm if this was taken from an official video, or just a random promotional appearance. It’s probably the latter, but either way the two of them are too adorable not to include here. (The footage also confirms my initial impression that Teri was, in fact, Sheena Easton a year too early.)