The famous 1979 Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey Park in Chicago ended about as well as it began. What started as a rallying cry against disco from an aggrieved rock DJ turned into an evening of chaos, as close to 50,000 people descended on the baseball park to destroy disco records. Pretty soon, a riot broke out, leading to multiple arrests and the grounds being completely trashed.
“But even since then, all these many decades later, disco never really died,” says Martha Wash, former singer of legendary female duo The Weather Girls. “It became dance music that morphed into house music that morphed into EDM. Disco music really hasn’t gone anywhere.”
Together, Wash, Norma Jean Wright and Linda Clifford have made sure of that, forging their legacies with classics like “It’s Raining Men,” “Saturday” and “Runaway Love.” September 13 at Myron’s at the Smith Center, they’ll perform together as The First Ladies of Disco, a supergroup with two collective Top 10 hits on the Billboard dance charts.
“It was the door that opened for a lot of Black women to come through, because prior to that there wasn’t a lot of work in the industry for Black women,” says Wright, who sang in the seminal disco band Chic before going solo. “Black people, period, we’ve always had to fight to get ahead, but disco is a genre that was open, and it embraced us.”
Clifford concurs. “Disco changed my life. Everything that I am, that I do and the result of whatever labor I put into this, is a result of disco.”
In its prime, disco was the music of choice in nightclubs. It was a universal language, a style that gathered the masses under the common goal of getting down. “You didn’t have to think about things,” Wash says. “You just wanted to dance and feel good and be with people.”
But the genre went well beyond just that.
“A lot of my gay friends have said to me that it kept them alive,” Wright says. “That it enabled them to go to these clubs, and be themselves and be free and not pretend that they’re somebody else.”
In the queer community, disco quickly became about freedom of expression. Androgynous disco icons like Sylvester bolstered the drag scene, and anthems like Diana Ross’ “I’m Coming Out” reminded them that they were loved. Disco’s most prominent artists gave a voice to communities that were otherwise voiceless at the time—even when it came to their own art.
In a move that made history and headlines, Wash fought through several legal battles to have her name credited on various tracks on which she had sung. The most famous lawsuit, involving the C+C Music Factory anthem “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now),” was perhaps the most absurd, as Wash, a plus-size powerhouse, had her uncredited song lip-synced by a skinny model in the music video. The singer’s refusal to give up led to federal regulations that now require vocalists to be credited on all albums and videos.
“It might have worked if it had been possibly a lesser-known artist. But up to that point, I already had a body of work,” Wash says. “People who knew me said, ‘I’m glad you did what you did, because it wasn’t right, and it also helped me think about situations I had been in that I may not have spoken up about.’”
The First Ladies of Disco made their mark on history then and continue to do so today. “We’ve started getting a newer generation of audience that has come out to see us,” Wash says. “Younger people come up and say, ‘My parents listened to your music. I grew up listening to disco music because of them.’”
The show at Myron’s, a 90-minute boogie full of hits from the ’70s through the ’90s, serves as a celebration of these trailblazers, who just can’t stay off the dancefloor. So come September 13, “We’re going to be raining some more men,” Wright says.
The First Ladies of Disco September 13, 7 p.m., $49-$82. Myron’s, thesmithcenter.com.
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