Quick on the heels of the loss of Whitney Huston, we now lose Donna Summer, a doyen of pop music that set the mood for the pulsating era of the disco 70’s to Heaven’s door.
A Grammy winner and global record seller, Summers passed on from cancer on Thursday May 17, 2012.
Gloria Gaynor, disco's other great diva, said Summer "forever changed ... how America danced and enjoyed themselves. She may have had her Last Dance here on earth, but Heaven Knows it is dancing with joy for her arrival."
The famed Liza Minelli said, "We will be dancing to her music forever," and record producer Quincy Jones said her voice was "the heartbeat and soundtrack of a decade."
Born LaDonna Gaines in Boston, she made her debut as a church singer at age 10 and began her professional career in Germany at the age of 18, performing in the shows Hair and Porgy and Bess and working as a studio session singer.
But it wasn't until 1975 that she found fame with the breathy vocals and grinding beat of
Love to Love You Baby. The song was a huge hit in American and European nightclubs even though its overt sexuality made it controversial.
Summer told Billboard magazine in a 2008 interview that she wasn't originally planning on singing that song herself.
"It was kind of a work in progress, and I thought that if I could get the right singer, it could be a hit. I had given Giorgio Moroder,the producer, the idea of
Love to Love You Baby, and he went into the studio and put a track to the idea and I went in and sang some words over it," she said.
"I didn't need a lot of words, so I
oohed and
aahed my way through it. I was imagining if Marilyn Monroe sang the song, that's what she would do," Summer told Billboard.
Summer followed up with a string of other disco tunes in the 1970s and into the mid-1980s, including
Last Dance, Hot Stuff, Bad Girls, I Feel Love and her cover version of the ballad
MacArthur Park, which was her first No. 1 record in the United States in 1978.
Barbra Streisand, who recorded the 1979 duet
No More Tears (Enough is Enough) with Summer said on Thursday, "She had an amazing voice and was so talented...It's so sad."
In 1983, Summer scored a massive hit with
She Works Hard for the Money, as she sought to branch out of the disco genre.
Throughout her career, Summer had 32 hit singles on the Billboard Hot 100, including four No. 1s.
Summer's recording success declined in the 1990s, after she embraced Christianity and released songs like
I Believe in Jesus. But her last studio album,
Crayons in 2008, produced three dance club hits with
I'm a Fire, Stamp Your Feet and
Fame.
In 2009, Summer sang at the Nobel Peace Prize concert in Norway in 2009 in honor of Nobel laureate U.S. President Barack Obama.
She also made guest appearances in the last three years on TV shows America's Got Talent and Platinum Hit.
Her most recent hit was the 2010 single
To Paris With Love.
We will all missed her badly.
Here, watch some of her videos. Do not miss the one where she appeared on Oraph and sang to the audience in sheer abandonment.
She Works Hard for the Money
Last Dance
Dim All the Lights
Bad Girls and Hot Stuff
MacAuthurs’s Park
On The Radio
I Feel Love
No More Tears (with Barbara Streisand)
On Oprah
