CHAPTER 19 | SOUL, FUNK, AND DISCO IN THE 1970s 481timing section text comments2:40 chorus Oooh, Superfl y... 8 bars: As before.
2:56 vamp 1 Superfl y... 8 bars: Mayfi eld chants the title word on the
downbeat of every other bar.
3:12 vamp 2 Tryin’ to get over... 17 bars: A return of the vamp that closed the
bridge.Listen & Refl ect
- “Superfl y” juxtaposes sections with a high level of verbal content (verses), a lower level
of verbal content (choruses), and little or no verbal content (vamps). Does that musical
device draw your attention toward the words or away from them? Why?
CD 4.2 Listening Guide 19.3 “Superfl y” CURTIS MAYFIELD
engage social issues either directly, as in Donna Summer’s “Bad Girls” (1979),
about prostitution, or obliquely, as in Chic’s “Good Times” (1979), which places
hedonism against an implicit backdrop of late-1970s economic recession.
Hit disco songs were released as standard 45-rpm singles, running about
three to four minutes in length. In addition, a new format was created, at fi rst
as promotional copies for DJs and later as a commercial product for the general
public: the 12-inch single. The size of an LP, the 12-inch single could hold a longer
version of the song, a dance mix (or “club mix”), which extended the number’s
length up to eight minutes or more, most notably through long instrumental
introductions and interludes. Dance mixes gave the record producer a larger
canvas on which to create formal structures based on texture and timbre. With
their wide grooves, 12-inch singles allowed DJs to locate segments of a song visu-
ally, encouraging the creative juxtaposition of portions of songs, a crucial aspect
of hip-hop (see chapter 20).
A parallel could be drawn between disco’s popularity with white audiences
in the mid-1970s and the rise of rock and roll in the mid-1950s. In both cases,
the previously mainstream popular music grew into a listener’s music, while the
new style offered a more rhythmic music that appealed to people who wanted
to dance. Swing, preeminently music for dancing, had by the 1950s morphed
into the mainstream pop of Frank Sinatra and Patti Page—fi ne for listening but,
as dance music, rather pallid in comparison to rock and roll. The irony of disco
in the 1970s, then, is that the less danceable music it supplanted was rock itself,
which, as progressive rock and arena rock, had grown more interesting for lis-
teners but harder to dance to. In that light, disco can be viewed as a part of the
reformation movement that also gave rise to punk.the dance mix172028_19_468-494_r3_sd.indd 481 23/01/13 11:05 AM