Music Monday: KC and The Sunshine Band – “Please Don’t Go”
Posted By RichC on March 14, 2022
Did you like disco? Me … not so much … but didn’t mind a few songs from the 1970s. For Music Monday here’s a YouTube video with KC and the Sunshine Band from 1979 performing “Please Don’t Go.”
“FOX and Friends” All American Concert July 20, 2012 in NYC
If you were like me and didn’t follow disco music closely, you probably didn’t know much about band founder Harry Wayne Casey and his 1973 Hialeah, Florida band (below).
The band was formed in 1973 by Harry Wayne Casey (KC), a record store employee and part-timer at TK Records in Hialeah, Florida. KC originally called the band KC & The Sunshine Junkanoo Band, as he used studio musicians from TK and a local Junkanoo band called the Miami Junkanoo Band. He was introduced to Richard Finch, who was engineering records for TK, and the Casey-Finch musical collaboration began. They were soon joined by guitarist Jerome Smith and drummer Robert Johnson, both TK studio musicians.
The first few songs, “Blow Your Whistle” (September 1973) and “Sound Your Funky Horn” (February 1974), were released as singles, and did well enough on the U.S. R&B chart and overseas that TK wanted a follow-up single and album. In the meantime, while working on demos for KC & the Sunshine Band, the song “Rock Your Baby” (George McCrae) was created. It was written by Casey and featured Smith on guitar, and became a number one hit in 51 countries in mid-1974. The band’s “Queen of Clubs”, which featured uncredited vocals by McCrae, was a hit in the UK, peaking at number 7 and they went on a tour there in 1975.
With the release of the self-titled second album KC and the Sunshine Band in 1975 came the group’s first major U.S. hit with “Get Down Tonight”. It topped the R&B chart in April and hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in August. “That’s the Way (I Like It)” also became a number one hit in November 1975 and the group received four nominations and one win at the 1976 Grammy Awards. The 1976 album Part 3 yielded two number one singles: “I’m Your Boogie Man” and “(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty”. Another hit, “Keep It Comin’ Love”(1977), peaked at number two. Their success lasted until the fifth album from 1979; their last chart-topping hit was “Please Don’t Go”, hitting number one for one week in January 1980, and becoming the first number one hit of the 1980s. With the explosion of new wave music and the declining popularity of disco, the group explored other styles and changed labels, joining Epic Records in 1980 after TK Records went bankrupt.
With a change in styles, Casey enjoyed success, dueting with Teri DeSario with “Yes, I’m Ready”, which hit No. 2 in March 1980 the adult contemporary sound was much different from his disco hits of the 1970s, and his first major success away from the Sunshine Band.
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