Drum machines were still a strange new novelty in the late sixties and early seventies. In 1968, during the brief period when folk-rock hitmakers the Bee Gees were broken up, Robin Gibb used a drum machine on “Saved by the Bell,” a ballad that reached #2 on the UK charts. Sly and the Family Stone also used one on much of their classic 1971 album There’s a Riot Goin’ On, including on the #1 hit “Family Affair.” That machine’s rigorous and unchanging beat is part of what makes the album sound so strange and messy. In disco, a genre that used a steady rhythmic pulse to keep dancers moving, the drum machine would prove massively important. Henry Wayne Casey and Richard Finch figured that out early.As teenagers, Casey and Finch were both low-level staffers at the TK studios. Casey worked for free, answering phones and pulling records from the distributor warehouse. Finch was a part-time recording engineer. Casey had been to a wedding at TK star Betty Wright’s house, and he’d fallen in love with what he’d heard there: Junkanoo, a Bahamian genre of party music. In 1973, Casey and Finch started KC and the Junkanoo Sunshine Band. (Casey was KC.) For a while, Casey and Finch were the only two members. Eventually, they put together a full band lineup, mostly using the Black studio musicians who played on TK’s records. Before long, Casey and Finch dropped the word “Junkanoo” from the group’s name, and the newly rechristened KC and the Sunshine Band released their debut single, a giddy party-funk record called “Blow Your Whistle,” on TK. The single did pretty well on the R&B charts, but it didn’t cross over to the Hot 100.
In the early seventies, Miami had a thriving disco scene. Gay clubs in Miami weren’t subjected to the same police harassment as the ones in New York, and dance floors flourished. Casey and Finch were too young to get into those clubs; Finch was still in high school. But some establishments wouldn’t check IDs, and Casey and Finch would hit those clubs, taking note of which sorts of sounds were moving dancers. Both of them had noticed that up-tempo R&B records were doing well in the clubs and on the charts, and they paid close attention as “Rock the Boat” scaled the Hot 100.
Inspired by what they heard in those clubs, Casey and Finch wrote a sparse but slinky R&B song called “Rock Your Baby.” Timmy Thomas had left his Lowrey organ at the TK studios, and that’s the instrument that Casey and Finch used to write “Rock Your Baby.” Casey programmed in a samba beat, and then Finch played drums along to that beat. “Rock Your Baby” is about sex, not about violence, but it has the same kind of otherworldly empty-space minimalism as “Why Can’t We Live Together.” Two of the first big hits to use drum machines, it turns out, probably used the exact same drum machine.
Thanks to that samba preset, “Rock Your Baby” doesn’t have the same four-four pulse as most of the disco hits that would come later, but it does have the mechanical insistence that would become key to the genre’s appeal. Casey and Finch worked in a small studio with only a few instruments, but they still managed to conjure some of the layered splendor that disco fans associated with Philadelphia International Records and Barry White. Casey played smooth, pillowy melodies on that Lowrey organ, while session guitarist Jerome Smith, who would soon become a member of the Sunshine Band, added a tricky, jittery groove. Smith got paid fifteen dollars for playing on “Rock Your Baby.”
Casey was already singing with the Sunshine Band, but he knew he was a limited vocalist and that the song needed a singer who could work in a higher register. When Casey and Finch finished recording their demo, they played it for TK Records boss Henry Stone. At the time, Stone was recording some songs with a Miami singer named Gwen McRae, who’d made a few minor R&B hits. McRae’s husband, George, was a singer himself. When Henry Stone heard the demo, George happened to be at the studio to pick Gwen up.
― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 26 June 2025 15:26 (two days ago)