Gay clubs, Philly Soul, and the 1975 song that launched music’s disco future
It might have been the archenemy of New York punks, conservative commentators, and those born without any sense of rhythm, but disco music was among the most revolutionary, rebellious sounds to emerge onto the US airwaves back in the 1970s, and it was the immortal sound of Van McKoy’s ‘The Hustle’ that broke that sound onto the mainstream radar.
A vast chasm exists between the prevailing image of disco in mainstream culture and the reality of the scene and its origins. While the image of a young John Travolta strutting his way across New York might be an easy touchstone for disco, the actual roots of the scene weren’t quite as high-budget, emerging from the underground LGBTQ+ nightclubs of New York back in the mid-1970s.
Society was changing as the US entered the 1970s, and one of the key legal catalysts for the disco scene was the overturning of a longstanding law that meant it was illegal for couples of the same sex to dance together in public.
Hence, gay clubs began to flourish in the major cities of the 1970s and, in New York specifically, their music and dance cues tended to come from the surrounding immigrant communities, with the Latina and Nuyorican communities being particularly influential on the style and sound of disco.
Sonically, disco’s lineage can be traced back to the emotive sounds of soul, particularly Philadelphia soul, which tended to be more mid-tempo and grandiose in its composition. That switch from soul to disco can be heard in the discographies of countless Philly soul acts during the mid-1970s, The Trammps being one major example, who went from northern soul obscurity to mainstream chart success during the disco age.
Inevitably, as the scene grew, musicians in the know started to get wind of disco and among them was Van McCoy. “It was something completely different from the you-do-your-thing-and-I-do-mine dances,” the songwriter recalled of his early exposure to the blossoming disco scene, with its Latin-inspired dancefloors. “It was people dancing together again.”
McCoy quickly began working on his own contributions to this bold new musical realm, and ‘The Hustle’ was the result. Released as a single in the summer of 1975, and reaching the top of the US pop charts and the soul charts soon thereafter, the single became many listeners’ first-ever exposure to disco, and it sparked a seemingly endless number of mainstream disco hits in its wake, dominating the dance music scene across the United States.
‘The Hustle’ itself pre-dated the single by a long while, being the name of a dance that became synonymous with the underground disco scene during its early years. Witnessing this incredible movement, McCoy simply gave that dance a commercial appeal and enough mainstream attention to change the American airwaves forevermore.
Tragically, McCoy passed away a few years after the release of the single, reportedly while working on a new extended disco mix of the track, but ‘The Hustle’ continues to be lauded as a disco floor-filler, as well as an essential moment in the history of the disco scene, which dominated the dancefloors of the 1970s and beyond.
