Felix In Hollywood

A Blog for the Smart Set

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Disco Mixed Marriages

One of the most annoying endearing things about the disco era, was that suddenly 'disco remakes' of existing songs were produced.  No genre was safe from the madness.  Everything from pop, to ballads, to classical and opera was fair game for a disco makeover.  The era created some strange bedfellows indeed.  Disco + Ethel Merman and Disco + Percy Faith immediately come to mind.

The following example is one of the stranger:


In 1979, legendary conductor of The Boston Pops, Arthur Fiedler, put out this album:


...and then died!

 Withing days, someone from either Fiedler's record company or Camp Bee Gees apparently thought the best way to shore up sales pay tribute was to take out a full page add in Billboard:

click to enlarge

5 comments:

jason said...

Thankfully Ethel and Percy (who is he again?) didn't die immediately upon contact with the dreaded Disco Fever like poor Mr. Fiedler.
I know I'm still dealing with an early case. You never quite recover.

Miss Janey said...

No wonder... that album cover IS to die from.

Dean said...

THANK YOU so much for this! I had a good laugh with the visual... and then another with the tag line "and then died!" Too funny!

Did you ever see the SNL commercial featuring Ethel Merman singing New Wave hits? Imagine her voice and a certain Depeche Mode song: "I'm taking a ride with my best friend! I know he'll never let me down again!"

Stephen said...

At Studio One,I used to do poppers & dance to a disco version of DON'T CRY FOR ME ARGENTINA. We all made mistakes in the 1970s.

normadesmond said...

i passed on the poppers, but loved that album, disco evita! i know i still have it, the album, not it.

one can also saturday night fiedler across storrow drive on the arthur fiedler footbridge.