COURTESY OF KC AND THE SUNSHINE BAND
Shake your booty with KC and his girls at the Pro Bowl concert tomorrow.
Sun shines on
funk again
You can thank Harry Wayne Casey for helping write such immortal lyrics as "Ohhh, do a little dance/Make a little love/Get down tonight/(bop, bop)/Get down tonight" and "That's the way/uh huh, uh huh/I like it/uh huh uh huh."
The name of KC & The Sunshine Band has became synonymous, perhaps undeservedly, with lowest-common-denominator '70s disco, much like the Village People. But there'll be plenty of it come tomorrow night at the Waikiki Shell as part of this week's activities leading up to Sunday's Pro Bowl.
Gettin' down
25th Anniversary Pro Bowl Concert & Party featuring KC & The Sunshine BandWhere: Waikiki Shell
When: 7 p.m. tomorrow
Tickets: $15, $25 and $30
Call: 591-2211
"My music was really R&B pop," Casey said in an earlier phone interview from his Miami home. "I grew up in the '50s and '60s, so my main influences were Motown artists like Stevie Wonder and the Supremes, and later Joe Cocker.
"If you look at what became disco, KC was dance music, yes, but it wasn't what it became. Our sound was mimicked, and that's what became disco. If you go to some record stores, you can find me in dance, in soul and in pop. They don't know where to put me, when they really should just have a big section for happiness."
The multiracial Miami group, based around the songwriting and production team of Casey and Richard Finch, released several simple but infectious dance singles.
After forming the band in 1973, Casey exploded into mainstream success two years later. Between 1975 and 1976, KC & The Sunshine Band became the first group to:
>> Chart three No. 1 pop hits in one year, a feat achieved previously only by The Beatles in 1964;
>> Become only the second group after the Jackson 5 to chart four U.S. No. 1 singles in the '70s;
>> Sold more than 100 million records and earned nine Grammy nominations, three Grammy Awards and an American Music Award.
"Our music was ahead of its time and has stood the test of time," says Casey.
He added that the band is touring more today -- about 100 performances a year -- than at the height of its popularity, when it numbered about 65.
COURTESY OF KC AND THE SUNSHINE BAND
Harry Wayne "KC" Casey stays at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel every year.
CASEY, now 53, and Richard Finch, wrote, arranged and produced their own band's hits, including the three consecutive No. 1's with "Get Down Tonight," "That's The Way (I Like It)" (both 1975) and "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty" (1976).
The hits all featured an enthusiastic grasp of danceable funk that was exaggerated to near parody, including "I'm Your Boogie Man" (1977) and "Boogie Shoes" (1978).
The band numbered as many as 12 for its live appearances, with some fans thinking Casey was black.
"A lot of people would come to see us and ask 'Where's KC?' and I would say 'Right here' and they would say 'Uh, no, you're not. You're supposed to be black.' "
Casey has seen the disco fad come full circle. After the cries of "Disco sucks!" faded as new wave took over in the early 1980s, the glam dance music -- and its related clothing -- is now fashionable again, he says.
"I was in a store the other day, looking at some pants, and the pants had these huge bell-bottoms on them," he said. "I never really thought the dance craze went away, to tell you the truth. People would try to say it went away, but I think even when punk came out, punk was just another version of dance music with a different name. That stuff was very danceable back then.
"I just think of all the years, with all the periods in music and life and stuff, that was a fun time for a lot of people. I think it was the last period where real musicians played real instruments, before the computer-age sound and the electronic sound took over.
"All the music was feel-good music, and especially today, there's so much sadness, people are looking for stuff that brings them up, and I think the '70s are the last era that's going to do that."
The most important aspect of composing, Casey says, is connecting with the people.
"The tunes and the melodies I compose are all a gift from God for me," he said. "Even when I'm outside walking or laying on the beach, melodies are always coming into my head and I always write them down."
MUSIC WAS important to Casey even as a young boy, composing lyrics just about any time something happy, sad, or memorable occurred in his life. He decided as a preteen that music had to be part of his life, so one of his first jobs was in a record store, where he made an important discovery.
"People were always coming in and asking for a record, but not knowing its name," Casey said. "I decided that any song that I write would have the words from the chorus as the title, so anyone could remember it."
Casey called it quits in 1984 after "Give It Up" was a hit.
"I was tired of being told what to do, even when I was feeling good," he said. "The business was too political and there was so much B.S. that it wasn't worth doing.
"When it was all happening, I'd come from being this kid to being a big, huge superstar. I lost my private life."
Casey returned to music in the early 1990s, especially after then-talk show host Arsenio Hall coaxed him out of early retirement.
"Arsenio said he wanted to see a KC reunion, so we did that, and I kind of got the bug again and realized it's what I should be doing," he said.
Casey put his disco duds back on and hit the road. But in 1995 he entered rehab because after retiring, he said, "I lost it."
"I went crazy. It was just something I did, it was the wrong thing to do, it wasn't a smart move with the drugs.
"I was tired, I didn't want to work anymore, I didn't want to be told when to smile, when to laugh, when to feel good, when not to feel good. I didn't want to be a part of it anymore. I wanted to be Harry Wayne Casey for a minute."
Today, his music is everywhere, in numerous advertising campaigns around the world. His songs are on the soundtracks to the movies "Boogie Nights" and "Boys Don't Cry" and covered by artists ranging from Rob Zombie and Beyoncé.
"I'm relaxed," he said. "I just think, 'I've been there and done that,' so it's easier to accept who I am. I really don't have to do anything I don't want to do."
Casey laughs when asked if he was the consummate party animal audiences see on stage.
"I wasn't," he says. "A lot of performers basically are pretty shy and have bad days and dark times like everyone else. I probably wrote some of my best songs on my darkest days, and I don't know if I wrote them to pick myself up or just to get myself thinking happy in my head."
One thing that does light up his life is his 10-day annual stay each January at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.
"And that's the way I like it!" he says.
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