The Bureau were an English new wave soul group formed in November 1980 in Birmingham, England, when the original line-up of Dexys Midnight Runners split up. The Bureau retained their Dexys roots and played powerful brass-driven soul sounds.
KC and the Sunshine Band is an American disco and funk band that was founded in 1973 in Hialeah, Florida. Their best-known songs include the hits "That's the Way ", "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty", "I'm Your Boogie Man", "Keep It Comin' Love", "Get Down Tonight", "Boogie Shoes", "Please Don't Go" and "Give It Up". The band took its name from lead vocalist Harry Wayne Casey's last name ('KC') and the 'Sunshine Band' from KC's home state of Florida, the Sunshine State. The group has had six top 10 singles, five number one singles and a number two single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Michael Stock is an English songwriter, record producer, musician, and member of the songwriting and production trio Stock Aitken Waterman. He has written and/or produced 18 No. 1 records in America and the UK, over a hundred top-40 hits and is recognised as one of the most successful songwriters of all time by the Guinness Book of Records. As part of Stock Aitken Waterman in the 1980s and 90s, he holds the UK record of 11 number one records with different acts. In the UK Singles Chart he has written 54 top-ten hits including 7 number ones.
The Dazz Band is an American R&B/funk band most popular in the early 1980s. Emerging from Cleveland, Ohio, the group's biggest hit songs include "Let It Whip" (1982), "Joystick" (1983), and "Let It All Blow" (1984). The name of the band is a portmanteau of the description "danceable jazz".
British Hit Singles & Albums was a music reference book originally published in the United Kingdom by the publishing arm of the Guinness breweries, Guinness Superlatives. Later editions were published by HiT Entertainment. It listed all the singles and albums featured in the Top 75 pop charts in the UK. In 2004 the book became an amalgamation of two earlier Guinness publications, originally known as British Hit Singles and British Hit Albums. The publication of this amalgamation ceased in 2006, with Guinness World Records being sold to The Jim Pattison Group, owner of Ripley's Believe It or Not!. At this point, the Official UK Charts Company teamed up with Random House/Ebury Publishing to release a new version of the book under the Virgin Books brand. Entitled The Virgin Book of British Hit Singles, it was first published in November 2008 with a separate albums book and second edition being published over the next couple of years.
Fern Kinney is an American R&B and disco singer, who is best remembered for her releases, "Groove Me" and "Together We Are Beautiful".
Archie Bell & the Drells was an American R&B vocal group from Houston, Texas, and one of the main acts on Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff's Philadelphia International Records. The band's hits include "Tighten Up", "I Can't Stop Dancing", "There's Gonna Be a Showdown", "Girl You're Too Young" (1969), "Here I Go Again", "Soul City Walk" (1975), "Let's Groove", "Everybody Have a Good Time" (1977), and "Don't Let Love Get You Down" (1976).
Deepest Blue are a British electronic music duo comprising Matt Schwartz and Joel Edwards. They are best known for their UK Top 10 hit singles, "Deepest Blue" (2003) and "Give It Away" (2004).
"Don't Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes" is a country song about a man away from home who is worried that his paramour may unwittingly stray from their relationship. The song was recorded in many different styles by many artists. It was written by Winston L. Moore and published in 1952. Perry Como's recording of the song became a No. 1 hit in both the US and UK.
Domenica "Nikka" Costa is an American singer whose music combines elements of pop, soul, and blues. She also had a career as a child singer starting in the early 1980s. She is the daughter of music producer Don Costa.
Dimitri from Paris is a French music producer and DJ of Greek descent. His musical influences are rooted in 1970s funk and disco sounds that spawned contemporary house music, as well as original soundtracks from 1950s and 1960s movies such as Breakfast at Tiffany's, La Dolce Vita and The Party, which were sampled in his album Sacrebleu. Dimitri fused these sounds with electro and block party hip hop he discovered in the 1980s.
Atmosfear are a jazz funk/Brit funk band who formed in the United Kingdom in 1978. The band was formed by two friends Lester J. Batchelor Jr. and Raymond Johnson two soul boys on the London Soul and jazz Funk music scene in the late 1970's, both were regular club goers and record collectors. Ray was a well known dancer and dance skater, Lester was a design student. They would hang out at local clubs such as Scamps, Bobby McGees, The Global Village, Wag and Billy's in London.
The Equals are an English rock band. They are best remembered for their million-selling chart-topper "Baby, Come Back", though they had several other chart hits in the UK and Europe. Drummer John Hall founded the group with brothers Derv and Lincoln Gordon, Pat Lloyd, and Eddy Grant and they were noted as being "the first major interracial rock group in the UK" and "one of the few racially mixed bands of the era".
"Running Bear" is a teenage tragedy song written by Jiles Perry Richardson and sung most famously by Johnny Preston in 1959. The 1959 recording featured background vocals by George Jones and the session's producer Bill Hall, who provided the "Indian chanting" of "uga-uga" during the three verses, as well as the "Indian war cries" at the start and end of the record. It was No. 1 for three weeks in January 1960 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States. The song also reached No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart and New Zealand in 1960. Coincidentally, "Running Bear" was immediately preceded in the Hot 100 No. 1 position by Marty Robbins' "El Paso", and immediately followed by Mark Dinning's "Teen Angel", both of which feature a death of, or affecting, the protagonist. Billboard ranked "Running Bear" as the No. 4 song of 1960. The tenor saxophone was played by Link Davis.
Animal Nightlife was a British group in the 1980s. It consisted of Andy Polaris on vocals, Leonardo Chignoli on bass, Steve Brown on guitar, Billy Chapman on saxophone and Paul Waller on drums.
Arthur Adams is an American blues guitarist from Medon, Tennessee. Inspired by B.B. King and other 1950s artists, he played gospel music before attending college. He moved to Los Angeles, and during the 1960s and 1970s he released solo albums and worked as a session musician. In 1985 he was tapped to tour on bass guitar with Nina Simone, and he staged a comeback in the 1990s when he released Back on Track, and became a respected Chicago blues player and bandleader in B.B. King's clubs.
Beggar and Co are a British jazz-funk group formed by Kenny Wellington, David Baptiste and Neville 'Breeze' McKrieth, originally members of the group Light of the World.
Blue Rondo à la Turk was an early 1980s British musical ensemble, whose music featured elements of salsa, pop and cool jazz. The group placed two songs on the UK Singles Chart, but is perhaps better known in retrospect for launching the careers of several players who went on to form the sophisticated jazz/Latin/samba/pop group Matt Bianco.
Tyrone Brunson was an American singer and musician, who played the bass guitar. One of his most successful singles was an electro-funk instrumental titled "The Smurf" (1982), which reached #14 on the Billboard R&B chart in 1983 and led to further dance records about The Smurfs.
One Way was an American R&B and funk band that was popular in the late 1970s, and throughout most of the 1980s, led by singer Al Hudson. The group's most successful record was "Cutie Pie", which reached number 4 on the Billboard Soul Singles chart and number 61 on the pop chart in 1982.
