"Boogie Down" | ||||
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Single by Eddie Kendricks | ||||
from the album Boogie Down! | ||||
B-side | "Can't Help What I Am" | |||
Released | December 1973 | |||
Recorded | 1973 | |||
Genre | Disco, funk, R&B | |||
Length | 3:48 (single edit) 7:02 (album version) | |||
Label | Tamla T 54243 | |||
Songwriter(s) | Leonard Caston, Jr. Anita Poree Frank Wilson | |||
Producer(s) | Frank Wilson & Leonard Caston, Jr. | |||
Eddie Kendricks singles chronology | ||||
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Official audio | ||||
"Boogie Down" on YouTube |
"Boogie Down" is a 1973 song which was recorded by Eddie Kendricks for Motown Records' Tamla label. The song was co-written by Leonard Caston Jr., Anita Poree and Frank Wilson, the same songwriting team that had composed "Keep On Truckin'", Kendricks' first major hit as a solo artist. Caston and Wilson co-produced the song and the arrangement was handled by Caston, Wilson and David Van De Pitte.
Like "Keep on Truckin'", "Boogie Down" is an up-tempo, disco, dance number that saw heavy rotation in dance clubs. Released as a single from the album of the same name, "Boogie Down" became Kendricks' second consecutive single to top the Billboard's R&B Singles Chart, holding the number one position for three weeks. [1]
It just missed becoming his second straight #1 on the Billboard Pop Singles Chart, peaking at number two for two straight weeks, behind "Seasons in the Sun" by Terry Jacks. [2] However, it was Kendricks' second #1 single on the Cash Box Top 100 chart. Billboard ranked it as the #30 Pop single of 1974. Outside the US, it was a Top 40 hit in Britain as well, hitting #39 on the UK Charts.
Credits adapted from The Billboard Book of Number One Rhythm & Blues Hits. [3]
Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated within African-American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to African Americans, at a time when "rocking, jazz based music ... [with a] heavy, insistent beat" was becoming more popular. In the commercial rhythm and blues music typical of the 1950s through the 1970s, the bands usually consisted of a piano, one or two guitars, bass, drums, one or more saxophones, and sometimes background vocalists. R&B lyrical themes often encapsulate the African-American history and experience of pain and the quest for freedom and joy, as well as triumphs and failures in terms of societal racism, oppression, relationships, economics, and aspirations.
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