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Roni Griffith is an American former 1980s disco musician and model from Bloomington, Indiana.
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Roni Griffith is an American former 1980s disco musician and model from Bloomington, Indiana.
She was one of the original Coconuts in the popular 1980s group Kid Creole and the Coconuts. They opened up for the B-52's, Huey Lewis and the News and appeared on Saturday Night Live in 1981. Finding success as a musician the same year she appeared on SNL with Kid Creole and the Coconuts, Griffith decided to go solo, signing a recording contract with Vanguard Records and producer, Bobby Orlando. [1] By the end of 1982 she had a platinum and gold record for her hits "(The Best Part of) Breakin' Up" and "Desire". "(The Best Part of) Breakin' Up" reached #63 in the UK Singles Chart in July 1984. [2] In addition, she was also featured in the first national Clairol commercial shot in 35 mm film for Nice 'n Easy.
She lived in New York from the age of 19 until she was 23 years old, finding an amount of success within a short period of time. On the eve of her first music video and her launch on the new music media outlet MTV, Griffith decided to walk away from everything based on her morals and values as a Christian in the secular music industry.
In 1983, Griffith pursued a career as a Christian contemporary artist. She appeared on The 700 Club and was also featured numerous times in her hometown newspaper, The Herald-Times . In 2004, she released her second Christian contemporary album, entitled Only You.
After giving up her fame in the secular music industry and becoming a Christian contemporary artist, in 1994 Griffith became a professional photographer, opening up her talent production company Integrity Productions. Griffith has been working as a photographer for over 10 years. She has worked with many companies in Indiana such as the Boy Scouts of America, the Helen Wells Agency, and celebrity clients. [3]
Gloria Fowles, known professionally as Gloria Gaynor, is an American singer, best known for the disco era hits "I Will Survive" (1978), "Let Me Know " (1979), "I Am What I Am" (1983), and her version of "Never Can Say Goodbye" (1974).
Leslie Ann Phillips, better known by her stage name Sam Phillips, is an American singer and songwriter. Her albums include the critically acclaimed Martinis & Bikinis in 1994 and Fan Dance in 2001. She has also composed scores for the television shows Gilmore Girls, Bunheads, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.
Kid Creole and the Coconuts is an American musical group created by August Darnell with Andy Hernandez and Adriana Kaegi. Its music incorporates a variety of styles and influences, in particular a mix of disco and Latin American, Caribbean, and Calloway styles conceptually inspired by the big band era. The Coconuts are a trio of female backing vocalists/dancers, founded and originally choreographed and costumed by Kaegi.
Deborah Anne Boone is an American singer, author, and actress. She is best known for her 1977 hit, "You Light Up My Life", which spent ten weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and led to her winning the Grammy Award for Best New Artist the following year. Boone later focused her music career on country music, resulting in the 1980 No. 1 country hit "Are You on the Road to Lovin' Me Again". In the 1980s, she recorded Christian music which garnered her four top 10 Contemporary Christian albums as well as two more Grammys. Throughout her career, Boone has appeared in several musical theater productions and has co-authored many children's books with her husband Gabriel Ferrer.
June Deniece Williams is an American singer. She has been described as "one of the great soul voices" by the BBC. She is best known for the songs "Free", "Silly", "It's Gonna Take a Miracle" and two Billboard Hot 100 No.1 singles "Let's Hear It for the Boy" and "Too Much, Too Little, Too Late". Williams has won four Grammys with twelve nominations altogether. She is also known for recording “Without Us”, the theme song of Family Ties.
Janet Jackson is the debut studio album by American singer Janet Jackson, released in September 1982 by A&M Records. Janet Jackson is described as a dance and contemporary R&B record. Songwriters Angela Winbush and René Moore contributed to much of the album's lyrics. Moore and Winbush share production credits with Foster Sylvers, Jerry Weaver, and Bobby Watson. On release Janet Jackson charted on the Billboard 200 and in New Zealand. Three singles from the album had little impact on Billboard Hot 100 charts, among them "Young Love", "Come Give Your Love to Me" and "Say You Do", though these singles achieved success on the R&B charts. Jackson performed "Young Love" and "Say You Do" on American TV shows American Bandstand and Soul Train in 1982. The cover artwork of Jackson's body submerged in water was based on a photo of Elizabeth Taylor. Worldwide, the album has sold 300,000 copies.
Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band was a big band- and swing-influenced disco band that was formed in the Bronx, New York. The band is best known for its number-one US dance hit "Cherchez La Femme/C'est si bon", from its self-titled debut album.
Tropical Gangsters is the third album by Kid Creole and the Coconuts, released on May 10, 1982. Originally conceived as a solo album by band leader August Darnell and titled Wise Guy, his label ZE Records pressured him to change it to a Kid Creole and the Coconuts record and to make it more commercial sounding in order to relieve the label's financial problems. Despite the tensions this caused within the band and Darnell's complaint that the subsequent record was a "cop-out", the more dance-pop oriented sound helped it reached number 145 on the Billboard 200 album chart, representing the group's commercial breakthrough in their home country. However, to the surprise of Darnell and his record company Tropical Gangsters was a huge success in Australia and New Zealand, Europe, and in particular the UK, where the album peaked at number three in the UK Albums Chart and yielded three top ten singles. Tropical Gangsters made Darnell a worldwide star, and the album remains both his and the ZE label's most successful record by far.
Thomas August Darnell Browder, known professionally as August Darnell and under the stage name Kid Creole, is an American musician, singer and songwriter. He co-founded Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band and subsequently formed and led Kid Creole and the Coconuts.
Anya Phillips was a Taiwanese fashion designer and the co-founder of the New York nightclub the Mudd Club. Phillips influenced the fashion, sound, and look of the New York-based no wave scene of the late 1970s. She was also the manager and girlfriend of musician James Chance.
"Breakin' Away" is a song by British singer Kim Wilde, released in September 1995 as the first single from her ninth album, Now & Forever (1995). Wilde had initially made her name in the 1980s as the highest-selling British female soloist of that decade. She had also earned some degree of success in the early 1990s. "Breakin' Away" was released both in its original form and as several different extended remixes on the 12" and CD-single formats. On the CD-single and cassette single, a song called "Staying with My Baby" was also included. This track was somewhat exclusive as it was only included on the Japanese issue of the Now & Forever album.
Fresh Fruit in Foreign Places is the second album by Kid Creole and the Coconuts, released in 1981.
Perri Lister is an English dancer, singer and actress. She was a dancer with the British dance troupe Hot Gossip which appeared regularly on The Kenny Everett Video Show in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the United Kingdom. In the 1980s Lister was a backing vocalist for a number of pop music acts, including Billy Idol, with whom she had a nine-year relationship.
Doppelganger is the fourth studio album by Kid Creole and the Coconuts, released in 1983. The album was a relative commercial and critical disappointment following the group's most popular album Tropical Gangsters/Wise Guy. The album was released on LP and cassette in September 1983 and peaked at #21 in the UK, and to moderate success throughout Europe but did not chart in the US. The album includes the singles "There's Something Wrong in Paradise", "The Lifeboat Party", and in the US "If You Wanna Be Happy". It was reissued by Universal Island Records with bonus tracks added to album in 2002.
"(The Best Part of) Breakin' Up" is a song written by Phil Spector, Pete Andreoli and Vince Poncia. It was first recorded by the Ronettes, produced by Phil Spector and arranged by Jack Nitzsche with Ronnie Spector on lead vocals and with backing vocals by Nedra Talley and Estelle Bennett, ably abetted by Darlene Love and the Blossoms, Bobby Sheen, and Sonny & Cher. The song was released in April 1964, the year widely recognized as the group's most successful year, and proved to be the group's third consecutive top forty hit in the US. The single peaked at number 39 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and number 43 on the UK Singles Chart.
The discography of American musical group Kid Creole and the Coconuts created and led by August Darnell includes fourteen studio albums, one live album, seven compilations, one extended play and twenty-seven singles. The small discography of The Coconuts – Kid Creole's backing singers – consisting of two studio albums and three singles is included on this page.
You Shoulda Told Me You Were... is a studio album by the American musical group Kid Creole and the Coconuts, released in 1991. It includes the single "(She's A) Party Girl".
"I'm a Wonderful Thing, Baby" is a 1982 song by Kid Creole and the Coconuts from their album Tropical Gangsters. It was the first single released from Tropical Gangsters and their first major hit reaching a peak of no. 4 in the UK Singles Chart. It also reached no. 18 on the US Club Play chart.
Roni Griffith is the debut album by Hi-NRG/disco/pop music singer Roni Griffith, recorded and released in 1982 on Vanguard Records. Her first album includes backing singers, Wendell Morrison and his wife Marian Rolle and Leanora Logan, who were with The Salsoul Orchestra at that time on their last album, Heat It Up; plus Connie Harvey, who was the disco bands, Dazzle and Poussez!, and Janet Wright who was with the disco/soul band, Inner Life on the Prelude Records album, I'm Caught Up . It was produced by Bobby Orlando, who played all of the instruments on her album. This album features a few cuts, "Desire", "Love Is The Drug" and the cover of The Ronettes tune, "(The Best Part of) Breakin' Up". After that, she left Vanguard Records to focus more on Christian life and pursue her career as a Contemporary Christian artist.
Descendants 3 is an American musical fantasy television film, being the third installment in the Descendants series, following Descendants and Descendants 2, and the last one in the film trilogy focused on Mal and her friends. It is written by Sara Parriott and Josann McGibbon, and is directed by Kenny Ortega. The film premiered on Disney Channel on August 2, 2019, and in other territories worldwide starting on October 12, 2019. The film was followed by an animated television special, Descendants: The Royal Wedding, released on 2021.
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