When American pop radio finally came on board, Casey's songs opened the gates into the disco era. First was "Rock Your Baby," a song he wrote and produced for George McCrae that went #1 R&B in July 1974 and topped the Hot 100 a week later. The first KC and the Sunshine Band chart-topper (again, both Hot 100 and R&B) was the delicious dance-floor filler "Get Down Tonight" in 1975. The hits kept coming, even into the '80s, when Casey released what today is his most popular song, "Give It Up," with a nine-figure streaming count just on Spotify.
A little backstory: Growing up in Hialeah, Florida (near Miami), Casey sang in church (white, but "very sanctified," he says). After high school, he went to work for a record store that was associated with TK Records, home to Betty Wright, Timmy Thomas, and Clarence Reid. He made himself useful and ended up going on the road as an opening act for White and writing songs for various TK artists. Teaming with TK studio wizard Rick Finch, guitarist Jerome Smith, and drummer Robert Johnson, he formed KC and the Sunshine Band and started recording his own material.
Before the Sunshine Band became so successful it was all-consuming, Casey made some soul classics with artists on the TK roster, including a song called "I Get Lifted" for George McCrae. In this discussion, we cover the KC and the Sunshine Band hits (including "That's The Way (I Like It)," which was more lascivious when it started), but we'll start with that one.
Harry Wayne Casey: Yeah. I was just messing around on the piano, like I did at every session, and I came up with that strange piano part. The lyric, "I get lifted up high," I wasn't talking about drugs or anything because I really wasn't doing any drugs at that time, so it was just about the spirit of feeling lifted, of being lifted up by someone you love. All the songs I wrote were about being in love and the feelings of being in love.
Songfacts: Is that your piano on the George McCrae version?
Casey: Yes. I wrote all the songs. I wrote every chord, I wrote every verse, every melody. So during a session while they were setting up, I would come in either already having the chords in my head or I would sit down at the piano and just start putting things together right there on the spot. It would take a while to get the drum sounds and everything like that, so I would create something right there on the spot.
Songfacts: You must have been a well of creativity at that point because you were very prolific.
Casey: I was. I've been writing since I was 13 years old and I always wrote about how I was feeling inside, whether it's a relationship or just things going on in my life or around me. I always wrote it down and it always came out with a melody with it. So it was just very natural for me. It was my way of expressing how I was feeling, because I really didn't talk to my parents and there wasn't anyone I really confided in, so I confided in my own words and pretty much kept it to myself until I started putting them to music.
Songfacts: Was there ever a song you wrote where you were trying to just unload something inside you very personal?
Casey: I don't know about unloading. Everything a writer writes is kind of unloading something within them or something they've been through or witnessed. In a way, all creativity, whether it's an artist or whatever, I think it's all unloading something. But evidently it's never actually unloading because you continue to write about it. You get one part out, then it's time to get the next part out. It's like a constant thing, you never stop.
Songfacts: With those soul songs, some of these guys will tell you they need an actual breakup to write about that big breakup, but other guys can do it just imagining it or channeling somebody else's breakup.
Casey: Right. I've watched the movies, I've read enough books, I've been through enough breakups on my own and I've witnessed enough breakups. I grew up in a family where my mother and father separated. I know the difference between what real love should be and what love is, and what hate is and all that.
I don't have to go through a breakup or a situation at that moment, although I guess some situations might have triggered something.
Songfacts: Back when you were KC and the Sunshine Junkanoo Band, you did a single called "Blow Your Whistle," which has this great party vibe and a very Junkanoo feel to it. It's the only song I've ever heard that has a whistle as a lead instrument.
Casey: Here's the story. There really was no KC and the Sunshine Junkanoo Band per se. I was doing everything at TK. I was doing some co-writing with Clarence Reid and then I also did anything that needed to be done: promotions, working in the warehouse, helping Henry Stone, the owner. I worked at his competitor during the day and I would go hang out there at night, so I found that there was a missing part at TK with all the artists that were recording, and that was a management thing, so I started taking over management and handling bookings of the artists that were having hit records there. And one of those artists that I took over was Timmy Thomas, who had "Why Can't We Live Together?" So I booked all his flights and hotels, did his negotiations. I did it all.
I went to the studio and I hired the local studio guys that worked at TK, and then I brought in the Mighty Junkanoo Band to play on the record. So when it came to the name, like, "Who's going to be the artist?" It was really just me. I didn't want to call it by my own name, so I came up with KC and the Sunshine Junkanoo Band because I thought maybe that's the direction I would take the music.
Songfacts: I find it interesting that at first you got noticed on the R&B charts and were getting some R&B airplay, and then you got noticed in the UK, and I think your first tour was in the UK.
Casey: It was. It was because of a song that I had written called "Queen Of Clubs."
Songfacts: Yes. "Queen Of Clubs" was on your first album and it didn't do anything in America, but for some reason it took off in Europe.
Casey: Yeah. Here, we couldn't give it away. We never did really release it as a single until after it was a hit in England, and then we put it out here.
Songfacts: At this point were you even considering yourself a live act or were you thinking of yourself more as a house band that was just going to be in the studio?
Casey: It was a studio situation at that point, and on that particular record I used some guys - Jerome and Robert - who had a band I'd done some local gigs with.
Then I started working on more songs. Timmy Thomas' organ was upstairs in the studio and I sat down and I pushed down one of the rhythmic buttons, "samba" or "mambo," or whatever it was, and I started playing these chords, and that's when I came up with the music for "Rock Your Baby."
The owner of our record label in England knew that "Blow Your Whistle" and "Sound Your Funky Horn," which was our second release, were making a little bit of noise over there, and he says, "Do you have anything else by KC and the Sunshine Band?" At that point I was already working on the next album, but he came over and he heard the song "Queen Of Clubs" and he said, "This will be a hit in my country."
He took it back over to the UK and it went to #7 on the UK charts and was a hit all over Europe. He said, "You need to come over here and do a tour," and I went, "What?!"
So I just grabbed up everybody that was playing on the record and we went over there, except the horn players - the horn players that you saw on the live shows never played on the records. There were four other guys that did all the studio work here in Miami, all the recordings. But my guys that I took on the road were very energetic, and because I had horns on the records, I had to have horns on the road.
Songfacts: The song that broke it wide open for you was "Get Down Tonight." Can you talk about that song?
Casey: "Get Down Tonight" was originally called "What You Want Is What You'll Get." A lot of times I will have an idea of a song, and during recording I'll just sing whatever comes into my mind and then go back, and if I don't like that, will change it to another complete title. I do it a little bit differently now. I start with titles most of the time and already have the idea of what the title is going to be. But for that particular song and for "I'm Your Boogie Man," it was different.
My working title was "What You Want Is What You'll Get," and that's what I used during the recording of the record. Then I came back and decided to change it to "Get Down Tonight." I just thought, "What are the things I like to do?" I love to dance, and so do other people. Do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight.
I didn't borrow it from any other song - no other song influenced it. I've never really been influenced by any other songs unless subliminally. There was a Gilbert O'Sullivan song ["Get Down"] that I'd never even heard of, but I didn't borrow anything from that song or even the title. It had nothing to do with the creation of "Get Down Tonight." It was just a story about life, about the things that one likes to do.
I've never copied anyone. I've been copied by many artists and have to go out to them, but I've never sat down and taken anybody's chords to create any song that I've ever written in my entire life.
Songfacts: Was that phrase "get down" floating around the lexicon back then?
Casey: Yeah, it was a term that was kind of floating around, just like "Shake Your Booty" - "booty" was floating around. It was a common term, and it was natural to pull from the lingo of the day to make it part of the title.
Songfacts: You mentioned "I'm Your Boogie Man" was another that you used that same process on. Can you talk about talk about that song?
I'll be a son of a gun
Look what you've done
Then I went back and "I'm Your Boogie Man" came into my head because I was thinking about how disc jockeys were always there on the radio. Like it says:
Early morning
Late afternoon
Or at midnight
It's never too soon
I'm your Boogie Man
It's taking the theme of the disc jockey being the one that's there for you all the time, no matter when. So it was as if I was a disc jockey, I'm the Boogie Man. Like if you call in and want to hear a certain song, or talk about what was going on in your life, I'm your Boogie Man. And of course I put in "turn me on," but that could also mean turned on the radio.
I never dissected these things when I was writing them because I was just writing about certain situations or certain feelings at the time.
Songfacts: You certainly had a sense for how to write a lyric that could be about dancing, but could very well be about something else.
Casey: Well, it was about everything. You could take it a lot of different ways. I never wanted to make it like it was about any one person or any one gender or anything, although I knew from working in the record store that the majority of records were bought by females, so I wrote to reach that audience.
The other thing that was deliberate in my writing, I'm more of a commercial songwriter than I am a storyteller songwriter, and that's because when I was working in the store, people would come in and ask for records but they didn't always know the names of them.
Sherry Smith, who used to work at the record label TK doing promotions and stuff, one night I was going through her record collection and The Beatles had just put out the red and the blue albums [1962-1966 (red), 1967-1970 (blue)]. I had never really paid too much attention to the lyrics, but I listened to the song "She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah. She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah," and how many times they repeated "I want to hold your hand." I was looking at these lyrics when the bells went off in my head. I felt like I was on the right track, but that's where I needed to be.
I didn't like The Beatles, but I can remember that bell going off in my head that connected with me and said, "This is your lane."
Songfacts: Yeah. "That's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it." No mistaking it.
Casey: Exactly. And those "uh-huh"s were not originally "uh-huh." At the time, a record had come out, "Je T'aime... Moi Non Plus." It had heavy breathing and stuff in it, and the original "uh-huh"s in "That's The Way I Like It" were more like heavy breathing in a sexual situation. I thought it was just way too much and I just simplified it and changed it to "uh-huh, uh-huh."
Songfacts: Did you ever actually record a take with the heavy breathing?
Casey: Yeah. It wasn't really heavy breathing, but the "uh-huh"s were a lot more sensual sounding. It was a little bit overboard and I cleaned it up.
Casey: Near the end of 1978, I was kind of anti-disco believe it or not, and I was trying to change a little bit from "That's The Way" and "Shake Your Booty" and all that. I was in the studio waiting for the next session to start, I'm sitting at the piano and I just start playing these chords, and I remember how beautiful they were. I decided that was the song I was going to record that day, and that became "Please Don't Go."
I called in Mike Lewis, who did guitar arrangements and stuff, and he brought in the orchestra with the French horns and the flutes and put a full orchestra on the track.
Songfacts: I was really surprised to see that your #1 song on Spotify, far and away, is "Give It Up." Because it wasn't your biggest hit.
Casey: See, that's not true. There's an illusion that it wasn't a big hit. Billboard, when they chart a record, you get points and stations are added. Well, there were a lot of stations that went on that record off of the success of it in the UK, which included even Y100 in Miami. Every radio station in the world, including the United States of America, had that record at #1 for at least six to eight weeks. The problem is, stations that were on it very early, it went down after it was #1 for eight weeks, and other stations, it took longer, so the points didn't add up right to make it the #1 record that it really was. The record was a #1 record all over the world, six to eight weeks on every chart, no matter what country you went to.
Songfacts: Tell me about writing that song.
Casey: I was thinking about... how do I explain this?
Everybody wants you
Everybody wants your love
I would just like to make you mine all mine
It seemed like everybody I always wanted to be with already had somebody else or wanted to be with somebody else. And I noticed how there's always this one person, everybody wants them, and they don't want anybody, and it would be real nice if you were mine. But you can't have them. That sort of situation.
And then there's the ones that are just so hard to get, that play all the games. So it's, "Give it up, baby, give it up." Everybody looks and stares at this person, but they're always like too good to give it up to anybody. They're always just playing this little game.
Songfacts: What is a lesser-known song that you worked on either for you or for another artist that you're particularly proud of?
Casey: I'm pretty much proud of everything I did. There's a couple on the George McCrae album. A song called "You Got Me Going Crazy." I was listening to that a few weeks ago.
There were a couple on Jimmy "Bo" Horne's album, a song called, "You Get Me Hot."
Songfacts: What is a song by another artist that has had the biggest impact on you?
Casey: I don't have any song that I ever would have thought about like that to be honest with you.
Songfacts: That might be part of your superpower, that you're able to do this so originally without copying anything else that's out there.
Casey: Exactly. One of my all-time favorite songs is "Over The Rainbow," and "Somewhere." I've always loved so much music and all kinds of music. Whatever was the flavor of the day was what I was into, and then after that moved on, I moved on to the next flavor.
I locked into anything that was coming out of Motown. I just loved the production and everything the songs made me feel. And there was that great R&B stuff with Aretha, that beautiful soul music.
I love R&B but I love country. I love certain rock songs if they're funky enough - Joe Cocker and Leon Russell. Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, Lee Michaels. The stuff that had keyboards I always liked. Then Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears with their horns. They were always so amazing in stereo.
But I gravitated towards anything that had a funky feel to it. That could be Cream, that could be Led Zeppelin, it could be anybody.
Songfacts: What's the best use of a KC and the Sunshine Band song in a movie or TV show?
Casey: "Get Down Tonight" and "Boogie Shoes" in Saturday Night Fever were great uses, but at the end of Kingsman: The Secret Service, they play "Give It Up" and that's a pretty great ending.
May 27, 2021
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