Following
Dance Masters: Shep Pettibone and
Dance Masters: Arthur Baker, the third Dance Masters anthology spotlights
John Luongo, unwitting mentor to series presenter
Baker and a lower-profile dance music legend on several fronts. A DJ first, the Bostonian taught himself to mix using a risky method of essentially bolting records together -- extending some with two copies -- and drew predominantly Black crowds from the whole of New England at the previously white Rhinoceros club. He organized one of the first DJ record pools, published a magazine (Nightfall) that launched the National Disco Awards, and in 1978 became known as a remixer. As recounted in the generous liners of this four-disc set,
Luongo started in his apartment with a tape machine, kitchen utensils, and handclaps before manifesting his creativity in studios with engineers and session musicians. He lays claim to being the first remixer to add original instrumentation to existing tracks, pointing to
Melba Moore's voluptuous remake of
the Bee Gees' "You Stepped into My Life," the Side One, Track One of
Melba and a number five Billboard disco hit. Extra musical layers and other sonic whims -- a shaken whirly tube picked up on the way to the studio, the remixer's own background vocals, etc. -- are on each one of his commissions. Another constant was experimentation with song structure.
Luongo's placement of an extended instrumental break at the front of
Jackie Moore's cool yet impassioned "This Time Baby" resulted in his first trip to the top of the disco chart, followed shortly thereafter by his elasticized progressive remix of
Dan Hartman's towering "Vertigo/Relight My Fire." Everything was done with concern for what wouldn't fly in a club and what artists wouldn't want done to their songs.
Luongo recalls that he "saw the iceberg" from aboard the disco ship and branched out in the '80s.
Material's "I'm the One" (the seven-minute version previously unavailable on compact disc) is the dancefloor funk sound of him and
Chic's
Nile Rodgers and
Tony Thompson adapting and sliding through a new era. Just ahead of that,
Luongo had added space and friction to
Visage's "Fade to Grey," and he continued to work with an assortment of other U.K. acts --
Bananarama,
Cabaret Voltaire,
Shakin' Stevens -- without regard for an aesthetic throughline. At the same time, he was behind otherwise unlikely number one dance hits for unhip American rockers
Greg Kihn and
Huey Lewis & the News, adding heft and a slight sense of otherness to "Jeopardy" and "I Want a New Drug." In a sense, this package is a major expansion of
Can You Feel the Force?, a two-disc 2017 set focusing on
Luongo's
CBS/
Sony work. The overlap isn't substantial, and this boasts an additional chart-topper released on
Luongo's
CBS subsidiary,
Pavillion,
Fantasy's boogie gem "You're Too Late" (with the unmistakable voice of
Fonda Rae). It also goes later into the '80s with the
CBS output, including
Gladys Knight & the Pips' popping "Save the Overtime (For Me)," instead of duplicating, say,
the Jacksons' "Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground)." ~ Andy Kellman