Kool & The Gang - Ladies Night 1979

 

Ladies' Night is the eleventh studio album by the American band Kool & the Gang, released in 1979. The album became their first major success especially after the release of the title track, the U.S. #8 "Ladies' Night," and the U.S. #5 follow-up "Too Hot" which both became Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. The album brought a return to the mainstream after a lull in success from 1976-1978. Ladies' Night reached number one on the U.S. R&B chart. Additionally, all the cuts from the album reached number five on the disco chart.^[2]

With Ladies' Night, Kool & the Gang made their funk style more mainstream by incorporating some pop and light R&B into the sound. The result was that this album was not only popular during the 1970s black-oriented funk era where the band started, but also during the more popular and diverse disco era. Ladies' Night became their first Platinum album.^[3] It also marked the debut of lead vocalist James "J.T." Taylor. 

 Kool & the Gang closed out the 1970s by edging the door shut on their classic sound. Ladies' Night marked the band's initial shift from their dirty funk to a more mainstream pop -- a lighter groove that primed clubbers for dance-'til-you-drop style partying. With the Brazilian fusion musician Eumir Deodato stepping into the production helm with a shared vision of "keep[ing] it simple and basic and clean," Kool & the Gang added a hot new spark to their sound, best illustrated across the title track, which topped the R&B charts for nearly a month. This ideal was also furthered on the downtempo soul of "Too Hot." The former was a jangly, spangly slab of pure dance that quickly became a club favorite, the latter a 180 degree shift that focused instead on vocalist James Taylor's rich timbre, a ballad of lost love where his vocals are smoother than even the sax solo. With the rest of the record falling into step behind these two giants, Ladies' Night kicked off Kool & the Gang's new musical era and, even though it certainly distanced some of their more funk-minded fans, it picked up a faithful army who'd keep the band in the charts for nearly a decade to come.