CONDITIONAL LOVE: Remembering Donna Summer

I was a teen living in Philadelphia when the phenomena known as Donna Summer began to enter my consciousness. Her first hit single "Love To Love You Baby" was making waves in the media partly for the orgasmic moaning that pervaded the recording, partly because in its 12" format it provided 17 minutes of it! Living in Philadelphia at that time, dance music was very important, especially in the gay community, yet I had a hard time relating to this new "hit". Perhaps it was the the incessant female moaning, perhaps the robotic beat of Giorgio Moroder's synthesizers, but whatever it was it baffled me at the time. But my regard for Summer's voice changed that summer when I was on a youth tour in Israel. There the buses were all equipped with radios. One day while out in the desert, the bus' radio begins to broadcast "Love to Love You Baby". Within seconds, in broad daylight, a bat comes through a window, onto the bus and attaches itself to a radio speaker on the roof and refuses to move until someone took their shirt and literally peeled the creature off the speaker.


There has always been a magnetic quality to Donna Summer's voice. I may have had difficulty initially, but her large mezzo-soprano voice was warm with just a light vibrato. I guess this reflects her roots in gospel, but unlike her fellow recently deceased chorister-cum-diva Whitney Houston, a strong direct quality that helped give her hits the anthemic appeal that singers today can only dream about.

Summer's emergence in the disco era was remarkable but not surprising. For many she WAS Disco. But she was an artist willing to push boundaries. Side A of A Love Trilogy is a single 17+ minute track "Try Me, I Know We Can Make It" that takes it's lyrics from that simple title. As I remember, it came with four calendar pin-ups of Summer and was an excellent choice for sex. Many of her albums were double albums; four full sides of hypnotic music. "Bad Girls" was essential to drunken Friday night parties as well as Improvisational Theater classes with Avery Brooks. 

She also tapped into the feminist movement of the 70's and making it pop, glorifying the "working women" whether sex worker or waitress, and her duet with Barbra Streisand "No More Tears (Enough is Enough)" is the anthem for anyone who has ever been fed up with a lover. By the early 80's, her cover of Jon Anderson's "State of Independence" and her collaboration with Musical Youth "Unconditional Love" shows she was an artist interested in various and diverse sources. By the end of the last century her fame may not have been as glorious as it once was (her unfortunate statement in the late 80's regarding HIV and AIDS cost her deeply and she has apologized), but now, in retrospect, it blazed for us for an incredibly incandescent period.  

Finding videos of her performing live on Youtube today reminded me what a sharp, appealing performer she was. I will always associate her music with friends, good times and general happiness.


Thank you for the joy!!