Harry Wayne Casey had an incredible run as a hit songwriter, producer and performer in the ’70s.
As the ‘KC’ and the lead singer in pioneering disco group KC And The Sunshine Band, Casey formed a creative partnership with bassist Richard Finch as co-writers and co-producers of a string of big-selling singles including four US No 1s in Get Down Tonight, That’s The Way (I Like It), (Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty and I’m Your Boogie Man.
But arguably the greatest song Casey ever wrote with Finch was a hit for another singer – George McCrae.
Article continues belowThat song, Rock Your Baby, was a chart-topping success in 1974.
It was also a hit with one of the most famous musicians that ever lived.
In a new interview for the Rock & Roll High School with Pete Ganbarg podcast, Casey looks back on his career and reveals how he wrote Rock Your Baby and his other classic songs.
Formed in Florida in 1973 and originally named KC & The Sunshine Junkanoo Band, Casey’s group also included guitarist Jerome Smith and drummer Robert Johnson.
Debut album Do It Good was released in 1974 on independent record label TK Records. Four singles were lifted from the album – Blow Your Whistle, Queen Of Clubs, Sound Your Funky Horn and I’m A Pushover. None were hits in the US, although Queen Of Clubs made the top 10 in the UK.
In fact, Casey’s first big success came with Rock Your Baby.
The singer George McCrae had guested on Do It Good, performing backing vocals alongside his wife Gwen, who also had a successful solo career. Her vocals were sampled in various dance tracks and the bassline from her 1979 song All This Love That I'm Giving partly inspired Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande’s No 1 duet Rain On Me.
As Casey explains in the Rock & Roll High School podcast, the idea for Rock Your Baby came to him when he was working in a Florida studio and discovered a Lowrey organ that had been used by Indiana-born musician Timmy Thomas on his influential 1972 track Why Can’t We Live Together, one of the first hit songs to utilise a rhythm machine.
Casey recalls that the Lowrey organ had seven or eight different pre-programmed rhythms, including mambo, cha cha cha and samba rock.
“I just hit one of those buttons,” he says, “and then in my normal way of writing, these chords come out. I remember playing it back and thinking, ‘Oh my god, this is amazing.’ It just had such a great feeling.”
With Richard Finch on bass and Jerome Smith adding funky rhythm guitar, the backing track was completed in 45 minutes as a demo.
For the lead vocal on the track, Casey initially thought of using Jimmy ‘Bo’ Horne, who went on to have a few minor hits in the disco era, including Dance Across The Floor, a 1978 single written and produced by Casey.
As fate would have it, Horne was not available for Rock Your Baby, but George McCrae happened to be hanging around at the studio at the right time.
Casey says of McCrae: “He started singing the melody that I gave him and I thought, ‘Oh my god, this is the voice for this song!’”
Released in May 1974, Rock Your Baby held the No 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in July of that year. It also had a three-week run at the top of the UK chart.
The song would eventually sell more than 11 million copies worldwide.
1975 was the year when KC And The Sunshine Band had their breakthrough with their second album, self-titled, and its chart-topping singles Get Down Tonight and That’s The Way (I Like It).
At this point the disco era was in full swing, and Harry Casey was a hit-making machine. A song he wrote for soul singer Betty Wright, Where Is the Love?, won a Grammy in 1975.
An instrumental version of Rock Your Baby was included on KC And The Sunshine Band's third album The Sound of Sunshine, also released in 1975.
Rock Your Baby was hailed as a classic by John Lennon, who famously stated: “I’d give my eyetooth to have written that.”
Lennon said that his 1974 single Whatever Gets You Thru The Night was in part influenced by Rock Your Baby.
In the Rock & Roll High School podcast, Casey admits: “I was never a huge Beatles fan.”
But he adds with evident pride: “I learned recently that John Lennon said that Rock Your Baby is the one song he wished he would have written. And that it did influence his song Whatever Gets You Thru the Night.”
And that’s not all.
“Rock Your Baby influenced ABBA to write their song Dancing Queen,” Casey says. “I can hear the progression right in the song. Absolutely.”
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