In the Beverly Hills 90210 episode "Duke's Bad Boy" Steve Sanders insults David Silver's producer by asking if his last hit was "Disco Duck."ĭJ Shadow sampled Disco Duck's trademark riff on the track "Right Thing/GDMFSOB," from his 2002 album The Private Press.
Rick dees disco duck release date series#
Template:FactĪlso in 1977, Peter Pan Records put out a series of children's records featuring Irwin the Disco Duck.ĭisco Duck was also referenced in an episode of Animaniacs, when the Warner siblings attend a karaoke club and Dot Warner flips through the book, saying "See if they have Disco Duck!"
Rick dees disco duck release date tv#
Scott and Willem a German Parody Version called "Tarzan Ist Wieder Da", and would later become the theme song of the defunct Philippine reality TV show The Misadventures of Maverick And Ariel. The 1979 Disney-produced album Mickey Mouse Disco, a late entry into the disco genre, featured a track called "Macho Duck," (inspired mostly by the Village People hit, Macho Man) with the voice of Nash on the track, in response.ĭisco Duck was covered in 1977 by D.J. Had Disco Duck been included in the film's soundtrack, royalties would have theoretically earned Dees at least $3.5 million, as the soundtrack has sold over 35 million copies to date. According to Dees, his manager at the time made the unwise decision to halt plans to include the song on the film's soundtrack because of fears that it would compete with sales of Dees's own album. On American Bandstand and other similar shows he lip-synched to the recording alone on stage with an unseen person performing the "duck" using a hand puppet, but when he appeared on The Midnight Special he gathered together a band, backup singers, and possibly even Pruitt, the voice of the duck on the record, and performed the song live.ĭisco Duck even made a "cameo" appearance in Saturday Night Fever, in a dance club scene in which a group of senior citizens were learning to dance disco-style.
But after a brief mandatory hiatus, Dees was hired by WHBQ-AM, WMPS's primary competition in Memphis.īy the time Disco Duck had become a hit, Dees and his "Idiots" starting making the rounds of the popular TV music shows to promote the song. When Dees talked about the song on his show one morning, the program director, citing conflict of interest, promptly fired him. Station management expressly forbid Dees from playing the song on his own show, and rival stations refused to play it for fear of promoting the competition. Nationally it peaked at #1 on Octofor one week, but held the #2 spot for the following four weeks and stayed in the Top 10 for ten weeks altogether.įor all its success, Disco Duck was shunned by radio stations in Memphis, including WMPS-AM, the station Dees worked for at the time. The final irony - RSO records, which published the Bee Gees' records, also published Disco Duck.Disco Duck became a nationwide hit by the early fall of 1976. Todd mentions how it is also strange that as bad as this song is, how he had no trouble finding video footage of it being performed on TV on all three networks. Actually, as Todd mentions, this came out in 1976, three years before the backlash over disco. Almost a perfect documentary, the one mistake I knew it made was crediting this song for being part of the death of disco and by extension putting a knife through the heart of the Bee Gees' third act of a career due to the group's close association to disco because they wrote and performed the music for "Saturday Night Fever". Strangely enough, this song was mentioned on the HBO documentary about the Bee Gees that came out in December "How Do You Mend a Broken Heart". Although I still think "Ring My Bell" (1979) gives it a run for its money. Thanks to Todd, a shadowy figure who reviews rock history, for validating that opinion. I believed he was just a one hit wonder who happened to write and perform the worst song in history. I didn't know who Rick Dees was - apparently a DJ with a 40 year career.
I have always thought that this song was awful. and I don't know why it was a hit either.
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