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’s title as the “Queen of Disco” wasn’t mere hype — she was one of the very few disco performers to enjoy a measure of career longevity, and her consistent chart success was rivaled in the disco world only by the Bee Gees.
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, the “Queen of Disco,” was born on December 31, 1948, in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father, Andrew Gaines, was a butcher and her mother, Mary Gaines, was a schoolteacher. From nearly the moment she learned how to talk, Donna sang ceaselessly. “From the time she was little, that was all she really did,” her mother recalled. “She literally lived to sing and she used to go through the house singing. She sang for breakfast, for lunch and for supper,” her mother added. Summer’s debut performance came one Sunday when she was 10 years old, when a singer scheduled to perform at her church did not show up. The priest, who knew from her parents, Summer’s fondness for singing, invited her to perform instead–expecting, at the least, an amusing spectacle. But to everyone’s surprise, the voice that bellowed out of Donna Summer’s tiny body that Sunday morning was overwhelmingly powerful and beautiful. “You couldn’t see her if you were beyond the third row,” her father remembered but you could hear her, Summer recalled, “I started crying, everybody else started crying. It was quite an amazing moment in my life and at some point after I heard my voice come out, I felt like God said to me, ‘Donna, you are going to be very, very famous.’ And I just knew from that day on I was going to be famous,”
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Summer attended Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Boston, where she starred in the school musicals and was very popular. She was also something of a troublemaker as a teenager, sneaking out to parties to circumvent her parents’ strictly enforced curfew. In 1967, at the age of 18, only weeks before her high school graduation, Summer auditioned for and was cast in a production of Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical scheduled to run in Munich, Germany. Overcoming her father’s initial objections, she accepted the part and flew to Germany with her parents’ reluctant approval. Summer learned to speak fluent German within a few months, and after Hair finished its run, she decided to remain in Munich, where she appeared in several other musicals and worked in a recording studio singing backup vocals and recording demo tapes. In 1974, still in Munich, Summer recorded her first solo album, ‘Lady of the Night,’ which scored a major European hit with the single “The Hostage” but failed to crack the American market.?
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That same year, Summer married German singer Helmuth Sommer. She adopted an anglicised version of his last name as her stage name, which she kept even after the couple divorced in 1976.?
In 1975, Summer co-wrote and recorded a demo version of a seductive disco track called “Love to Love You Baby,” initially intending it for another artist. Producers liked Summer’s demo version so much that they decided to make it her song instead. The final version released in the United States, an unprecedented 17 minutes long, featured Summer’s tantalisingly soft vocals and sensual moaning–sounds so suggestive, in fact, that many radio stations initially refused to play the song. Nevertheless, the path-breaking disco track became an overnight sensation, skyrocketing to No. 2 on the U.S. singles chart and serving as the titular track of her second album. Building on the success of “Love to Love You Baby,” Summer released two albums in 1976: A Love Trilogy and Four Seasons of Love, both of which were enormous successes. In 1977, Summer released two more hit albums, ‘I Remember Yesterday’ and ‘Once Upon a Time,’ and in 1978, her single “Last Dance” from the soundtrack of ‘Thank God It’s Friday’ won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
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Notable achievements.
Awards:
1978?
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Won Best R&B Vocal Performance Female for ‘Last Dance’?
Nominated for Best Pop Vocal Female for MacArthur Park.?
1979?
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Won Best Rock Vocal Performance Female for Hot Stuff, ?
Nominated for Album Of The Year for Bad Girls,?
Nominated for Best Pop Vocal Female for Bad Girls,?
Nominated for Best R&B Vocal Performance Female for Dim All The Lights?
Nominated for Best Disco Recording for Bad Girls.?
1980?
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Nominated for Best Pop Vocal Female for On The Radio.?
1981?
Nominated for Best Rock Vocal Performance Female for Cold Love,?
Nominated for Best Inspirational Performance for I Believe In Jesus.?
1982?
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Nominated for Best Rock Vocal Performance Female for Protection,?
Nominated for Best R&B Vocal Performance Female for ‘Love Is In Control’?
1983?
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Won Best Inspirational Performance for ‘He’s A Rebel’.?
Nominated for Best Pop Vocal Female for ‘She Works Hard For The Money’.?
Nominated for Album Of The Year for the soundtrack to Flashdance.?
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1984?
Won Best Inspirational Performance for ‘Forgive Me’?
1997?
Won Best Dance Recording for ‘Carry On’?
1999?
Nominated for Best Dance Recording for ‘I Will Go With You’?
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Other achievements:
‘Last Dance’ won an Academy Award for best Song from a Motion Picture in 1978. (Note, while Donna sang the song – the award went to the songwriter, Paul Jabara) It also earned a Golden Globe Award.?
Donna was the only artist ever to guest host Dick Clark’s American Bandstand.?
Donna is the first female artist to have three number one singles in one year.?
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She is the only artist to date to have three number one double albums in a row.?
To date, Donna has racked up 11 gold albums and three platinum albums (two of which went double platinum). Additionally, she has has 12 gold singles and two platinum singles. (Check out www.riaa.com for a complete list of certifications.)?
Donna has 14 top 10 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 and four of which reached number 1.?
She picked up three American Music Awards in 1979 for Favorite Female Vocal Pop or Rock, Favorite Single Pop or Rock (Bad Girls), and Favorite Female Vocalist for Soul Music.?
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In 1980 Donna received the NAACP Image Award.?
In 1992 Donna was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.?
Her most recent CD, Live & More Encore yielded back to back number one dance hits and was certified gold in Spain.?
She is currently eligible for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame and was nominated for the first time in 2007 (for the class of 2008).?
In 2008, she became the only artist to have a number one dance hit in every decade since the 1970s.?