Songoftheday 6/16/13 - Everybody wants you everybody wants your love, I'd just like to make you mine all mine...

K.C. (& The Sunshine Band) - "Give it Up"
from the album KC Ten (1984) or All In A Night's Work (UK 1982)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #18 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 10

Today's Song of the Day is by disco king Harry Wayne Casey, or as he's known to the music world as K.C., who went from working in a record shop to selling millions of his own, partnering up with engineer/musician Richard Finch in Miami in the early 70s. Naming his backing band of studio musicians the Sunshine band after his home state, KC & The Sunshine Band released their first album in 1973, and the first single, "Blow Your Whistle", became their first R&B hit, reaching #27 on that chart. Their follow-up, "Sound Your Funky Horn", was their first to make the British chart the following year.  The third single from the set, "Queen Of Clubs", put them on the pop chart for the first time, peaking at #66 and going top-10 in England.

But it was 1975 that the band broke big, as their self-titled sophomore album was released, and from the record came two #1 pop hits, "Get Down Tonight" and "That's The Way (I Like It)", both classics of the disco era. Their third vocal album, Part 3, yielded yet another chart-topping hit, "I'm Your Boogie Man" in 1977. As the disco craze started to wind down, the band released a slick ballad, "Please Don't Go", which went to #1 on the pop chart in 1979.

As the disco scene was pretty much destroyed at the beginning of the 80s, so was the collaboration between Casey and Finch, as the Sunshine Band broke up. A song from their last album together, "Give It Up" was released in England in 1983, where it became a #1 hit. Almost a year later, it was put out in the US, only this time just under the KC name (possibly to avoid connection with the "disco" band), where it returned him to the charts. The song, written by Casey, doesn't stray from his old band's sound, though...

"Give It Up" went all the way to the top-20 on the American pop chart, and also reached #24 on the dance club play chart (I'm surprised it didn't do better). In the UK, it was KC's first and only #1 hit with or without the Sunshine Band. He went on to have a couple more charting singles in the UK, while in America he "bubbled" under the chart with the follow-up track to this, "Are You Ready". In 1998, he went to #52 on the R&B chart as a featured artist on filthy-rap artists 2 Live Crew's "2 Live Party".

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Ten years after the KC version of "Give It Up" Danish Eurodance group Cut N' Move released a cover of the song, and it went to the top of the charts in Australia in 1993...

Another Eurodance act from Germany, Captain Jack, had a minor hit in their homeland with their 2003 version...

Another band from Germany, BeFour, also took on the song in 2008...

The Black Eyed Peas sampled KC's record for their album track "Love You Long Time"...

In my favorite just for its randomness, from a benefit concert in 1986, is Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics and Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders...

A rare performance of the song with the Sunshine Band...

... and finally, here's KC miming it for Top Of The Pops...

 Up tomorrow: a storm's a-brewing.