Disco Duck
Encyclopedia
"Disco Duck" is a satirical
disco
novelty song
performed by Memphis
disc jockey Rick Dees
and His Cast of Idiots. It became a number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100
for one week in October 1976 (and ranked #99 out of the 100 most popular songs of the year according to Billboard
magazine). It also made the top 20 on the Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart, peaking at number 15. "Disco Duck" was initially released in the south by Estelle Axton
's Fretone label but was later released by RSO Records
for national and international distribution.
Combining orchestral disco styles with a Donald Duck
-esque voice as the main plot point, the story within "Disco Duck" centers around a man at a dance party who is overcome by the urge to get up and "get down" in a duck-like manner. When the music stops, he sits down, but when he decides to get up and dance again, he finds that everyone in the room is now doing his dance.
, the original voice of Donald Duck
in many Walt Disney
cartoons, but on several occasions the Disney Company maintained that Nash never contributed to the song. The voice of the duck was performed by Ken Pruitt, an acquaintance of Dees, as stated on the label of the RSO release.
For all its success, "Disco Duck" was shunned by radio stations in Dees hometown of Memphis, including WMPS-AM, the station Dees worked for at the time. Station management forbade Dees from playing the song on his own show and rival stations in the city refused to play it for fear of promoting the competition. When Dees talked about (but did not play) the song on his show one morning, his boss fired him citing conflict of interest
. After a brief mandatory hiatus, Dees was hired by station WHBQ-AM, WMPS's primary competition in Memphis.
By the time "Disco Duck" become a hit, Dees and his "Idiots" started making the rounds of the popular TV music shows to promote the song. On American Bandstand
(and similar shows), Dees lip-synched to the recording, alone on stage with an unseen person animating a duck hand puppet (Ironically, this appearance was never seen in the Memphis area due to then-ABC affiliate WHBQ-TV
pre-empting Bandstand for wrestling at the time and for the aforementioned Memphis radio avoidance reasons). But when he appeared on The Midnight Special
he gathered together a band, backup singers and possibly Pruitt, the voice of the duck on the record, and performed the song live.
"Disco Duck" even made an appearance in the film Saturday Night Fever
, in a dance club scene in which a group of senior citizens were learning to dance disco-style. It was also featured in a deleted scene added back to the PG version. As it stands, Dees could have made an even more substantial amount of money from the song. According to Dees, his manager at the time made the unwise decision to deny use of the song on the film's soundtrack because of fears that it would compete with sales of Dees's own album. The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack has now currently sold 40 million copies worldwide, and is the second best-selling soundtrack of all time.
Although "Disco Duck" hit #1 on the charts, Matthew Wilkening of AOL Radio
ranked the song at #54 on his list of the 100 Worst Songs Ever, stating that "six million people bought this piece of duck droppings in 1976. Not one of them would admit to doing so today."
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.
In 1979, Kermit the Frog
sang a song called "Disco Frog" on Sesame Street
, which he also later sang on The Muppet Show
, and was most likely inspired by "Disco Duck".
"Disco Duck" was covered in 1977 by D.J. Scott and Willem, a German Parody Version called "Tarzan Ist Wieder Da".
Also in 1977, Peter Pan Records
put out a series of children's records featuring Irwin the Disco Duck
.
In 1989, Grandmaster Chicken & D.J. Duck included a sample of the song in the 12" version of Check Out The Chicken.
"Disco Duck" was 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."
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".
DJ Shadow
sampled
"Disco Duck's" trademark riff on the track "Right Thing/GDMFSOB", on his 2002 album The Private Press
.
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
disco
Disco
Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...
novelty song
Novelty song
A novelty song is a comical or nonsensical song, performed principally for its comical effect. Humorous songs, or those containing humorous elements, are not necessarily novelty songs. The term arose in Tin Pan Alley to describe one of the major divisions of popular music. The other two divisions...
performed by Memphis
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....
disc jockey Rick Dees
Rick Dees
Rigdon Osmond "Rick" Dees III is an American comedic performer, entertainer, and radio personality, best known for his internationally syndicated radio show The Rick Dees Weekly Top 40 Countdown and for the novelty song "Disco Duck." He is a People's Choice Award recipient, a Grammy-nominated...
and His Cast of Idiots. It became a number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100
Billboard Hot 100
The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...
for one week in October 1976 (and ranked #99 out of the 100 most popular songs of the year according to Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
magazine). It also made the top 20 on the Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart, peaking at number 15. "Disco Duck" was initially released in the south by Estelle Axton
Estelle Axton
Estelle Axton was the co-founder, with her brother Jim Stewart, of Stax Records.Born in Middleton, Tennessee, Estelle Stewart grew up on a farm...
's Fretone label but was later released by RSO Records
RSO Records
RSO Records was a record label, formed by rock and roll and musical theatre impresario Robert Stigwood in 1973. The "RSO" stands for the Robert Stigwood Organisation. The company's main headquarters were at 67 Brook Street, in London's Mayfair...
for national and international distribution.
Origin and storyline
Written by Dees, "Disco Duck" was inspired by a 1960s novelty dance song called "The Duck", recorded by Jackie Lee in 1965. According to Dees, it took one day to write the song, but three months to convince anyone to perform it.Combining orchestral disco styles with a Donald Duck
Donald Duck
Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created in 1934 at Walt Disney Productions and licensed by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor suit with a cap and a black or red bow tie. Donald is most...
-esque voice as the main plot point, the story within "Disco Duck" centers around a man at a dance party who is overcome by the urge to get up and "get down" in a duck-like manner. When the music stops, he sits down, but when he decides to get up and dance again, he finds that everyone in the room is now doing his dance.
The voice of the duck
A misconception about "Disco Duck" is that the voice of the duck itself was provided by Clarence NashClarence Nash
Clarence Charles "Ducky" Nash was an American voice actor, best known for providing the voice of Donald Duck for the Walt Disney Studios...
, the original voice of Donald Duck
Donald Duck
Donald Fauntleroy Duck is a cartoon character created in 1934 at Walt Disney Productions and licensed by The Walt Disney Company. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill, legs, and feet. He typically wears a sailor suit with a cap and a black or red bow tie. Donald is most...
in many Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
cartoons, but on several occasions the Disney Company maintained that Nash never contributed to the song. The voice of the duck was performed by Ken Pruitt, an acquaintance of Dees, as stated on the label of the RSO release.
Response and repercussion
"Disco Duck" became a nationwide hit in the United States by September 1976. On the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, it peaked at number one on October 16, 1976, for one week, held the number-two spot for the following four weeks and remained in the Top 10 for a total of ten weeks.For all its success, "Disco Duck" was shunned by radio stations in Dees hometown of Memphis, including WMPS-AM, the station Dees worked for at the time. Station management forbade Dees from playing the song on his own show and rival stations in the city refused to play it for fear of promoting the competition. When Dees talked about (but did not play) the song on his show one morning, his boss fired him citing conflict of interest
Conflict of interest
A conflict of interest occurs when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other....
. After a brief mandatory hiatus, Dees was hired by station WHBQ-AM, WMPS's primary competition in Memphis.
By the time "Disco Duck" become a hit, Dees and his "Idiots" started making the rounds of the popular TV music shows to promote the song. On American Bandstand
American Bandstand
American Bandstand is an American music-performance show that aired in various versions from 1952 to 1989 and was hosted from 1956 until its final season by Dick Clark, who also served as producer...
(and similar shows), Dees lip-synched to the recording, alone on stage with an unseen person animating a duck hand puppet (Ironically, this appearance was never seen in the Memphis area due to then-ABC affiliate WHBQ-TV
WHBQ-TV
WHBQ-TV, channel 13, is an owned-and-operated television station of the News Corporation-owned Fox Broadcasting Company, located in Memphis, Tennessee. Its studios and transmitter are located in Memphis.-Under RKO General:...
pre-empting Bandstand for wrestling at the time and for the aforementioned Memphis radio avoidance reasons). But when he appeared on The Midnight Special
The Midnight Special (TV series)
The Midnight Special is an American musical variety series that aired on NBC during the 1970s and early 1980s, created and produced by Burt Sugarman. It premiered as a special on August 19, 1972, then began its run as a regular series on February 2, 1973; its last episode was on May 1, 1981...
he gathered together a band, backup singers and possibly Pruitt, the voice of the duck on the record, and performed the song live.
"Disco Duck" even made an appearance in the film Saturday Night Fever
Saturday Night Fever
Saturday Night Fever is a 1977 drama film directed by John Badham and starring: John Travolta as Tony Manero, an immature young man whose weekends are spent visiting a local Brooklyn discothèque; Karen Lynn Gorney as his dance partner and eventual friend; and Donna Pescow as Tony's former dance...
, in a dance club scene in which a group of senior citizens were learning to dance disco-style. It was also featured in a deleted scene added back to the PG version. As it stands, Dees could have made an even more substantial amount of money from the song. According to Dees, his manager at the time made the unwise decision to deny use of the song on the film's soundtrack because of fears that it would compete with sales of Dees's own album. The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack has now currently sold 40 million copies worldwide, and is the second best-selling soundtrack of all time.
Although "Disco Duck" hit #1 on the charts, Matthew Wilkening of AOL Radio
AOL Radio
AOL Radio powered by Slacker, , is an online radio service available only in the United States.- Roots :...
ranked the song at #54 on his list of the 100 Worst Songs Ever, stating that "six million people bought this piece of duck droppings in 1976. Not one of them would admit to doing so today."
Inspirations and later uses
The 1979 Disney-produced album Mickey Mouse DiscoMickey Mouse Disco
Mickey Mouse Disco is an album released by Disneyland Records in 1979. A late entry in the genre of disco, Mickey Mouse Disco included disco-fied versions of Disney classics and Disney-fied versions of disco classics...
featured a track called "Macho Duck", (inspired mostly by the Village People
Village People
Village People is a concept disco group that formed in the United States in 1977, well known for their on-stage costumes depicting American cultural stereotypes, as well as their catchy tunes and suggestive lyrics....
hit, Macho Man
Macho Man (song)
"Macho Man" is the seond single recorded by the American disco group Village People. The song "bubbled under" the charts during summer 1978 before picking up substantial airplay that August...
) with the voice of Nash on the track, in response.
In 1979, Kermit the Frog
Kermit the Frog
Kermit the Frog is puppeteer Jim Henson's most famous Muppet creation, first introduced in 1955. He is the protagonist of many Muppet projects, most notably as the host of The Muppet Show, and has appeared in various sketches on Sesame Street, in commercials and in public service announcements over...
sang a song called "Disco Frog" on Sesame Street
Sesame Street
Sesame Street has undergone significant changes in its history. According to writer Michael Davis, by the mid-1970s the show had become "an American institution". The cast and crew expanded during this time, including the hiring of women in the crew and additional minorities in the cast. The...
, which he also later sang on The Muppet Show
The Muppet Show
The Muppet Show is a British television programme produced by American puppeteer Jim Henson and featuring Muppets. After two pilot episodes were produced in 1974 and 1975, the show premiered on 5 September 1976 and five series were produced until 15 March 1981, lasting 120 episodes...
, and was most likely inspired by "Disco Duck".
"Disco Duck" was covered in 1977 by D.J. Scott and Willem, a German Parody Version called "Tarzan Ist Wieder Da".
Also in 1977, Peter Pan Records
Peter Pan Records
Peter Pan Records is a record label specializing in children's music. It was created in the late 1940s. The label was owned by the Synthetic Plastics Company of Newark, New Jersey until the 1970s....
put out a series of children's records featuring Irwin the Disco Duck
Irwin the Disco Duck
Irwin the Disco Duck, a.k.a. Irwin the Dynamic Duck, is a fictional character who was featured on a series of children's records from Peter Pan Records...
.
In 1989, Grandmaster Chicken & D.J. Duck included a sample of the song in the 12" version of Check Out The Chicken.
"Disco Duck" was referenced in an episode of Animaniacs
Animaniacs
Steven Spielberg Presents Animaniacs, usually referred to as simply Animaniacs, is an American animated series, distributed by Warner Bros. Television and produced by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. The cartoon was the second animated series produced by the collaboration of Steven...
when the Warner siblings attend a karaoke club and Dot Warner flips through the book, saying "See if they have Disco Duck."
In the Beverly Hills, 90210
Beverly Hills, 90210
Beverly Hills, 90210 is an American drama series that originally aired from October 4, 1990 to May 17, 2000 on Fox and was produced by Spelling Television in the United States, and subsequently on various networks around the world. It is the first series in the Beverly Hills, 90210 franchise...
episode, "Duke's Bad Boy", Steve Sanders insults David Silver's producer by asking if his last hit was "Disco Duck".
DJ Shadow
DJ Shadow
Joshua Paul Davis better known as DJ Shadow is an American music producer, DJ and songwriter. He is considered a prominent figure in the development of instrumental hip hop and first gained notice with the release of his highly acclaimed debut album Endtroducing....., which was constructed...
sampled
Sampling (music)
In music, sampling is the act of taking a portion, or sample, of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song or piece. Sampling was originally developed by experimental musicians working with musique concrète and electroacoustic music, who physically...
"Disco Duck's" trademark riff on the track "Right Thing/GDMFSOB", on his 2002 album The Private Press
The Private Press
The Private Press is the second full-length studio album by DJ Shadow, released on June 2, 2002 on MCA. Although not as critically well-received as his 1996 debut breakthrough Endtroducing..., The Private Press still received universal acclaim....
.