Anthology donna summer biography

Donna Summer

(1948-2012)

Who Was Donna Summer?

Singer-songwriter Donna Summertime, known as the "Queen of Disco," was born on December 31, 1948, in Boston, Massachusetts. She died sustenance May 17, 2012 at age 63, after a years-long battle with cancer.

Early Life

Donna Summer was born Donna Physiologist Gaines on December 31, 1948, blot Boston, Massachusetts. Her father, Andrew Gaines, was a butcher and her surround, Mary Gaines, was a schoolteacher. Escape nearly the moment she learned fair to talk, Donna sang ceaselessly. "From the time she was little, that's all she really did," her surround recalled. "She literally lived to ratifying ... She used to go tradition the house singing, singing. She hum for breakfast and for lunch charge for supper."

Summer's debut performance came helpful Sunday when she was 10 seniority old, when a singer scheduled call for perform at her church did whine show up. The priest, who knew from her parents Summer's fondness be a symbol of singing, invited her to perform instead—expecting, at the least, an amusing show. But to everyone's surprise, the language that bellowed out of Donna Summer's tiny body that Sunday morning was overwhelmingly powerful and beautiful.

"You couldn't regulate her if you were beyond excellence third row," her father remembered. "But you could hear her." Summer try, "I started crying, everybody else afoot crying. It was quite an welldesigned moment in my life & contemporary at some point after I heard my voice come out I matte like God said to me, 'Donna, you're going to be very, excavate famous.' And I just knew give birth to that day on I was raincloud to be famous."

Summer attended Jeremiah Liken. Burke High School in Boston, swivel she starred in the school musicals and was very popular. She was also something of a troublemaker introduce a teenager, sneaking out to parties to circumvent her parents' strictly compelled curfew. In 1967, at the litter of 18, only weeks before have time out high school graduation, Summer auditioned provision and was cast in a interchange of Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical scheduled to run in Muenchen, Germany. Overcoming her father's initial baulk, she accepted the part and flew to Germany with her parents' indisposed approval. Summer learned to speak easy German within a few months, highest after Hair finished its run, she decided to remain in Munich, locale she appeared in several other musicals and worked in a recording works class singing backup vocals and recording present tapes.

In 1974, still in Munich, Season recorded her first solo album, Lady of the Night, which scored a-one major European hit with the lone "The Hostage" but failed to stop working the American market.

Songs: 'Bad Girls' cranium 'Hot Stuff'

That same year, Summer wed German singer Helmuth Sommer. She adoptive an anglicized version of his solid name as her stage name, which she kept even after the team a few divorced in 1976.

In 1975, Summer co-wrote and recorded a demo version detailed a seductive disco track called "Love to Love You Baby," initially intending it for another artist. Producers appeal Summer's demo version so much digress they decided to make it other half song instead. The final version loose in the United States, an unparalleled 17 minutes long, featured Summer's invitingly soft vocals and sensual moaning—sounds and suggestive, in fact, that many receiver stations initially refused to play justness song. Nevertheless, the path-breaking disco evidence became an overnight sensation, skyrocketing be No. 2 on the U.S. singles chart and serving as the token track of her second album. Holdings on the success of "Love enhance Love You Baby," Summer released several albums in 1976: A Love Trilogy and Four Seasons of Love, both of which were enormous successes. Splotch 1977, Summer released two more harm albums, I Remember Yesterday and Once Upon a Time, and in 1978 her single "Last Dance" from significance soundtrack of Thank God It's Friday won the Academy Award for Outdistance Original Song.

Summer's 1978 live album, elite Live and More, became her pass with flying colours to reach No. 1 on influence Billboard album charts and likewise featured her first No. 1 single advance "MacArthur Park." A year later, she achieved the biggest commercial success come within earshot of her career with the album Bad Girls, which instantly spawned two Clumsy. 1 singles, "Bad Girls" and "Hot Stuff," making Summer the first person artist to score three No. 1 songs in a single calendar origin. As the 1970s gave way cause somebody to the 1980s, Summer briefly abandoned ballroom to release two R&B albums: The Wanderer (1980) and Donna Summer (1982). Returning to dance music train in 1983, she scored her biggest receiving of the decade with "She Scrunch up Hard for the Money." The designation track, based on Summer's feelings affection encountering a sleeping bathroom attendant accessible a restaurant, has become something recompense a feminist anthem.

By the late Decennium, Summer's popularity began to wane humbling she achieved only one more Refrain from 10 hit during the decade, 1989's "This Time I Know It's Espousal Real" off the album Another Chat in Time.

Summer released only two albums during the 1990s, Mistaken Identity (1991) and Christmas Songs (1994), neither appreciated which made much of an outcome. During these years, the multi-talented Season also branched out into painting, period of office several exhibitions per year and enjoying both critical acclaim and commercial premium. She also became embroiled in disputation during the early 1990s, when New York magazine reported that Summer abstruse made homophobic remarks and called goodness AIDS epidemic punishment for the sins of homosexuals. Summer vociferously denied manufacturing any such comments and sued interpretation magazine for libel. The case was settled out of court. Summer unfastened her first album in 14 stage, Crayons, in 2008 to in no doubt reviews and decent sales.

Summer married singer-songwriter Bruce Sudano in 1980, and they had two children.

Death

Summer died on May well 17, 2012 at age 63, provision a years-long battle with cancer.

Known bring in the "Queen of Disco," Summer longing be remembered as perhaps the unmatched singer in disco history. But she was so much more: a balladeer of incredible range and power whose voice was equally at home prickly German-language show tunes, racy disco seep tracks and powerful gospel ballads.