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"Disco Duck" is a satirical disco novelty song performed by Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots. At the time, Dees was a Memphis disc jockey. It became a number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 for one week in October 1976 (and ranked #97 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 it was later released by RSO Records for national and international distribution. The song earned a 1977 People's Choice Award for Favorite New Song.[1]

"Disco Duck"
Single by Rick Dees & His Cast of Idiots
from the album The Original Disco Duck
A-side	"Disco Duck (part one)"
B-side	"Disco Duck (part two)"
Released	September 4, 1976
Recorded	1976 in Memphis, Tennessee
Genre	Disco, novelty
Length	3:17
Label	Fretone (initial release) RSO (wide distribution)
Songwriter(s)	Rick Dees
Producer(s)	Bobby Manuel
Rick Dees & His Cast of Idiots singles chronology
"Disco Duck" (1976) "Dis-Gorilla" (1976)

Origin and storyline

Written by Dees, "Disco Duck" was inspired by a 1960s novelty dance song called "The Duck", recorded by Jackie Lee (Earl Lee Nelson) in 1965.[2][3] According to Dees, it took one day to write the song, but three months to convince anyone to perform it.[4]

Combining orchestral disco styles with a Donald Duck-esque voice as the main plot point, the story within "Disco Duck" centers on 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.

Duck voice

This section does not cite any sources. (March 2015)

A misconception about "Disco Duck" is that the voice of the duck was provided by Clarence Nash, 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 record. The voice of the duck was performed by Ken Pruitt, an acquaintance of Dees, as stated on the label of the RSO release. For the live tour, the duck vocals were handled by Michael Chesney, another acquaintance of Dees.

In fact, the voice emulates that of Yakky Doodle, a Hanna-Barbera animated duck who appeared on TV in 1960 and 1961 and was still seen regularly on afternoon TV cartoon shows in the late 1970s. He even parodies Yakky's signature phrase, "Are you my mama?", saying "I've got to have me a mama!"[5][6]

Response and impact

"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 10 weeks.[7]

For all its success, "Disco Duck" got very little airplay in Memphis, including at WMPS, the station Dees worked for at the time; Dees was forbidden by station management to play the record on his own show, and rival stations refused to play it for fear of promoting the competition. When Dees merely mentioned the song on his show one morning, WMPS management fired him citing conflict of interest. After a brief mandatory hiatus, Dees was hired on at WMPS' primary competition, WHBQ, who gave him permission to play his song.[4]

By the time "Disco Duck" had become a hit, Dees and his "Idiots" started making the rounds of the popular TV music shows to promote the record. On American Bandstand (and similar shows), Dees lip-synched to the recording, alone on stage with puppeteer Rickey Provow animating a duck puppet that he had made. This appearance was never seen in the Memphis area due to then-ABC affiliate WHBQ-TV pre-empting Bandstand for wrestling^{[clarification needed]} at the time and for the aforementioned Memphis radio avoidance reasons. But when Dees appeared on The Midnight Special and went on a live tour along the East Coast, he hired a band, backing singers and a commercial artist, Michael Chesney, to perform the duck vocals, and they did everything live.

"Disco Duck" 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 to the PG-rated 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 extremely unwise decision to deny use of the song on the film's soundtrack album because of fears that it would compete with sales of Dees's own record.[8] The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack has now currently sold 40 million copies worldwide, and is the second best-selling soundtrack of all time.

Irwin the Disco Duck, also called Irwin the Dynamic Duck, a fictional character who was featured on a series of children's records from Peter Pan Records, was inspired by this record.[9]

Chart performance

Certifications

Region	Certification	Certified units/sales
Canada (Music Canada)[28]	Platinum	150,000^
United States (RIAA)[29]	Platinum	2,000,000^
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone.

References

External links

• Rick Dees - Disco Duck on YouTube

На других языках

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- [en] Disco Duck

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[es] Disco Duck

"Disco Duck" es una canción novedad de sátira de música disco, interpretada por el DJ Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots, originario de Memphis, Tennessee. Se convirtió en número 1 del Billboard Hot 100 durante una semana, en octubre de 1976 —y ocupó el puesto 99 entre las 100 canciones más populares de los años 70 según la revista Billboard—. Alcanzó el Top 20 en las Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs del Billboard, llegando al puesto nº 15. Disco Duck inicialmente fue presentada por el sello Freetone de Estelle Axton y luego por RSO Records a nivel nacional e internacional.

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