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Disco music’s time in the sun may have passed, but the legacy of “The Hustle,” a mega hit in the genre, lives on
Alice George –
On April 18, 1975, Van McCoy and the Soul City Symphony’s “The Hustle” was released and skyrocketed to become a massive dance hit of the decade, selling ten million records. The song and the dance it celebrated set the beat of the disco era.
The record is known for its irresistible rhythm and its primary lyrical command: “Do the hustle,” which is said 11 times. The only other lyrics—said five times—are “Do it.” Before spending an hour to compose the song, McCoy had joined an acquaintance to visit a New York nightclub and see disco fans dance the hustle, which had originated among Latino communities in the city. McCoy later recalled that “It was something completely different from the you-do-your-thing-and-I-do-mine dances. It was people dancing together again.” “The Hustle” went on to win a Grammy for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.
In American popular memory, disco resides in images of a young John Travolta strutting down the street and commanding a dance floor, but the era did not begin in 1977 when Saturday Night Fever became a hit film along with its Bee Gees soundtrack, now the second-highest-selling film soundtrack of all time after The Bodyguard. Disco first emerged in underground Black, Latino and gay clubs where people created their own version of dance music. At the close of the 1960s, it was still illegal for same-sex couples to dance in public in New York City, but that changed in 1971, opening the door for gay clubgoers to celebrate their new freedom at the discotheque.
What these underground clubs planted in the late 1960s and early 1970s were the roots of disco, which would leap into mainstream pop culture in the mid-’70s at a time of “Rust Belt” economic collapse and spiraling inflation, a world in which a U.S. president had resigned in disgrace and the Vietnam War waned.
In 1975, disco began its move into the spotlight as records such as McCoy’s gained attention from rock fans. “With disco music, you see several threads come together in a really interesting way,” says curator Krystal Klingenberg of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. “We’ve got this partner dance element, we’ve got the birth of electronic music and we’ve got Philly soul and just soul antecedents in general … and you have them come together at this moment of release after a time of great social tensions” that rocked the 1960s. “And so where is the place to go? The dance floor, and it becomes this absolutely massive, popular success.”
Disco introduced significant use of synthesizers, electronic pianos and orchestral instruments, such as brassy horns and silky strings, and often featured repetitive lyrics. The rhythm became central to moving people from their seats onto the dance floor, with bass drummers emphasizing a “four-on-the-floor” pulse, hitting all four quarter beats in every measure. At the same time, Philadelphia soul had already introduced a more luxe feel to dance music by adding lush strings to frame the vocalist.
The dance is just as much a part of the experience as the music. “We can look at the dance moves that Travolta does in Saturday Night Fever, and that whole group of choreography gets called ‘the hustle,’ but over time, it coalesces into this more specific partner dance,” says Klingenberg, who notes that some people still do the hustle today as a part of ballroom dancing. “The hustle meant a thing at the time, and even now, remains in our memory as this one move, despite it being really a catchall for so much more.”
In some clubs, the hustle was introduced as a line dance rather than as a dance for couples. But partner dancing became significant: A few months after the song was released, a New York Times article reported that “after years of dancing at each other, couples suddenly are dancing with each other. And parents, over-30s and great-aunts who have not danced in years are back on the parquet. … Dance observers see the hustle as an expression of a yearning for style and sophistication in the 1970s that has replaced rebellious attitudes of the previous decade.”
The writer, Dena Kleiman, compared McCoy’s “Hustle” single to Chubby Checker’s iconic “Twist” of the early 1960s. Sources told the Times, “The hustle is sophistication,” and, “When you do it, it’s not only that you feel good. It looks good.” The Times even included a step-by-step guide about how to do the dance. The first of eight steps was: “Twist your left foot out to the side and rest it on an angle with the heel on the ground and the toes in the air. Tilt the head and torso to the left.” Klingenberg cites the lindy hop, the mambo and the cha-cha as antecedents of disco partner dancing.
As disco tunes increasingly invaded Billboard’s Hot 100 list, rock performers such as Cher, Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones joined the sound. Later, as the genre moved into the mainstream, there were also disco roller-skating events and boat parties. In addition, some disco hits were recorded on 12-inch, 45-rpm extended-play singles so that DJs had the power to stretch the dance experience. Historian Adam Green said in PBS’s “The War on Disco,” aired in 2023, that being in the club and responding to the beat “almost felt like you were participating in something equivalent to religion.”
And disco culture did not confine itself to the dance floor: Disco launched trends in fashion for men and women. According to journalist Ed McCormack, disco fashion varied “from Pierre Cardin suits to silver cosmic clothing, from Halston originals to backless halters, through all the shades, cycles and fetishes of chic, camp and queer.”
Disco fans danced to records from the “Queen of Disco,” Donna Summer, as well as Gloria Gaynor, ABBA, the Bee Gees and many more, while club owners appreciated the reality that paying DJs was considerably cheaper than hiring a band for a rock crowd.
But eventually, the disco era came to an end as the ’70s did. Many people believe they can identify the exact day disco suffered a fatal blow. On July 12, 1979, about 50,000 music fans heard the call of Chicago rock DJ Steve Dahl and reported to a Chicago White Sox-Detroit Tigers doubleheader at Comiskey Park for “Disco Demolition Night.” Dahl had a personal motive: He had been fired from his last job on Christmas Eve because the station’s management had decided to become all-disco. During the break between the two games, fans flooded the field, and Dahl exploded a fireworks bomb in a crate full of disco records contributed by the crowd. The riot forced the cancellation of the second game, which the White Sox forfeited.
The DJ contended that his rowdy fans were just tired of disco and disliked its glittery image, but others saw deeper psychological reasons for angst directed at disco. Some white men, they suggested, wanted to reduce the influence of gay men, Black and Latino people, and women. Additionally, they believed that rock fans, who were predominantly white men, hated disco because it was seen as belonging to these groups, according to PBS’s “The War on Disco.” Historian Jefferson Cowie told PBS that “in many ways, the ’70s are the roots of our own time. All the questions that emerged in the 1960s—about race, about gender, about sexuality—those answers are being fought over in the 1970s.”
While “The Hustle” and disco represented a relatively short pop-culture phenomenon, the sound set the stage for what would follow. Later genres such as house music, electronic dance music and new wave flowed from disco. And even now, contemporary artists like Lady Gaga and Dua Lipa have embraced the disco beat.
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Alice George, Ph.D. is an independent historian with a special interest in America during the 1960s. A veteran newspaper editor, she is recently the author of The Last American Hero: The Remarkable Life of John Glenn and has authored or co-authored seven other books, focusing on 20th-century American history or Philadelphia history.
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Fifty Years Ago, This Irresistible Disco Song and Dance Craze Swept the Nation and Changed the Music Landscape – Smithsonian Magazine
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