Most people know about her hits. Great songs like “Last Dance”, “Hot Stuff”, “On The Radio” and “She Works Hard For The Money.”
What most people don’t know is that Donna started off as Donna Gaines in a rock band called The Crow. When the band broke up, she left school to be in the German production of the the musical Hair. Once in Germany, there was no stopping Donna. She was active in musical theater, playing in such shows as Showboat, Porgy And Bess, and The Me Nobody Knows, and in 1971 she cut her first solo record, “Sally Go ‘Round The Roses”
By 1974, and now going by the name Donna Summer, she was doing a great deal of session work which brought her into contact with producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. Together they recorded “The Hostage”, a song which became Donna’s first hit in Europe.
In 1975, Donna recorded “Love To Love You Baby”, the song that finally brought her success in America.
The rest is history. Since then she has racked up fourteen top ten hits, four number one singles, three platinum albums, five Grammy awards and twelve other Grammy nominations. She is the first female artist to have three number one solo singles in one year (“MacArthur Park”, “Hot Stuff” and “Bad Girls”) and she is the only artist to have three number one double albums in a row (Live And More, Bad Girls, and On The Radio).
Over the years Donna has proven herself to be a consummate artist and songwriter – she has written or co-written many of her hits. She participated in a benefit performance for GMHC at Carnegie Hall that raised over $400,000 for that organization. She also inked a multi-album deal with Epic Records and her first release for her new label was a live CD recorded at New York’s Hammerstein Ballroom. This concert was videotaped and became the highest rated concert special for a solo artist that VH-1 ever broadcast.
In 2007, she signed a new deal with Burgundy Records (an imprint of Sony/BMG) and in 2008 she released her first album of all newly written and recorded material in 17 years. The album is called Crayons and with it came the number one dance single, I’m A Fire – making Donna the only artist to ever have a number one dance single in every decade since the 70s.
Over three decades after her first success, Donna was poised to start a whole new chapter in her career – showing the world that the Queen was indeed back. But unfortunately, that was not meant to be. She passed away on May 17, 2012 from cancer. In 2013 was posthumously inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame – a long overdue official recognition of her incredible musical legacy.
Lets go back in time with the music video “She Works Hard For the Money”. Enjoy!