KC and the Sunshine Band

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Image:KC and the Sunshine Band 002.jpg KC and the Sunshine Band is an American musical group. Founded in 1973, their style has included funk, R&B and disco. Their most well known songs include the disco hits "That's the Way (I Like It)", "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty", and "Get Down Tonight".

1 The 1970's
2 The 1980's
3 The 1990's and beyond
4 Discography
5 Selected Compilations
6 External links

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The 1970's

The group was formed by Harry Wayne Casey ("KC"), a record store employee and part-timer at TK Records in Miami. Following demo work, Casey was encouraged to create his own group. The initial members were just Casey and Richard Finch (his main partner in songwriting), but Jerome Smith, Fermin Goytisolo, and Robert Johnson were soon added to the Sunshine Band line-up. Casey's close friend Chris Minten helped choose the candidates to be in the band.

The first few songs, "Blow Your Whistle" (September 1973) and "Sound Your Funky Horn" (February 1974), released on the debut album Do It Good, were R&B hits but had limited mainstream impact. However, George McCrae took Casey's "Rock Your Baby" and made it a hit in mid-1974, selling over 5 million copies. The band's "Queen of Clubs" was a hit in Europe, and they went on tour to Europe in 1975 off that success.

Image:DebutKC.jpg

With the release of the eponymous triple platinum second album KC and the Sunshine Band in 1975 came the group's first major US hit with "Get Down Tonight". It topped the R&B chart in April and the Billboard chart in August. "That's the Way (I Like It)" also became a number one hit in November 1975 and the group did well at the 1976 Grammy Awards. The 1976 album Part 3 yielded three top 5 singles: I'm Your Boogie Man, (Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty and Keep It Comin' Love. Their success lasted until the fifth album and 1979–80; their last chart topping hit was "Please Don't Go" in December 1979. With the declining popularity of disco, the group explored other styles and changed labels, joining Epic Records in 1980 after TK Records went bankrupt.

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The 1980's

In 1981, two years after the release of the previous album, the group released two albums with new material, geared toward pop; The Painter and Space Cadet. These albums generated little success, but in 1982, a hit track called Give It Up on the album All in a Night's Work brought a return to success in the UK, but failed to chart in the United States. However, the band released another album, KC Ten, in 1983, and included the track once again. Epic Records, however, refused to issue the song as a single due to its prior failure in the US and a frustrated Casey form "Mecca Records", releasing the single himself in a final attempt to garner the song some success in the US. It worked, but the album still failed to surpass expectations. This led to the group falling into stasis around 1985 with the retirement of Casey.

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The 1990's and beyond

A revival in the interest of disco music in 1991 brought Casey out of retirement. He reformed the group and began touring once again. Since then, the band has released a large number of compilation albums, featured along with some newly recorded material. The album Oh Yeah! was released in 1993 after a ten year gap between new albums, excluding compilations.

In 2001, the band made a brief comeback into the music scene after an eight-year lull with the release of a new album titled I'll Be There For You. The album was praised by critics, but it failed to generate any impact on the charts or in sales. More recently, the group had an appearance in the 2003 remake of the movie The In-Laws.

Several KC songs have been included in the Dance Dance Revolution series of dance video games. That's the Way (I Like It) was included in Dance Dance Revolution 1stMIX, Shake Your Booty was in Dance Dance Revolution 4thMIX and Get Down Tonight was in the American home version of DDRMAX2.

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