Donna Summer

Donna Adrian Gaines (December 31, 1948 – May 17, 2012), known professionally as Donna Summer, was an American singer and songwriter. She gained prominence during the disco era of the 1970s and became known as the "Queen of Disco", while her music gained a global following.

Born and raised in Boston, Summer dropped out of high school before graduating and began her career as the lead singer of a blues rock band named Crow and moved to New York City. In 1968, she joined the German adaptation of the musical Hair in Munich, where she spent several years living, acting, and singing. There, she met music producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, and released her first album, the European market-only Lady of the Night in 1974. Following the recording and European release of the groundbreaking disco anthem, "Love to Love You Baby", she signed with Casablanca Records in 1975, where it was released in North America. In the US, the single became her first top five hit on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 2 in 1976. Summer's first three Casablanca albums — Love to Love You Baby, A Love Trilogy and Four Seasons of Love — all went gold in the US and led to her informal title "First Lady of Love" in the popular music media. Her fourth Casablanca release, I Remember Yesterday (1977), launched the top ten US and number one UK hit "I Feel Love", which has since been hailed as one of the most important records in pop music history. After recording much of her first six albums in Munich with Moroder and Belotte, Summer and the producers relocated to the United States, where Summer would continue to record successful singles such as "Last Dance", MacArthur Park", "Heaven Knows", "Hot Stuff", "Bad Girls", "Dim All the Lights", "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)" with Barbra Streisand, and "On the Radio".

Starting in 1978, Summer first topped the Billboard 200 with the live album, Live and More, thus beginning a streak of three consecutive number one albums, including Bad Girls (1979) and the compilation album, On the Radio: Greatest Hits Volumes I & II (1980). In achieving this, Summer became the first and only artist to have three number one double albums. All three albums were certified platinum or higher in the United States, with Bad Girls selling over two million copies. Summer was the first female artist to record three number one singles in one calendar year, doing so in 1979. Summer's success was interrupted by the late 1970s social backlash against disco music, and in 1980, she left Casablanca Records for Geffen Records. As a response, her next album, The Wanderer, found Summer recording mostly rock and new wave music, as well as inspirational music inspired by her newfound Christian faith. However, her Geffen Records recordings were not as successful as predicted. Summer returned to the top of the pop charts in 1983 with the single, "She Works Hard for the Money", off the album of the same name, which was released off of Mercury Records after it was found she owed Casablanca one more album. Despite this success, Summer's recordings began floundering not too long afterwards. Rumors of alleged homophobic comments made during and after a concert in 1983 led to a falling-out with Summer's gay fanbase. In 1989, Summer worked with the team of Stock Aitken Waterman and scored her first top ten US hit in six years with "This Time I Know It's for Real", which would be her fourteenth and final top ten hit of her career. Summer would make the Hot 100 one last time in 1999 with her rendition of "I Will Go with You (Con te partirò)".

Summer continued to record music up until her death in 2012 from lung cancer at her home in Naples, Florida. In her obituary in The Times of London, she was described as the "undisputed queen of the Seventies disco boom" who reached the status of "one of the world's leading female singers." Moroder described Summer's work on the song "I Feel Love" as "really the start of electronic dance" music. Summer has been inducted into several musical institutions during her lifetime and posthumously, including the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Dance Music Hall of Fame and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame. In 2013, a year after her death, Summer was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In December 2016, Billboard ranked her sixth on its list of the "Greatest of All Time Top Dance Club Artists".

Donna Adrian Gaines was born in Boston on December 31, 1948, to Andrew and Mary Gaines. She was the third of seven children. She was raised in the Boston neighborhood of Mission Hill. Her father was a butcher, and her mother was a schoolteacher. Some sources claim that her birth name was "LaDonna", but her birth certificate lists her name as "Donna". Her daughter, Brooklyn Sudano, says that "LaDonna" was a childhood nickname.

Summer's performance debut occurred at church when she was ten years old, replacing a vocalist who failed to appear. She attended Boston's Jeremiah E. Burke High School where she performed in school musicals and was considered popular. In 1967, Summer joined the blues rock band Crow. Weeks before she was scheduled to graduate from high school, Summer traveled with the band to New York to secure a record deal. After a record label passed on signing the group since it was only interested in Summer, the group agreed to dissolve.

Summer stayed in New York and auditioned for a role in the counterculture musical, Hair. She landed the part of Sheila and agreed to take the role in the Munich production of the show, moving there in August 1968 after getting her parents' reluctant approval. This decision was arguably what caused Summer's career, along with many of her castmates', to rocket. The cast also included Helga Charlotte Tolle, Reiner Schöne, Ron Williams, Gudrun "Su" Kramer, Elke Koska, Jürgen Markus, Jutta Weinhold and Peter Kent, all of whom starred alongside Summer in the musical Hair. She eventually became fluent in German, singing various songs in that language, and participated in the musicals Ich bin ich (the German version of The Me Nobody Knows), Godspell, and Show Boat. Within three years, she moved to Vienna, Austria, and joined the Vienna Volksoper.

In 1968, Polydor released Summer's first single (as Donna Gaines), a German version of the title "Aquarius" from the musical Haare (Hair). In 1969, her second single "If You Walkin' Alone" on Philips Records, was released; this was followed in 1971 by a third single, a remake of the Jaynetts' 1963 hit, "Sally Go 'Round the Roses", from a one-off European deal with Decca Records. She provided backing vocals for producer-keyboardist Veit Marvos on his Ariola Records release Nice to See You, credited as "Gayn Pierre". Several subsequent singles included Donna performing with the group, and the name "Gayn Pierre" was used while performing in Godspell with first husband Helmuth Sommer during 1972.