(The Hit Hammer is where I'm reviewing each #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100. Starting from when the chart started in 1958 and eventually working my way to the present. To see my inspiration and more information about this blog, please CLICK HERE)
Van McCoy & the Soul City Symphony - "The Hustle"
Hit Number 1: July 26, 1975
Stay at Number 1: 1 Week
Just like the genre of disco itself, "The Hustle" is said to have started in an obscure night club. Van McCoy had been in the music business for a while at this point, and he was a factor in several hits in the 1960s. However he wasn't a very well-known figure, and he didn't always seem to get credit for some of his work. Sometime in the '70s, McCoy was in New York to work on an album for himself and his Soul City Symphony, Disco Baby. His music partner, Charles Kipps, was in a nightclub called Adam's Apple, and everyone in the club was doing a unique dance they called "the hustle." There wasn't any song that matched the dance, it was just something the club patrons started doing at random. Well, Kipps was very intrigued by this dance they were doing, and when he relayed this to McCoy, so was he. McCoy was not a singer, but he was good at writing musical compositions and thought it would be cool to put some music with the hustle dance.
Sadly, McCoy was all too used to not getting a lot of credit in the music industry, and he didn't expect his Disco Baby album to get anywhere, even with the addition of "The Hustle." Remember, we're in 1975. Disco was starting to become a force, but it was still something unfamiliar to a lot of people. It was a crapshoot when artists released disco songs if they would even stick. Not to mention it had been over ten years since dance songs were popular. McCoy was a young guy when songs like "The Twist" and "The Locomotion" were popular, so maybe his inspiration to write "The Hustle" came from that, along with the fact that disco dance music was becoming popular, and thought the whole "Hustle" thing could be some cute little idea to throw onto the Disco Baby album. As I often do on here, I'm only speculating, since there isn't a ton of backstory on how "The Hustle" came to be. All we know is that it started in a nightclub.
I can only imagine the surprise McCoy got once "The Hustle" blew up. "The Hustle" is a dance that I can't really describe, but in the video above you can see all kinds of people doing it. Disco was an excuse for the boomers generation to start dancing, and "The Hustle" only opened that door even more. Now as a song, it's hard for me to judge it one way or another. That's the thing about dance songs; they are impossible to review. The only reason for dance songs like "The Hustle" to exist, is, of course, to dance to them. McCoy was clearly not going for the greatest song of all time when he put the song together; like all dance songs, it commands the listener to get up and dance. In the case of "The Hustle," it tells the listener (or I should say "dancer") to "do it!" Of course, no one would "do it" if "The Hustle" wasn't any fun, and it is pretty fun. I kind of like the dinky flute melody played throughout, along with the "oohing" background vocalists and twangy, funk-infused guitar strums. As a song by itself, "The Hustle" isn't anything great, but get a bunch of people together who wanna dance and put this on, and I can't see it not filling a dance floor.
Unfortunately, McCoy didn't get to enjoy his hard-earned royalties from "The Hustle" for very long, as he died of a sudden heart attack at the age of 39 in 1979. He was just starting to work on an extended version of "The Hustle" too, which obviously he didn't get to complete on his own, but a group called "The Mix Masters" were able to complete it for him and get it out for release. (From what I see, it didn't do much, but it's still cool to see McCoy get his work out there posthumously) Really, "The Hustle" was just another one of those weird musical phenomenon that had its own special moment; totally locked to its time forever. But it would spark a whole lot more dance music from here on out.
GRADE: 6/10
10 ALERT!!!
10cc's hypnotic, dreamlike ballad "I'm Not in Love" peaked at #2 behind "The Hustle." (And the next two #1 hits, crazy enough) Oooh, I'll wait a long time for it. It's a 10.
IN POP CULTURE:
Anyone that was in grade school in the 2000s (like me) remembers the legendary movie Shark Tale. Well, there's a scene at the very end of the movie where Oscar (voiced by Will Smith, a future Hit Hammer topic) starts a club called Club Oscar. Him and all the other characters take turns dancing to different songs, and "The Hustle" is one of those songs. It only appears for a few seconds, but there was no way I was gonna pass on using this video here, so here it is:
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