- THE DAZZ BAND Let It All Blow (Motown)
- Week Ending 1st December 1984
- 1 Week At #1
The first 25 singles to top my personal charts had unwittingly followed a pattern; no records with exclusively female lead vocals, and no dance tracks. So, with the former category taken care of with my 26th #1, an out-and-out club groove in the form of Let It All Blow became my 27th.
It wouldn’t be the last of its kind.
Record Mirror magazine had entered my orbit during the summer of 1984 (Frankie or Depeche Mode must have been on the cover and caught my attention); the inclusion of all the “proper” Gallup UK charts (as opposed to No.1 Magazine’s pretty and colourful MRIB lists) was too much to resist, especially once I discovered the Billboard Hot 100 charts were in there as well. Amongst all these rundowns was a Club Chart, compiled from the feedback provided by various DJs around the country (mostly in or around London, no doubt).
Late 1983 and early 1984 was something of a vintage era for dance/club/soul/Hi-NRG/electro/rap music; think of Let The Music Play, White Lines (Don’t Do It), Ain’t Nobody, She’s Strange, Just Be Good To Me, Change Of Heart, Breakin’ (There’s No Stoppin’ Us). These were followed by tracks of the calibre of I Feel For You, The Medicine Song, the 1984 remix of Lost In Music, and You Used To Hold Me So Tight. Many of the funky male combos who’d made a commercial breakthrough in the early 80s – The Gap Band, Kool & The Gang, Zapp – were either moving in a more soulful direction or aiming straight for the AOR crossover heartland with rock-oriented material.
The Dazz Band weren’t total novices – their 1982 single Let It Whip had been a minor success – but Let It All Blow was their first UK hit. It also dominated the RM club chart for 5 weeks, with its quirky yet naggingly simple charm. Based around a handful of catchy gimmicks; an explosive intro (that repeated in the middle-eight), a basic piano chord motif through the verses, some handclaps, and the “heave-ho, let it all blow” hookline sung in a daft voice, the track was fun, and very funky.
Whether it actually deserved to be a #1 when none of those classics mentioned earlier had managed the feat, is something I will be asking myself more than once as we move into 1985…
Amazingly few discotheques provide jukeboxes 