KC and the Sunshine Band

KC and the Sunshine Band are an American disco and funk band that was founded in 1973 in Miami, Florida. Their best-known songs include the hits "Get Down Tonight", "That's the Way (I Like It)", "⁠(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty", "I'm Your Boogie Man", "Keep It Comin' Love", "Boogie Shoes", "Please Don't Go", and "Give It Up". The band took their name from lead vocalist Harry Wayne Casey's last name ('KC') and the 'Sunshine Band' from KC's home state of Florida, the Sunshine State. The group had five number-one singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart: four in the 1970s and the first number one song of the 1980s.The band was formed in 1973 by Harry Wayne Casey (KC), who was a record store employee and part-timer at TK Records in Hialeah, Florida. The band was originally called KC & The Sunshine Junkanoo Band because KC used studio musicians from TK and a local Junkanoo band called the Miami Junkanoo Band. During this time, bassist Richard Finch had been engineering records for TK, which is how the Casey-Finch musical collaboration began. They were soon joined by guitarist Jerome Smith and drummer Robert Johnson, both TK studio musicians.The first few songs, "Blow Your Whistle" (September 1973) and "Sound Your Funky Horn" (February 1974), were released as singles, and did well enough on the U.S. R&B chart and overseas that TK wanted a follow-up single and album. In the meantime, while working on demos for KC & the Sunshine Band, the song "Rock Your Baby" (George McCrae) was created. Written by Casey, it featured Smith on guitar and became a number one hit in 51 countries in mid-1974. The band's "Queen of Clubs", which featured uncredited vocals by McCrae, was a hit in the UK, peaking at number 7, and they went on a tour there in 1975.KC and other band members were frequent guests on WHYI-FM, branded as Y-100, one of southeast Florida's more powerful FM pop stations, that covered Dade and Broward Counties and beyond. This gave the band significant hometown exposure, during the rise of the disco genre in one of its epicenters.The release of the self-titled second album KC and the Sunshine Band in 1975 spawned the group's first major U.S. hit with "Get Down Tonight". It topped the R&B chart in April and hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in August. The group received two nominations at the 18th Annual Grammy Awards held in February 1976. "That's the Way (I Like It)" also became a number one hit in November 1975. The 1976 album Part 3 yielded two number one singles: "I'm Your Boogie Man" and "(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty". For the latter, the group received a nomination at the 19th Annual Grammy Awards. Another hit, "Keep It Comin' Love" (1977), peaked at number two in the US.

Biography summary from English Wikipedia, photograph via Wikimedia Commons.