Donna Summer
Donna Adrian Gaines (December 31, 1948 – May 17, 2012),[2] 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.[3][4]
Donna Summer
Donna Adrian Gaines
- Donna Gaines
- Gayn Pierre
December 31, 1948
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
May 17, 2012 (aged 63)
Naples, Florida, U.S.
- Singer
- songwriter
- actress
1968–2012
-
Helmuth Sommer(m. 1973; div. 1976)
3, including Brooklyn and Amanda Sudano
Influenced by the counterculture of the 1960s, Summer became the lead singer of a psychedelic rock band named Crow and moved to New York City. In 1968, she joined a German adaptation of the musical Hair in Munich, where she spent several years living, acting, and singing.[5] There, she met music producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, and they went on to record influential disco hits together such as "Love to Love You Baby" and "I Feel Love", marking Summer's breakthrough into international music markets. Summer returned to the United States in 1976,[6] and more hits such as "Last Dance", her version of "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" followed.
Summer amassed a total of 32 chart singles on the US Billboard Hot 100 in her lifetime, including 14 top-10 singles and four number-one singles. She claimed a top-40 hit every year between 1976 and 1984, and from her first top-10 hit in 1976, to the end of 1982, she had 12 top-10 hits (10 were top-five hits), more than any other act during that period. She returned to the Hot 100's top five in 1983, and claimed her final top-10 hit in 1989 with "This Time I Know It's for Real". She was the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach the top of the US Billboard 200 chart and charted four number-one singles in the US within a 12-month period. She also charted two number-one singles on the R&B Singles chart in the US and a number-one single in the United Kingdom.[7] Her last Hot 100 hit came in 1999 with "I Will Go with You (Con te partirò)". While her fortunes on the Hot 100 waned in subsequent decades, Summer remained a force on the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart throughout her entire career.
Summer died in 2012 from lung cancer, at her home in Naples, Florida.[8] In her obituary in The Times, 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."[3] Moroder described Summer's work on the song "I Feel Love" as "really the start of electronic dance" music.[9] In 2013, Summer was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.[10] In December 2016, Billboard ranked her sixth on its list of the "Greatest of All Time Top Dance Club Artists".[11]
Early life[edit]
Donna Adrian Gaines was born on December 31, 1948, in Boston, Massachusetts, to Andrew and Mary Gaines, and was third of seven children.[12] She was raised in the Boston neighborhood of Mission Hill. Her father was a butcher, and her mother was a schoolteacher.[5]
Summer's performance debut occurred at church when she was ten years old, replacing a vocalist who failed to appear.[5] She attended Boston's Jeremiah E. Burke High School where she performed in school musicals and was considered popular.[5] In 1967, just weeks before graduation, Summer left for New York City, where she joined the blues rock band Crow. After a record label passed on signing the group since it was only interested in the band's lead singer, the group agreed to dissolve.[13]
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.[5] 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. She briefly toured with an ensemble vocal group called FamilyTree, the creation of producer Günter "Yogi" Lauke.
In 1968, Summer released (as Donna Gaines) on Polydor her first single, a German version of the title "Aquarius" from the musical Haare (Hair), followed in 1971 by a second single, a remake of the Jaynetts' 1963 hit, "Sally Go 'Round the Roses", from a one-off European deal with Decca Records.[14] In 1969, she issued the single "If You Walkin' Alone" on Philips Records.[14]
She married Austrian actor Helmuth Sommer in 1973, and gave birth to their daughter Natalia Pia Melanie "Mimi" Sommer,[15] the same year. 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 Helmuth Sommer during 1972.[14] Their marriage subsequently ended in divorce, and she married singer-guitarist Bruce Sudano in 1980.[16]
Controversy[edit]
In the mid-1980s, Summer was embroiled in a controversy when she allegedly made anti-gay remarks regarding the relatively new disease AIDS. Summer publicly denied she had ever made such comments and in a letter to the AIDS campaign group ACT UP in 1989 said it was "a terrible misunderstanding". In explaining why she had not responded to ACT UP sooner, Summer stated, "I was unknowingly protected by those around me from the bad press and hate letters. If I have caused you pain, forgive me." She closed her letter with Bible quotes (from Chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians).[51]
In 1989, Summer told The Advocate magazine, "A couple of the people I write with are gay, and they have been ever since I met them. What people want to do with their bodies is their personal preference".[52] A couple of years later, she filed a lawsuit against New York magazine when it printed an old story about the rumors as fact, just as she was about to release her album Mistaken Identity in 1991.[53] According to a Biography television program dedicated to Summer in which she participated in 1995, the lawsuit was settled out of court, though neither side wanted to divulge any details.[54][55]