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He is a musician and record producer born Domenico
Monardo in Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania.
His father was a trombonist and encouraged his learning to read
music and taught him how to play the trombone. He would perform that instrument in his high school band
and would win a scholarship to the Eastman School of Music in New York in
1957. He became friends with
Chuck Mangione and Ron Carter and they would all performed in the school's
jazz band. In the early 1960s
he enlisted in the US Army and became a member of the West Point Army Band
and after leaving service he moved back to New York and became a session
trombonist where he would work with such notables Tommy James and Diana
Ross. He was the only known
jazz trombone soloist that would appear on a pop record since the 1920s or
'30s. In 1973 he set up the
production company called the Disco Corporation of America (DCA) with two
associates, Harold Wheeler and Tony Bongiovi. After producing Don Downing's
"Lonely Days, Lonely Nights" as their premiere release, he discovered the
artist Gloria Gaynor, for whom he would produce her first three albums
including Never Can Say Goodbye, which was a disco groundbreaker in
that one side of the record was completely segued without a single break
between tracks and had originally been the idea of Tom Moulton, or "the
father of the disco mix". He
became internationally known when he began releasing disco versions of
well-known film music. His
first major success under his own name came in 1977 when he made the charts
at No. 1 in the US and No. 7 in the UK with the Star Wars Theme, which
would outsell the original theme by John Williams. This would be his only chart hit in
the UK, but in the US he would reach Top 40 status with the releases "Theme
from Close Encounters". "Themes from Wizard of Oz", "Empire Strikes Back"
and "Pop Goes the Movies (Part 1)."
His album Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk reached platinum
status in 1977. Carrying on as
a producer into the 1980s he would work with Trini Lopez, Kenny G,
Samanthan Sang, Marlena Shaw and many more, but after becoming
disillusioned he retired to Florida in 1985 and took up a job as a
commodity broker. Having crept
back into the business in 1997 to assist his friend Yamira on her new
album, the new Star Wars movies began to appear in 1999 and Sony's
president contacted him about doing a new dance mix. He began work in earnest but as the
composer, John Williams, had put on a clause that no-one could record any
interpretation of the music on the same label as him, it could not be
released. Not to be outdone he
released music from all of the Star Wars movies onto the CD Dance Your
Asteroids Off to the Complete Star Wars Collection in 2000. At the beginning of 2007 he worked
on a single release of "Raiders of the Lost Ark".
Meco recordings
Theme From Close Encounters (John Williams)
Roman Nights (Harold Wheeler)
Diana Ross recordings
Give Up (Bernard Edwards/Nile
Rodgers)
I'm Coming Out (Bernard
Edwards/Nile Rodgers)
Sources:
- British
& American Hit Singles 1946-1997 by Chris Davies (published by
Batsford)
- http://www.discomusic.com/people-more/39_0_11_0_C/
- http://www.echostation.com/interview/meco.htm
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meco
- http://www.geocities.com/mecofan/?200718
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