OK, that’s a long introduction, but I really needed to lie out where I stand before anyone starts branding me as I tackle a sensitive topic. Josiah Howard, in his biography of Donna Summer “Truth, Rumor, and Salvation,” calls out the political backlash that Donna generated within the African American community throughout the first 20 years of her career.

In Germany, Donna celebrated her uniqueness. She became quite an exotic figure around town on a continent that had already embraced the likes of Josephine Baker and Lena Horne. To Europeans, themselves victims of racism and genocide only a generation prior, the vanquishing of fascism was a call to socialism and equality. Donna reflects this attitude in her song from “Lady of the Night,” Let’s Work Together Now. It’s a folksy call to tolerance and love of humankind. One of my favorite photos of Donna appears in her own biography and features Donna in a huge Afro. The picture is an interesting celebration of Donna’s identity as African American after growing up in a heavily integrated Boston neighborhood, where “shades of gray” were everywhere.

A further example of the open mindedness with which Donna was raised might stem from her self-identified heritage as Dutch Irish in part. When Donna married in Austria, it was to a Caucasian man whom gave her the surname that would carry with it the connotation of the heat of a passionate August night (did I mention that there is snow here?). The deterioration of her living arrangement due to the restraint of Donna’s talents led to a separation and extramarital affair with another Caucasian man. It should be noted that both of these men, while as different in appearance as they could possible be within the range of Caucasian, were both stunningly handsome. Helmut Summer had chiseled Aryan features and fine bone structure, looks that were bestowed upon his daughter with Donna, Mimi, and when combined with Donna’s own beauty and style, created quite an exotic little girl who clearly bore the family resemblance from both sides of the family. The man identified in “Ordinary Girl: The Journey” by Donna as her paramour after her separation from Helmut, was dark haired, mustachioed in the most bushy of styles of the time, and reminiscent of a young Tom Selleck. I know what the attraction was!

As Donna’s first truly commercial success took off with Love to Love You, Baby, her Caucasian musical partners, Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, drove a European style that exploited the emerging cult craze called “disco.” Started in largely black and Latino underground clubs, the phenomenon allowed gay minority men to celebrate their own newly claimed freedom without fear of law enforcement. In these secret enclaves, nobody cared if you were black, white, or tan. There was something far more important that was both in common and dividing. 

		With the criticality of soul influences in the emerging music, Neil Bogart jumped at the opportunity to capitalize on Donna’s own heritage and exotic image in Europe. He had to bring her to the US. The vision was entrenched and as intransigent as the concept of B&W: a wealthy, exotic, independent and sexually liberated black woman…the very culmination of the women’s movement, the civil rights movement, and gay liberation. Roxie Roker as Helen Willis only twenty years younger and come of age in the ‘60s.
Black & white pioneers: the affluent Willis’s happy marriage annoyed even “activist” George Jefferson

Donna has said repeatedly throughout her career that she hated the image, largely due to the sex part of the equation, and that it didn’t reflect who she really is as a person. Nonetheless, on Larry King Live this year, Donna admits that it happened as it did, and that “sex sells.” The idea was over the top in its execution and in its cadre of image professionals hired to pull it off without a glitch, and was just as over the top in its success. The interracial aspect of Donna’s relationship with the man she calls “Gunther” in Ordinary Girl, furthered the image as she was seen on his arm from time to time and lived with him in the house on Benedict Canyon. The house itself is modest by today’s standards, but back in 1976 was an exclusive and secluded hideaway in an area reserved for only the wealthiest, and primarily “whitest.”

On the album Four Seasons of Love, Donna says that she got the chance to recreate some famous cinematographic moments. Those specifically are Diana Ross in Mahogany, representing Winter Melody. Donna represents the heroine in a more vulnerable, more trembling way than Ross’s classic image, which in itself is iconic in stature; a logical cover of a black actress portraying a legendary black actress’s role. However, as Marilyn Monroe in “Seven Year Itch” complete with flowing white dress atop a street subway grate blowing wind upward and Marilyn-esque hairdo (Autumn Changes), Donna gives us the impression that despite black hair and brown skin, that she thinks she is the platinum blonde whom she mimicked in her inaugural US hit, Love to Love You, Baby.
		Gentlemen prefer blondes, unless the brunette is Donna Summer

The other images from the album are less recognizable, but represent a Scarlett O’Hara Donna (Spring Affair) swinging on a rope swing made of flowers, and a 40s era chanteuse (Summer Fever) lowered to the floor atop 
a cardboard moon cutout (Rita Hayworth or Marlena Dietrich? I’m not THAT old), both recreations of previous screen moments played by white actresses.

Donna was on a grueling tour schedule that included every conceivable venue: black, white, gay, straight, Latino…you name it, and Neil had her booked there. It was good publicity and good money. As Candi Staton says in her own autobiography, “it was easy to make $3,000 a night playing a gay club.” Not bad when what you are really doing is promoting your record sales. Donna’s only song through 1976 that gave any nod to her African American heritage was 1976’s “Black Lady” from I Remember Yesterday. Despite it’s self-descriptive title and subject matter, the words of the song perpetuated the white equals good guy (girl), black equals bad girl (and not The Bad Girl yet) typecasting of the old westerns, and the musical style leaned heavily into the rock foray later more deeply explored after disco’s retreat to the underground. With “She was bad, really mean” included in the lyrics, the offering did little to help prevent the eventuality to come. 

Other African-American acts such as Tavares, Thelma Houston, The Sylvers, Sylvester, and Sister Sledge were soon to follow onto the disco bandwagon, but in doing so maintained a greater sense of connection with their heritage. Solidarity, a sense of growing from the inner city and the projects followed. TV’s the Jefferson’s was more of the model that these groups followed, depicting the emergence of the Evans family struggle on “Good Times” as an outdated notion. Our day had come, it seemed, at least according to George Jefferson, and his militant persona underscored his righteousness in what he had earned with nobody white telling him what to do.

As a result of the growing success of African-American citizens and its newfound visibility on TV (Roots, The Jeffersons, Good Times, What’s Happening, Sanford and Son) and in the entertainment industry (Diana Ross, Donna Summer, The Jacksons, The Commodores, The Trammps), there was a pride in achievement, and a loyalty to the struggle that preceded it. Don’t sell out, don’t forget, and don’t lose your sense of identity and what makes you different. Similarly, many gay and lesbian activists today feel the same way about those who have become too assimilated into the general population, coupling up for long time periods, having children, driving Volvos, and abandoning the sexual freedom and priority that identified the gay liberation and gay rights movements.

		Many symbols of African-American heritage were evident in the ‘70s: the afro, African-themed clothing, use of the terms “brother” and “sister” in relating to one another. Donna’s image-makers quickly abandoned all vestiges of traditionally African-American style in recreating her 1977 “Once Upon a Time” look. While the black Cinderella story may have been a logical follow up to Ross’s and Jackson’s more successful attempt at retelling “The Wizard of Oz” from a black perspective, the famous pair portrayed the characters as decidedly black with no apologies.
Call her “Miss Ross”

Ross without her wigs and long hair instead replaced with her own hair in tight afro style, and Jackson unapologetically himself as Scarecrow.

With long, flowing, and straight hair, make up that accentuated the finer elements of her features, and in a Farrah Fawcett pose for the trademark headshot of Donna among the publicity photos for the album, a backlash amongst the black community began to emerge. Donna began to experience a criticism that would last for the next 15 years and beyond. Donna was too “white” to be black. To them, she had sold out. Even the few lines in the album such as from “If You Got It, Flaunt It” like “You ain’t got nothin’ I ain’t got, they might be bigger, but that’s all” and “and a sweet lil’ ol’ girl like me” from “Sweet Romance” weren’t enough to convince us that our girl was still a home girl.

This image continued throughout much of the Live and More tour. The sellout tour run, with its live-recorded album at the then-outdoor Universal Amphitheater featured a subtle evolution of this same look. 1979’s Bad Girls brought back a return of a more urban African-American image, with curly hair and more urban lyrics “now your mama won’t like it when she finds out, her girl is out tonight.” However, even the funkier style of Donna’s music didn’t convince those who criticized her. The lyrics to the Summer-authored “Dim All the Lights” include “Turn my brown body white, come on dim all the lights.” 

Not helping was the photographic work of Francesco Scavullo, the late famed photographer. According to Josiah Howard, Donna had fallen in love with his work after “Once Upon a Time” and insisted that he exclusively photograph her for her albums and publicity photos from that point on. The combination of Neil’s stylistic magic makers and Francesco’s photography helped sell millions upon millions of records, but added to the fray.
		The Scavullo masterpiece that started it all

A growing funk sound was emerging from within disco itself, more like the original disco records like “Soul Makossa.” “Brick House” by the Commodores and “Ladies Night” by Kool and the Gang exemplified the new funky disco sound. Black fans fled to this sound in numbers because it was more true to the soul sound that more accurately reflected the black music sound. White listeners who did not latch onto traditional rock and roll also became fans of the new beat due to the “Disco Sucks” movement of July 12, 1979. 

Back in the early ‘70s, I can remember my father referring to songs by The Jackson 5 and The Ohio Players as “jungle music.” That term was a euphemism for black music. It was enough that his generation had begrudgingly accepted the rock invasion of The Beatles, et al, 10 years earlier, but that was mostly white, and this was black! No doubt about it. Despite the bandwagon headed back to Detroit’s Motown and The Sound of Philadelphia roots, Donna musically headed to Nashville and Cleveland (the birthplace of Rock and Roll and your author) as she experimented with musical genres that were traditionally the territory of white artists: Country and Rock and Roll on Bad Girls, as heard in “On My Honour,” “Our Love,” and with “Hot Stuff” and its Grammy for Best Female Rock Performance proving that she could hold her own in amongst Caucasian competitors, but losing the Best Disco Record Award to Gloria Gaynor for “I Will Survive.”