Disco-- Everybody's doin' it: Richie Havens "Back to My Roots" (1980)

A funny part of getting into the deep cuts of the disco era, as I've mentioned before, is how eventually everybody's doing it, everybody seems to get around to making their disco track. B.B. King. Little Feat. Camel. Barbara Streisand. The Beach Boys. Even the opening act at Woodstock! 

"Going Back to My Roots," Richie Havens (1980): Havens covering Lamont Dozier's 1977 original, about going back to Detroit to see family. Black family. The Roots TV series chronicling the saga of an American family going back to Africa aired in '77. But Havens turns the song into a global multicult anthem and inspiring model blueprint of the spiritual side of House music. The deconstructed dancefloor parts give it that proto-House production feel and Haven's soulful voice an anthemic and universal pop heft that is indomitable. "I'm not talking about the roots in the land/I'm talking about the roots in the man/It's not red, it's not white, it's not yellow, it's not black, it's down to earth." 

Richie Havens with Groove Armada live in Brixton (2002): Numerous other versions chart over the years, peaking in the US with NYC disco group Odyssey in '81, and then a founding Italo House version for the FPI Project in '89, and other chart appearances in South Africa and UK and other parts of  Europe again in '89 and '94 and '99 and 2002. At this point Dozier's disco classic is practically a standard of House style dance music. Here's Havens still bridging disco's spiritual House music soul with EDM millennials.

"Going Back to My Roots," Lamont Dozier (1977): For Dozier, the great songwriter who co-wrote and produced 14 Billboard number one hits with Motown, living in LA at the time the song was about going back to his Black roots in Detroit. An intimate psychological (if epic) journey; the original clocks in at over 9 minutes long. But Hugh Masekela, South African trumpeter, producer, anti-apartheid artist, contributes to production and takes the song back to Africa. The final section moves explicitly into Afrobeat territory, chanting in Yoruba and carrying on with the collaborative energy of sizzling global funk music; so LA to Detroit to Soweto. It's a great track, if maybe a little disjointed by its Dozier and Masekela sides. But Havens' voice and the way his discofied version fully transforms the song into this multicultural global dance anthem really takes it to another level for me. Makes it a post-disco global disco classic.