This week we honor the passing of the Pop Icon in 2012 (3 years ago last week), that shaped disco and Music.
LaDonna Adrian Gaines, 63, was known by the stage name Donna Summer, was an American singer-songwriter who gained prominence during the disco era of the late 1970s. She had a mezzo-soprano vocal range, and was a five-time Grammy Award winner. Summer was the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach number one on the U.S. Billboard chart, and she also charted four number-one singles in the United States within a 13-month period.
Born into a devoutly Christian lower middle class African-American family in Boston, Massachusetts, she first became involved with singing through church choir groups before joining a number of bands influenced by the Motown Sound. Influenced by the counterculture of the 1960s, she became the front singer of a psychedelic rock band named Crow and moved to New York City. Joining a touring version of the musical Hair, she spent several years living in West Germany, where she married Helmut Sommer, whose surname she adopted as her stage name.
Returning to the U.S., Summer co-wrote the song "Love to Love You Baby" with Pete Bellotte; music producer Giorgio Moroder convinced her to sing it herself, and it was released to mass commercial success in 1975, particularly on the disco scene. Over the following years, Summer followed this success with a string of other disco hits, such as "I Feel Love", "MacArthur Park", "Hot Stuff" and "No More Tears (Enough is Enough)". Becoming known as the "Queen of Disco", she regularly appeared at the Studio 54 club in New York City, while her music gained a particularly large following within the gay community, for whom she became a gay icon.
Struggling with drug addiction and depression, she subsequently became a born-again Christian. Diagnosed with lung cancer, Summer died on the morning of May 17, 2012, at her home in Key West, Florida after a battle with the disease.
Via Wiki
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