THE CHIC ORGANIZATION BOX SET VOL. 1 — SAVOIR FAIRE: Disco’s Platinum Standard

Disco was eas­ily the most producer-driven genre of pop­u­lar music dur­ing the 1970s.  As a result, the pro­duc­ers have star-like sta­tus amongst genre fans.  A vari­ety of names are thrown around when the sub­ject of “who is the best?” comes up but one could eas­ily make the case that Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards — col­lec­tively known as The Chic Organization — were the most con­sis­tent and forward-thinking of the lot.  Whether cut­ting albums for their own group, Chic, or rack­ing up hits for Diana Ross and Sister Sledge, they hit the scene with a fully-formed aes­thetic that left the fans want­ing more and imi­ta­tors scram­bling to grab a piece of their dis­tinc­tive mir­ror­ball magic.

And yet, Rodgers and Edwards have never received the kind of ret­ro­spec­tive trib­ute their suc­cess deserves: most of their pro­duc­tions have remained in print but no one ever made an attempt to do a com­pre­hen­sive overview.  Thankfully, Rodgers decided to mount this sort of project him­self and the result is, for Your Humble Reviewer’s money, the box set of the year.

The Chic Organi­za­tion, Vol. 1: Savoir Faire is a smartly-assembled set that has a lot to offer fans new and old.  Its four discs walk the lis­tener through the many high­points of the Rodgers/Edwards discog­ra­phy, start­ing with their first record­ing as Chic in 1977 — the propul­sive, minimalist-yet-lush “Everybody Dance” — to their final album as a group in 1984.  Along the way, all the famil­iar hits for other artists — “We Are Family,” “Upside Down” and “He’s The Greatest Dancer,” to name just three — make an appear­ance as well as some delight­ful album cuts that show off Rodgers’ and Edwards’ impec­ca­ble blend of musi­cian­ship and song­writ­ing savvy.

For those unfa­mil­iar with the Chic sound, Your Humble Reviewer thinks of it as “plat­inum disco”: the churn­ing relent­less­ness of funk is pol­ished up with a bit of jazzy com­plex­ity (espe­cially in the group vocals) plus string arrange­ments that harken back to the pre-rock era.  As they moved into the 1980’s, the sound became more stripped-down and elec­tronic as Rodgers and Edwards flirted with a more angu­lar, quirky approach that flirted with new wave irrev­er­ence.  That said, their gift for an ele­gant melody never deserted them:  even when they go for an edgy groove, they are so nat­u­rally styl­ish that you’d swear they sweat Armani cologne.

At this point, it must be noted that The Chic Organization, Vol. 1: Savoir Faire is more than just an expan­sive hits-and-album-tracks comp.  Every cut has been remas­tered from the orig­i­nal tapes by Rodgers him­self so even fans who know every note by heart will be able to hear this set with fresh ears — each song has new sonic depth and the orchestral-tinged glitz is that much brighter.  Rodgers has also been care­ful to include sev­eral rare 12-inch ver­sions and longer ver­sions of famil­iar cuts.  Noteworthy exam­ples in this cat­e­gory include a rework­ing of Chic’s “My Forbidden Lover” that has a punchier intro built on a group-vocal hook lifted from later in the song and a hyp­notic 12-inch ver­sion of Carly Simon’s “Why” that allows the lis­tener to get lost in its mes­mer­iz­ing synth-reggae groove.

Even better, there are five new mixes by Dimitri From Paris: if you’ve ever heard DFP’s remix work on stuff from this era, you know he has a rev­er­ent, clas­si­cal style of mix­ing that blends in nicely with the orig­i­nals here.  His remix of Chic’s “I Want Your Love” has an impres­sive, sym­phonic flair but his most impres­sive work here might be his take on Sister Sledge’s “Thinking Of You,” which book­ends the lush, yearning-strings-led groove of the song with a solo burst of ecsta­tic gospel vocal­iz­ing that makes the song inbe­tween feel like a heav­enly dream.

However, the biggest treat on The Chic Organization, Vol. 1: Savoir Faire might be the trio of tracks from Johnny Mathis’s unre­leased, Chic Organization-produced album.  It’s tragic that Mathis and his man­age­ment got cold feet about releas­ing said album because it would have eas­ily been received as his best mod­ern work: the Rodgers/Edwards pro­duc­tion pushes the trade­mark ele­gance of the Chic sound to the fore and Mathis responds to it with classy, inspired per­for­mances.  Each of the cuts is a seam­less blend of the old and new, with the sprightly vocal gym­nas­tics of “Something To Sing About” being Your Humble Reviewer’s favorite.

If there’s a quib­ble with this set, it is that the liner notes could have been more expan­sive:  Rodgers con­tributes a nice yet all too brief essay that touches on Chic’s early days and how the box set came to be but fans will likely regret that there isn’t song by song anno­ta­tion.  That said, it’s the music that mat­ters most and The Chic Organization, Vol. 1: Savoir Faire deliv­ers cut after cut of disco as its most ele­gant.  If you have a seri­ous inter­est in disco, don’t hes­i­tate to pick this set up.

.