"Disco Duck" | ||||
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Single by Rick Dees & His Cast of Idiots | ||||
from the album The Original Disco Duck | ||||
A-side | "Disco Duck (part one)" | |||
B-side | "Disco Duck (part two)" | |||
Released | September 4, 1976 | |||
Format | 7" and 12" single | |||
Recorded | 1976 in Memphis, Tennessee | |||
Genre | Disco | |||
Length | 3:17 | |||
Label | Fretone (initial release) RSO (wide distribution) |
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Writer(s) | Rick Dees | |||
Producer(s) | Bobby Manuel | |||
Rick Dees & His Cast of Idiots singles chronology | ||||
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"Disco Duck" is a satirical disco novelty song performed by Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots. At the time, Dees was a Memphis disc jockey. It became a number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 for one week in October 1976 (and ranked #99 out of the 100 most popular songs of the year according to Billboard magazine). It also made the top 20 on the Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart, peaking at number 15. "Disco Duck" was initially released in the south by Estelle Axton's Fretone label, but it was later released by RSO Records for national and international distribution.
Written by Dees, "Disco Duck" was inspired by a 1960s novelty dance song called "The Duck," recorded by Jackie Lee (Earl Lee Nelson in 1965. According to Dees, it took one day to write the song, but three months to convince anyone to perform it.
Combining orchestral disco styles with a Donald Duck–esque voice as the main plot point, the story within "Disco Duck" centers around a man at a dance party who is overcome by the urge to get up and "get down" in a duck-like manner. When the music stops, he sits down, but when he decides to get up and dance again, he finds that everyone in the room is now doing his dance.
A misconception about "Disco Duck" is that the voice of the duck itself was provided by Clarence Nash, the original voice of Donald Duck in many Walt Disney cartoons, but on several occasions the Disney Company maintained that Nash never contributed to the song. The voice of the duck was performed by Ken Pruitt, an acquaintance of Dees, as stated on the label of the RSO release. For the live tour, the duck vocals were handled by Michael Chesney, another acquaintance of Dees.