"Ease on Down the Road" | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Single by Consumer Rapport | |||||||||||
B-side | "Go On With Your Bad Self" | ||||||||||
Released | March 1975 | ||||||||||
Format | 7" single | ||||||||||
Recorded | 1975 | ||||||||||
Genre | R&B, soul, disco | ||||||||||
Length | 3:02 (7" version) 6:28 (12" version) |
||||||||||
Label | Wing and a Prayer Atlantic |
||||||||||
Writer(s) | Charlie Smalls | ||||||||||
Producer(s) | Stephen Y. Scheaffer Harold Wheeler |
||||||||||
|
"Ease on Down the Road" | ||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Single by Diana Ross & Michael Jackson | ||||||||||||||||||||
from the album The Wiz: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack | ||||||||||||||||||||
B-side | "Poppy Girls" (instrumental by Quincy Jones) | |||||||||||||||||||
Released | September 21, 1978 | |||||||||||||||||||
Format | 7" single | |||||||||||||||||||
Recorded | 1977 | |||||||||||||||||||
Genre | R&B, soul, disco | |||||||||||||||||||
Length | 3:54 | |||||||||||||||||||
Label | MCA | |||||||||||||||||||
Writer(s) | Charlie Smalls | |||||||||||||||||||
Producer(s) |
Quincy Jones Tom Bahler |
|||||||||||||||||||
|
"Ease on Down the Road" is a song from the 1975 Broadway musical The Wiz, an R&B re-interpretation of L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The Charlie Smalls–composed tune is the show's version of both "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" and "We're Off to See the Wizard" from the 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz. In the song, performed three times during the show, Dorothy and her friends the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion dance their way down the Yellow Brick Road and give each other words of encouragement.
Two versions of the song have been released as charting singles: one associated with the Broadway show by studio group Consumer Rapport in 1975, and a second recorded by Diana Ross and Michael Jackson for the 1978 feature-film adaptation of The Wiz.
The song was performed in the original Broadway production by Stephanie Mills (Dorothy), Hinton Battle (Scarecrow), Tiger Haynes (Tin Man), and Ted Ross (Cowardly Lion), who also perform the song on the original 1975 cast album for The Wiz. The song was a number-one disco hit for five non-consecutive weeks in a recording by the disco studio group Consumer Rapport. Produced by Stephen Y. Scheaffer and The Wiz musical arranger Harold Wheeler, the Consumer Rapport version hit the Billboard Soul Singles chart, peaking at #19 and the Hot 100, peaking at #42.