From the liner notes:
There are certain moments from the mid 1970s Disco era I will never forget. One of those clearest memories is hearing Love's Coming/Baby Love by USA-European Connection for the very first time. I can recall the exact instant like it only happened two nanoseconds ago – and in full IMAX 3D and Surround Sound! It was a Sunday in mid-February 1978 and I was at The Embassy Club in London's Old Bond Street.
Loftily considered the capital's answer to New York's Studio 54, The Embassy is where Sylvester filmed his video for You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) descending the curved staircase from the central balcony area and every Sunday they held a popular Tea Dance event. For the one cover price of £4 (you could buy two Disco albums on import for that cost!) all snacks and drinks—served by waiters in ultra-tight shorts—were included as glammed-up-to-the-nines patrons danced the afternoon and night away.
It was during one particular dance floor frenzy that the DJ played Love's Coming/Baby Love and I distinctly remember its completely new sound shocking me into standing completely rigid and listening closely in wonder at the aural sensations suddenly washing over me. I stood galvanised in the middle of that flashing floor under the swirling lights for nearly fifteen minutes, stunned as the constant orchestral movements, unexpected series of rhythmic breaks and abrupt time changes, ripples of floating strings, synthesizer eruptions and ecstatic girl group vocals segued into the next track. Then, quick as a flash, I literally ran to the DJ booth and demanded to know what I'd just heard. With a roll of his eyes hinting that I was just one of the many asking for the exact same information he told me, "Come Into My Heart by USA-European Connection."
The very next day I rushed to my favourite Disco import emporium in Soho and asked for the USA-European Connection album. "Not out yet," came the reply. "Try in a few weeks when T.K. Records release it." But I just couldn't wait that long and called up my best friend who worked as a producer for Capital Radio, London's premier station since 1973. Every so often he'd let me go into Capital's Euston Tower head offices to raid the New Release cupboards and over the years ! managed to get a lot of rare Disco tracks that way. But I didn't find the USA-European Connection album until I scanned the out-of-bounds desk of famed DJ Kenny Everett. Recklessly, before anyone had noticed, it was whisked into my bag, on my turntable at home, blaring out and I was closely studying the album cover credits. There the name Boris Midney was listed not just as composer and producer but also arranger, conductor, engineer, photographer, keyboardist and horn player—the complete package. Interestingly enough Everett had written a note-to-self in ballpoint on the inner sleeve which said "Huge in the US, the continuously segueing sides may be too much of a good thing". From that moment on I had to know who this multi-talented Midney person was and became totally obsessed by getting every subsequent album he produced. I began collecting his work from all over the globe and am happy to say that my complete fan devotion has not diminished one iota in the intervening years since hearing those groundbreaking USA-European Connection cuts for the first time.
You'll find out why in the second of five Disco Recharge Collections presenting the matchless work of Boris Midney whom I called in my co-authored book Saturday Night Forever: The Story of Disco, "The Stephen Sondheim, David Hockney and Stanley Kubrick of the Disco genre all rolled into one". This "Special Edition" features Midney's two innovative and incredible USA-European Connection albums plus 12" and 7" versions of the medleys and songs featured on both. The key lyric in Come Into My Heart/Good Loving, the first album's title track, sets the tone of this whole collection perfectly: "High winds of feeling tear me apart". For the dancer is immediately caught up in the surge of undulating music as wave upon wave of lilting melody, wild percussion, peripatetic stings and shrieking violins, pounding reverbs, conga breaks and orchestral ingenuity hit you between the eyes with a distinctly emotional force. All that sumptuous pummelling continues in Love's Coming/Baby Love with tuned discordance made to sound sweetly harmonious as the "sensuous vocals" (by Leza Holmes, Renne Johnson and Sharon Williams) go slo-mo only to be uplifted by angelic harps, echo chamber beauty and string enchantment. Sparer, crisper and more precise than the Come Into My Heart album, the second self-titled USA-European Connection release from November 1979 featured the equally haunting I'd Like To Get Closer/Do Me Good and Join the Dance/There's A Way Into My Heart. Vocals this time provided by Chequita Jackson and Kevin Owens, a duo who would continually be employed to convey the delicious brand of Midney Magic. Each is a grandiose symphony of musical quality, focused individuality and artistic refinement that was entirely unique for the Disco era yet still retained the ability to sweep you onto the dance floor for a rapturously blissful workout.
After defecting from Russia and signing with the ABC/Impulse Records Jazz label in America, the classical musically trained Boris Midney had the idea of combining pop rhythms with more orthodox sounds. "The idea of pop meets classical had been brewing inside me for years," says the great man himself in comments taken from an exclusive interview especially conducted for this "Disco Recharge" series. "I had built a studio in Princeton, New Jersey, and started experimenting with strings over funk there. But it wasn't until I built ALPHA International Recording Studios in Philadelphia, with Peter Pelullo, that my Disco foundation truly began. There was no true Disco at the time, just a flavour – R&B with an orchestra—but there was dance pop like Silver Convention. I heard their tracks first hand in Bob Reno's office at Mercury Records and loved the string sound. That confirmed I was on the right track in the combination of different musical styles."
Midney recalls how the Come Into My Heart album was put together: "I made this tape in my studio in Philadelphia at odd times, mostly at night. I sat at the piano and played it all the way through. Of course there were a lot of objections like, 'You can't have one track on the album, too long, gotta separate them, nobody will listen…etc'. I was looking to somehow connect the Euro Sound with the US Funk and R&B one. While commuting from Princeton to Philadelphia, on the highway there was a large sign saying 'Connection to 95', and that's how I got the USA-European Connection concept and project title. Every new style of music starts with a beat and this drummer I was working with at the time had 'that beat'. I was clearly developing a sound, I just wasn't aware of creating Disco. The subsequent Disco craze was nothing short of a revolution against established and cliché pop that allowed composers and producers to experiment with new and 'off-the-wall' sounds, truly the basis for any new movement. Later my lawyer Sandy Ross said, 'You're crazy, what kind of name is USA-European Connection? Make it shorter or it will never sell. That's when I knew I was on the right track".
While some thought Midney was a lunatic recording stuff that was clearly unmarketable to their ears, many loved what he was doing as he points out. "I guess I was determined. I was doing something I really liked and deeply enjoyed doing it. So when the master tape was finished, a friend of mine from New York told me he knew David Mancuso, the DJ and owner of the downtown New York 'underground' club, The Loft, and arranged for it to be premiered there. The place was crowded, full of balloons, and it went on at midnight. One by one people cleared the dance floor because they wanted to listen as it contained such a different sound. I saw this as something of a disaster that the clubbers' non-reaction was due to the recording/mix not being up to par. Without saying thank you or goodbye to Mancuso, I drove back to Philly and totally remixed it. Something that was completely unnecessary as I got a call the next night saying Mancuso had played it again a number of times and people couldn't get enough. After that it was put on regular rotation at The Loft and things started to happen very quickly. Promoters called and I was introduced to Henry Stone at T.K. Records who came up with an offer to release it on their Marlin label."
The result was a Billboard Hot Dance Disco Chart Number 1 that remained on every DJs playlist for the next 21 weeks. Naturally Stone asked Midney for a second USA-European Connection album follow-up. "But I didn't have anything. By then I was at my Eras Studio on Manhattan's East 54th Street. One night I went to my favourite restaurant that specialized in fried, boiled and grilled ducks but my dinner didn't taste exactly right. I went back to the studio and got terrible double vision and severe nausea. I sat at the piano hoping it would pass. My engineer Dmitri Zbrizer was still there and I said 'Let's record something'. He rolled the tape and I was in and out of consciousness playing non-stop until Dmitri yelled 'How the hell do you know what you are playing?' and the tape ran out. I had no sheet music only a click track in my headphones but the second USA-European Connection album was done, with just the vocals and arrangements added the following week. I learned about my father's death during the Come Into My Heart recording, and I had food poisoning on the second album and could barely play a note on the piano. But those dual feelings of euphoria and a total reality disconnect provided the inspiration. Any kind of good music doesn't result from sheer happiness or satisfaction, there has to some drama, discord and sadness. Melancholy is the most beautiful of human emotions and that quality is definitely invested in both USA-European Connection albums".
~ Alan Jones
Co-author of the bestselling book Saturday Night Forever: The Story of Disco