Almost Rang the Phone Off the Wall

"After the club’s 1969 uprising, gay discos proliferated, and they needed music. The genre that a handful of producers developed was a hodgepodge of black styles: it borrowed Motown’s insistent beat, the percussiveness of Philadelphia soul, the grandiose orchestration that backed Isaac Hayes. The disco sound emerged full blown in 'The Love I Lost,' a 1973 hit by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes. Echols quotes Peter Shapiro, the author of 'Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco,' who noted the track’s 'hissing high-hats, the thumping bass sound, the surging momentum, the uplifting horns, the strings taking flight.'"

James Gavin in The New York Times reviews Alice Echols's Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture.