Day After Day #188: Jive Talkin'

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4). 

Jive Talkin' (1975)

Ask most older music fans their thoughts on the Bee Gees and they'll likely talk about the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and white suits and disco balls. But the Gibb brothers were making music as teens nearly 20 years before the John Travolta movie came out, playing in skiffle bands and releasing music in Australia, where the family had moved in the late '50s. 

In the mid-'60s, Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb had released a few albums in Australia with little success before moving to England. In 1967, Robert Stigwood heard their demo tapes and signed them to a five-year contract to release their albums internationally. The group, which expanded to included Vince Melouney and Colin Petersen, had hits with "New York Mining Disaster 1941" and "To Love Somebody" and were getting Beatles-esque receptions throughout Europe and the U.S.

Their success was short-lived. By 1970, Robin went solo and Barry and Maurice were still playing as the Bee Gees, but their singles were struggling. They reunited with Robin and had a #1 hit in the U.S. in 1971 with "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart," but within a few years were scuffling again. Atlantic Records head Ahmet Ertegun recommended they work with R&B producer Arif Mardin and by 1975, they started to embrace dance music. Disco was growing popular and the Bee Gees timed their musical shift perfectly.

The first single from their 1975 album Main Course was "Jive Talkin'," which featured scratchy guitar by Barry and a funky bass line from Maurice, who used a synth bass. The song was originally called "Drive Talking," about the sound their car was making on the drive to the studio in Miami. Mardin thought Barry was singing "Jive Talkin,'" which he explained to the band was a black expression for bullshitting, so the group changed the lyrics.

"It's just your jive talkin', you're telling me lies, yeah/Jive talkin', you wear a disguise/Jive talkin', so misunderstood, yeah/Jive talkin', you're really no good/Oh my child, you'll never know/Just what you mean to me/Oh my child, you got so much/You gonna take away my energy."

The single was delivered to radio stations in a plain white cover without the name of the song or artist on the outside. The song was such a departure from the band's usual sound, and the tactic worked, as "Jive Talkin'" went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, #1 in Canada and #5 in the U.K. 

"Jive talkin', you're telling me lies, yeah/Good lovin' still gets in my eyes/Nobody believe what you say/It's just your jive talkin' that gets in the way."

Barry Gibb didn't employ that famous falsetto on "Jive Talkin'," though. That happened on the next single, "Nights on Broadway," another funky effort that found Barry hitting the high notes on the chorus. The group followed up Main Course with 1976's Children of the World and its first single "You Should Be Dancing," which went to #1 and got the Bee Gees played in discos around the world. 

Then came the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, which the band didn't work on until post-production. John Travolta said the dancing he did in the movie was to songs by Stevie Wonder and Boz Scaggs; the Bee Gees songs were added later. "Jive Talkin'" and "You Should Be Dancing" were included on the soundtrack, as were songs written by the Bee Gees for the movie including "Stayin' Alive," "How Deep is Your Love," "Night Fever" and "More Than a Woman." All those songs were co-written with producer Albhy Galuten, who years later I would interview for Webnoize (he was an early internet tech executive; he also has a number of patents, including the first commercial drum loop, which was used on "Stayin' Alive").

The soundtrack became the best-selling album in music history, eventually eclipsed by Michael Jackson's Thriller and others. It has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide. While some said Saturday Night Fever kicked off the disco craze, it actually prolonged it; the genre was starting to fade and the Bee Gees revived it for another couple of years. The Bee Gees had a couple more hit albums before the backlash against disco kicked in by the end of 1979. They would only have one more top 10 single in the U.S., "One" in 1989.

Meanwhile, Barry became a successful producer, working with Barbra Streisand on her 1980 hit album Guilty and Dionne Warwick in 1982 with her comeback album Heartbreaker. The Bee Gees had some success in the late '80s with the albums E.S.P. and One. They released four more albums, with the last one coming out in 2001. Maurice died in 2003 at age 53 of a heart attack. Barry and Robin made a few appearances as the Bee Gees in 2009, but in 2011, it was announced that Robin was diagnosed with liver cancer. He died in May 2012. Barry took a hiatus before releasing a third solo album in 2021, doing mainly acoustic reimaginings of Bee Gees songs; it went to #1 in the U.K. and Australia and #2 in the U.S.

I liked disco as a kid and the Bee Gees especially. My uncle had a copy of Main Course when it came out. But I turned my back on disco and the Bee Gees in '79 when everybody else did. I remember trading in my copy of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack at a record store and using the credit to buy the new Led Zeppelin album In Through the Out Door. But I've come to terms that those disco songs were pretty damn fun. And I have to wonder: if the song was called "Drive Talking" instead of "Jive Talkin'," that whole Bee Gees disco era may not have happened.