Sound Field

- In 1978, dance floors across America were set on fire by a disco song called, you Make Me Feel Mighty Real.

The track recorded by Sylvester didn't just make waves on the billboard Hot 100, it became a pride anthem, embodying L-G-B-T-Q expression and quickly turning into a staple in nightclubs.

But here's the twist.

It wasn't originally written as a dance song at all.

- [Woman] Sylvester, widely celebrated as the queen of disco became a star in the vibrant gay disco scene.

But his journey began in a completely different setting.

The Gospel church.

These roots heavily influenced the original version of You Make Me Feel Mighty Real, a song he wrote with his band mate, James Burrick.

The first draft of the song was much slower and with a lead piano.

We're excited that their band gave Sylvester pushback on changing the song into an upbeat dance tune.

But Sylvester and Zuric insisted, no, we have to do that because that's what's on the radio.

And they were right.

The song hit the top 10 in countries all over the world cementing Sylvester's status as a dance music star.

This is a story of how Sylvester started as a young boy singing in the church choir and became the queen of disco, a pioneer in dance music history with his powerful falsetto voice.

- I don't think that we arrive at the time where we have pop artists and rap artists like Little Uzi Vert exploring different gender expressions without Sylvester.

Yeah, I really feel like we almost are in a Sylvester world.

- [Woman] Sylvester was born in 1947 in Watts, a neighborhood in South Los Angeles.

His mom was a devout Pentecostal Christian, and every weekend Sylvester and his brothers would join her at church.

It was there in the church choir that Sylvester started his musical journey.

Things took a tough turn when Sylvester was outed as a teenager, straining his relationship with his mother.

He left home and found himself spending more time with his grandmother, Julia Morgan.

Julia was a jazz singer and she introduced Sylvester to the world of jazz vocalists like Billie Holiday and Josephine Baker adding another layer to his musical influences.

- My name is Myles E Johnson.

I'm a writer, performance artist, and I am a Sylvester stan.

- Can we talk a little bit about like Sylvester's or a little bit more about Sylvester's influences?

- A ride that so many artists went like went on was like, where are my roots, the church, gospel, soul, blues, jazz, but where can I take it?

Funk music.

In the Sylvester's case, disco.

- [Woman] As a teenager, Sylvester frequented gay clubs in LA and formed a group with black trans women and self-identified cross-dressers called the Disquotays.

By the 1970s, Sylvester had moved to San Francisco, a hub for the gay liberation movement, and joined a theater group called The Cockettes.

Sylvester's unique falsetto voice and dedication to his craft made him a standout in the group.

So much so that Sylvester thought it best to leave the Cockettes and go solo.

- [Man] Sylvester put together a group of straight white men to make up his first band, and they called themselves Sylvester and the Hot Band.

You can hear Sylvester's gospel roots and his grandma's jazz vocal influence on their first release.

The track was originally written for the Broadway show Sweet Adeline in 1929, and had gone on to be covered by many of the jazz singers that Sylvester grew up listening to, like Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald.

Why Do I Want For Things I Dare Not Hope For?

But Sylvester's version is a slowdown, more syncopated and soulful edition, which features his almost felting falsetto vocals leading the track.

Sylvester and the Hot Band started making waves with their early covers around San Francisco, landing local gigs and even getting the chance to open for David Bowie.

They went on to release two albums blending Sylvester's Gospel Roots with Rock, which was more commercially popular at the time.

You can really hear this mix on songs like Down On Your Knees, written by the band's bassist Kerry Hatch.

Unfortunately, neither of the band's albums sold well, and by 1974, the Hot Band had left Sylvester.

- Determined to keep going, Sylvester put together a few new lineups, this time with the help of drag queens, but despite their talent and flair, they struggled to find commercial success.

Then Sylvester auditioned new background vocalists and struck gold.

He discovered Martha Wash and Izora Rhodes.

If those names ring a bell, it's because they later formed the Weather Girls and gave us the iconic hit, "It's Raining Men".

Martha Wash in particular went on to lend her powerhouse vocals to hit dance tracks throughout the nineties, including "Gonna make you sweat (Everybody dance now)".

But before all that, they started as backup singers in Sylvester's new band.

The year was 1977 and disco was on fire.

Sylvester and his new band put together an album titled "Sylvester" leaning heavily into the disco craze.

"Down, down, down, down", written by Sylvester himself, cranked the tempo up to a blazing 135 beats per minute, faster than most dance hits at the time.

The track reached number 18 on the Billboard dance chart marking Sylvester's most successful release up to that point, - The singer in church knows this note is what gets people out their seat.

So the person whose church is the dance floor knows that this BPM is what's gonna get them on the dance floor - By embracing the popular disco sound, Sylvester's solo career was finally finding some commercial success.

A lot of artists will just write the music for themselves and then just put it out.

And aren't necessarily like thinking about like who are they speaking to?

What message are they giving, how do they wanna make people feel?

And I feel like to me, Sylvester gives the opposite.

- I think that it's something that a black, queer, person has in the back of their head where it's like, okay, well bills are still real and I have to understand what's happening on the dance floor, but also just being a good trend forecaster and just being like an innovative person and having your ear to the street.

- [Woman] But the real breakthrough came with his next album.

Step two.

- [Man] While at City Disco, a popular disco club in San Francisco, Sylvester met a technologically savvy record producer working the lights named Patrick Cowley.

Cowley had studied music in college and specifically electronic music production, which was novel at the time.

Sylvester intrigued by Cowley's electronic instrument wizardry invited him to work on his new album, and the rest, as they say is history.

The mix of Cowley's electronic instrumentation with the band's traditional instruments created a new groovy sound, reminiscent of Donna Summer's "I Feel Love", what Giorgio Moroder had produced a year earlier, - And like Donna Summer and "I Feel Love".

Sylvester delivered a powerful vocal performance that evoked pure euphoria on the dance floor.

But it wasn't just the production of "You Make Me Feel" that made it a lasting standout in music history.

In fact, it wasn't even the most popular song on the album at the time, that honor went to "Dance Disco Heat".

Yet over the years, you make me feel has eclipsed dance, disco heat in popularity.

Why?

Because of what it represented during a time of intense homophobia in the United States.

The song's lyrics talk about the sensuality of meeting someone on the dance floor, and then there's the chorus.

You make me feel mighty real.

The word real could mean so many things, including finally feeling like yourself.

This message, whether or not it was immediately recognized by the general public became an anthem for gay liberation.

- It becomes really interesting and radical that you had this person who was being as queer as he was and being beloved by black folks in the seventies.

- [Woman] The author of Sylvester's biography, Joshua Gamson said: "In a way, if I'd felt that earlier, I'd have come out earlier.

Embracing who you are, celebrating who you are, being as fabulous as you could possibly be.

I think that's the message that he's preaching in the song, and I could have used a dose of that as a teenager".

The album's two hit singles catapulted it to the top of the billboard dance chart, and a year later it was certified gold.

- Sylvester really was that person who was glamorous, black, and this is how you navigate this, with this identity.

- More than that, Sylvester brought representation to the growing L-G-B-T-Q movement through his disco music, a genre rooted in the black and brown gay community.

- This is important because Sylvester refused to stay closeted even when his label tried to conform his image to be more masculine.

- What does Sylvester mean to you?

- I can't really articulate how much being 10 years old and seeing somebody who a grownup be themselves and be visibly queer and glamorous and being embraced by other black people.

It really showed that, oh no, this can be a warm world too, you know?

- As the 1970s ended, disco's popularity waned partly due to anti disco sentiment, but dance music evolved into new styles like High Energy, House, and Techno.

Sylvester would go on to release seven more albums throughout the seventies and eighties and kept the dance floors pumping with tracks like, "Do You Wanna Funk?"

in 1982.

Sylvester and Cowley recaptured the magic of "You Make Me Feel", by blending the traditional disco sound with the new electronic dance sound of high energy, the song became a hit in Europe further cementing Sylvester and Patrick Cowley as innovators in dance music history.

- Sadly, Patrick Cowley died from AIDS later that year and six years later, Sylvester passed away from AIDS in 1988 at the age of 41.

In his will, he declared that the proceeds from his music should go to HIV AIDS charities.

- To still be activated enough to support your community.

We not only see that as brave and as beautiful, but also as a blueprint.

Here's how you can be in the midst of a struggle and still create relief for yourself and others.

- Though Sylvester has been gone for over 30 years, the power of his music continues to impact people.

In 2019, "You Make Me Feel Mighty Real" was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation, and to this day remains a powerful celebration of L-G-B-T-Q pride.

- When I think about the artists like Lil Nas X, when I think about Lady Gaga.

Of course, when I think about Beyonce and the Renaissance album, I think that you can really see their influence on a lot of things sonically, they were one of the people to really show this is how soul music and gospel music and blues music and dance music can live together.

Wait, yeah, Sylvester's Mighty Real, Sylvester was mighty real, mighty complex, and a mighty soulful artist inside of black music, and American music in general.