KC & The Sunshine Band
KC & the Sunshine Band were one of the top hit-making groups of the disco era, with five No. 1 pop hits, each of them built from excitable hooks and simple, repeated lyrics about life and love on the dance floor.
Singer-keyboardist “KC” was born Harry Wayne Casey on Jan 31, 1951, in Hialeah, Fla. He played in bands as a teenager and then studied music at Miami-Dade Community College. At Miami-based TK Records, he and bassist-arranger Richard Finch (born Jan. 23, 1954, in Indianapolis, Ind.) together formed a band originally called KC and the Sunshine Junkanoo Band in 1973.
KC and Finch had their first No. 1 as songwriters with George McCrae's recording of their “Rock Your Baby.” Their Sunshine Band connected with fans first in England with the 1973 single “"Sound Your Funky Horn” and the 1974 album debut “Do It Good,” while only denting American soul charts. The group's self-titled second album in 1975 made them international stars of the moment, with the U.S. No. 1 hits “That's the Way (I Like It)” and “Get Down Tonight,” plus the top 40 “Boogie Shoes.”
More hits followed, first from the 1976 album “Part Three,” which included more career-defining singles: “I'm Your Boogie Man,” “(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty” and “Keep It Comin' Love.” The album “Do You Wanna Go Party” included the danceable love ballad “Please Don't Go,” the band's final No. 1 pop single in the U.S. and the last Sunshine Band song produced by Finch before quitting the act.
In 1982, KC was seriously injured in a head-on collision, but in 1983 scored one final dance hit, “Give It Up,” a top 20 single in the U.S. The band broke up and KC retired from music in the mid-'80s, but he reformed the Sunshine Band with mostly new members a decade later.
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