One Hit Wonder: Play That Funky Music

It's September 18, 1976, and "Play That Funky Music" hits the charts and stays for three weeks, long enough to become ingrained in our cultural conciousness forever. Because even if you weren't alive back then, or know nothing else about the song, you probably know the chorus to this one:

Play that funky music white boy
Play that funky music right
Play that funky music white boy
Lay down the boogie and play that funky music till you die

The song was the only hit by a Pittsburgh rock band called Wild Cherry, led by singer and songwriter Rob Parissi. Named after a box of cough drops, the band had a rather unremarkable career in the early 1970s before breaking up. Parissi got a job managing a Bonanza steakhouse until he was overcome by the urge to get onstage once again.
But with disco music taking over the charts, the reformed Wild Cherry wasn't doing much better than its predecessor, until a fateful night in a club when they saw the direction their music would take.
"In the dressing room, I told the guys that we had to find a rock'n'roll way to play this disco stuff," Parissi said in an interview. "Our drummer said, 'Well, I guess it's like they say -- You gotta play that funky music, white boy.' I said, 'That's a great idea.' I grabbed a bar pad, the kind used to take down drink orders, and began to write."
The song itself is autobiographical, the tale of a rock band struggling to make it in a disco world until they add a funky beat to their music.

Now first it wasn't easy
Changin' Rock and Roll and minds
and things were getting shaky
I thought I'd have to leave it behind
But now its so much better (it's so much better)
I'm funking out in every way
But I'll never lose that feelin' (no I won't)
Of how I learned my lesson that day

To cement its new rock/funk direction Wild Cherry went into the studio to record a cover of a Commodores tune called "I Feel Sanctified," with"Play That Funky Music" planned as the B side of the disc. But their producer and label pushed for "Funky Music" to be the A side, and it soon took off. The song earned a number of honors for Wild Cherry: Billboard's Best Pop Group of the Year, an American Music Award for the Top R&B Single of the Year, as well as two Grammy nominations (Best New Vocal Group and Best R&B Performance by a Group or Duo).
But at its heart, "Play That Funky Music" was always a novelty song, and groups that score their first hits with novelty songs are rarely able to follow up and build a lasting career (Dexy's Midnight Runners and "Come On Eileen" being a case in point).
Despite the initial acclaim, the group never scored again. "After that, we started to overproduce our records, and that's probably why we never had another major hit," Parissi said. "A lot of that was my fault, striving to sound different. We cut our last album in February 1979 and then just kind of fell apart."
So, while the group is long gone, its one big hit is still with us and still getting airplay...and royalties for Parissi, I hope.

Just a taste: Play That Funky Music, Wild Cherry