Review: Donna Summer, The Ultimate Collection

Donna Summer is more than a piece of ass.  A lot more.  I didn’t realize this until recently because I wasn’t paying attention during the mid ’70s to mid ’80s when she was a major star.  Dumb.  You should always pay attention.  For starters, Summer has an exceptionally strong voice.  But she has more than that.  She is a very talented songwriter who wrote or co-wrote much of her material including most of her big hits.  With a strong background in musical theatre she also has a pronounced ability to take on whatever characterization is needed to sell the song and make it work.  Summer combined her writing and characterization abilities to produce a sequence of conceptual double albums that were also major hits.  For a long time, she led the way.  Summer is a very talented woman. 

That talent was massively rewarded during her prime.  She won five Grammy Awards including awards in the R&B, Rock, Dance and Gospel categories.  She had at least one top forty tune every year from 1975 through 1984 including 14 Billboard top 10 pop singles, 4 pop #1s, and 16 #1s on various Billboard charts.  She was the first woman to have 3 #1 singles in a calendar year and the first artist of any kind to have 3 consecutive #1 double albums.  Not only were many of her singles big hits, a couple of them were revolutionary.  The 17+ minute remix of “Love to Love You, Baby” released in 1975 was a worldwide phenomenon.  The track featured Summer moaning and groaning in the throes of simulated orgasm combined with a monstrous dance groove crafted by Giorgio Moroder.  It was banned, it was salivated over, and it became a staple of the underground and emerging disco dance scenes.  Some people divide the history of disco into before and after “Love to Love You, Baby”, and it launched the careers of both Summer and Moroder.  (I also wonder if it didn’t play an unrecognized role in the “Disco Sucks” phenomenon.  If this was simulated orgasm, how could insecure males ever be sure their women weren’t jiving them all along?  Rather than deal with their secret my-dick’s-too-small fears these guys attacked disco?  Ya think?) Summer and Moroder followed it up with “I Feel Love” another monster dance and pop hit that was the first recognized song to be recorded with a completely synthesized backing track.  “I Feel Love” has been remixed more times by more people than you can count. 

When I began to wake up and learn something about Summer I naturally wanted to hear the full version of “Love to Love You, Baby” that had had such an enormous effect on the development of dance music.  I was suprised to find we didn’t have it anywhere in our collection.  No problem, right?  There’s a million Donna Summer retrospective collections out there so it should be easy to get a copy.  Turns out that isn’t the case.  All the greatest hits collections have it, but they almost all have the short radio version.  The original album of the same name which contained the long remix as side 1 is still in print but I was looking for a good career retrospective.  The only one I was able to find was the import “The Ultimate Collection” a three disc set that includes all of her major hits along with the 17 min “Love to Love You, Baby”.  Most of Summer’s disco tracks were given 12″ club mixes and, for the most part, these longer mixes are absent here.  Almost all of the tracks are the album versions.  The two exceptions are the New Radio Millenium mix of “State of Independence” and the Masters at Work 86th St mix of “I Feel Love” (the original album versions of both tunes are also included). 

“The Ultimate Collection” is remastered in 32 bit format (regular redbook CD is 16 bit) and the sound quality is excellent.   With a voice as clean, strong and pure as Summer’s, recordings as well engineered as many of these, and a sound system that will let you hear it, the 32 bit mastering is a real benefit. 

If all you want are the major hits and you can live without the complete “Love to Love You, Baby” there are many other collections out there that will more or less do the job at a lower price.  If you want a retrospective collection that includes the long “Love to Love You, Baby”, this is your only choice.  However, it’s a good choice because it includes all the hits, sounds terrific, and is a definitve demonstration that Donna Summer was so much more than a piece of ass.