Sylvester - The Queen of Disco-Realness

You know the story of the churchman who preaches from the pulpit but then fools around with children in the back of the sacristy? This script differs slightly from the usual tale told about such representatives of the Holy Institution; according to his own accounts, at the age of just eight, it was little Sylvester James Jr. who seduced the organist of the Church Of God In Christ, located in the Watts neighborhood of south Los Angeles. The boy is too curious, and has a desperate need to discover what lies behind the rigidity of the clerical robe; the sense of sin and the taste of forbidden fruit act like a spring on his already combustible imagination, likely combined with the need to find a male figure to take the place of his absent father. Or, more simply, Sylvester is already running his first experiments to figure out what it might mean to have a flesh-and-blood husband - some eight-year-olds build things with Lego, others take their role far too seriously while playing House.

But the responsibility lies with the adult in question; the organist gives in to the boy's advances, and the two begin an affair that will only be discovered when Sylvester is taken to the doctor, who finds clear signs on the back of his body of precocious sexual activity.

We are in the mid-1950s; the discovery of the strange couple will be the scandal of the year among the churchgoers, and the man in question will be immediately transferred to another neighborhood (not excommunicated, mind you: transferred). But for little Sylvester, this marks the start of a swift and painful slide into a world of marginalization, where difference is branded and punished as a sin of the devil. Everything is made even more dramatic by the fact that, up to that point, Sylvester had unquestionably been the superstar of the services, which everyone rushed to attend: every Sunday morning, the boy climbed onto a fruit crate to reach the lectern, and sang out the gospel hymns with a mature, impassioned voice that soared into a tireless lyrical falsetto and showered the crowd with a divine vibrato.

But his flamboyance no longer amuses anyone; it's one thing to impersonate Diva Divina and pass for an amusing eccentric, quite another to sleep with the priest and insist on wearing his mother's clothes to make the act more convincing. For his mother Letha in particular, who has remarried and, besides Sylvester, John and Larry, has had three more children, the situation grows more untenable by the day. Her religious faith clouds her love for her firstborn, while neighborhood gossip bears down on the rest of the family, including a stepfather who wants nothing to do with the matter. At just fifteen, and without having finished school, Sylvester officially finds himself out of the house.

So begins the arc of one of the most brilliant and uncompromising personalities in twentieth-century dance music. For many at the time, as sadly still today, Sylvester is simply beyond the pale: Black, gay, made up, wigged out, with a piercing voice impossible to ignore, a presence that wouldn't go unnoticed even inside the aviary of the Versailles gardens. Wherever he turns up, audiences feel somehow cornered; some play along, but many look embarrassed and unsure what to do, as if the "problem" were theirs (remember the reactions in the room that time Cicciolina went on French TV to sing "Muscolo rosso" with her nipples bared?).

I've known plenty of people 'like him', but of all of them Sylvester just wasn't capable of hiding. He could have had a normal life, if only he'd toned it down a bit...

These are the words spoken by his sister Bernardette in a posthumous documentary about her brother's life. Words that can even make sense, coming from a family member visibly worried about the safety of the person in question. But they're also words you often hear tossed around by the most unlikely people. And yet it's precisely thanks to people incapable of hiding, like Sylvester, that society moves forward, for everyone's benefit. The San Francisco "clones" could say what they liked when they accused him of being too effeminate during one of the many marches in support of Harvey Milk's election, of whom Sylvester was a close friend; the truth is that it's certainly not through concealment and silence that the rest of the world will ever come to care about the causes of a minority like the queer community. Sylvester may well be excessive and over the top, embodying that very stereotype which makes closeted, insecure people so uncomfortable, but he puts his face, his reputation, and even his backside on the line, and in doing so he takes the scorn, the kicks and the insults of an entire America. He will nonetheless emerge a moral winner, as well as the embodiment of one of the most unforgettable Queens of Disco in history, thanks to an enviable vocal talent.

The history of entertainment is certainly not short of androgynous figures, especially in the gilded Seventies and Eighties, but none of them seem to bring the uncompromising passion that Sylvester James did. From the gospel music of his childhood, which would give him the blueprint for his vocal style, through a rock and blues period with the Hot Band, and on to the most free-spirited and futuristic disco music thanks to his partnership with the brilliant Patrick Cowley, all the way to HI-NRG, rare groove leanings and post-disco excursions, Sylvester's career is a small goldmine of hits and albums largely forgotten today by the general public, yet still shining with a brilliant light of their own.

Not only that, he's also behind one of the ten most famous and explosive dance tracks of all time, so let's be clear: anyone who has never so much as tapped their left foot's toes to the rhythm of "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" had better go make themselves some chamomile tea. For those who choose to stick around, this story is told through the first four stages of our protagonist's life, from adolescence to the conquest of success, and then following the swing of time's passage, from private events to shifts in fashion and socio-cultural perceptions.

Stage one: homeless but with perfect makeup – The era of the Disquotays, "defiant sissies of the Sixties"

Barely a teenager and already out of the house, Sylvester finds himself living day to day, scraping together food and shelter however he can – often finding refuge at his maternal grandmother's house and with friends, sometimes stealing something to eat from neighborhood shops and sleeping on the street. The odd jobs he finds don't last long. During this period he becomes part of the Disquotays, a group of queer and transgender people, predominantly African American, who hang around Sunset Boulevard. For Sylvester it's his first contact with a community more congenial to him, a sort of extended family in which he finds the love and support of people who share his own experiences. Duchess, a transgender sex worker, soon becomes one of his best friends.

These are intense years; besides being a fixture at Etta James's house, who has turned her living room into a club where the Disquotays throw the city's most outrageous and fiery parties, one of their favorite pastimes is dressing up as women to get into Hollywood's heteronormative clubs. Cross-dressing in those days is a crime punishable by arrest and jail time, but that certainly doesn't discourage the group from trying every Saturday night. When the disguise works, the results are nothing short of hilarious. When instead they get caught at the door – not exactly difficult, given Sylvester's build, who is no featherweight – then it's heels in hand and off running down the Boulevard, fleeing from police and bouncers. But the daily life of the Disquotays, however colorful it may appear in a posthumous retelling, is anything but easy. Prostitution and drugs are the main ways of getting by, and even though Sylvester himself will never personally take part in such activities, the future is harsh and uncertain for everyone, often far too short due to circumstances beyond their control.

We're now well into the Sixties, and America is in turmoil over the civil rights struggle that the African American population is loudly demanding. These are uprisings that will help reshape the face of society in the years to come, but as unfortunately happens in a capitalist and patriarchal climate, emancipation is won in stages, and in the current push for recognition there's no room for further fringes and minorities outside the "Christian family format", even though they too might add their voice to the chorus for everyone's common benefit.

The celebrated James Baldwin – writer, theorist and fervent activist, already known at the time above all for the explosive subject matter of his famous novel "Giovanni's Room" (1956) – is filed by the CIA under the heading "Negro homosexual" while living in semi-exile in France, where he is trying to piece together the fragments of his own experience (Raoul Peck's documentary "I Am Not Your Negro" (2016) is highly recommended viewing). But over the – documented – bisexuality of Malcolm X a dead silence still reigns to this day; almost no one dares speak of it for fear of "tarnishing" the reputation of a man who gave his life for his people. His private affairs obviously have nothing to do with the value of his actions, but at the time the matter of his fluid sexual past isn't even present in the records, a clear sign that this particular taboo simply cannot be revealed – on pain of instant discrediting in the eyes of his supporters, despite a life devoted to their needs (a life that would soon be taken from him, as soon as his words began to criticize the war in Vietnam).

Even more telling is the position of one of the movement's most famous fathers, Martin Luther King; in a letter responding to one from a young gay man asking his advice on how to deal with his situation (published in Ebony magazine in 1958), King commends the young man for the clarity with which he expresses his feelings and for the courage to face them openly – one of the first public documents in the history of the African American community where, instead of condemning outright acts that were at the time illegal, the existence of homosexuality is considered with the calm of a simple fact. But King's letter, unfortunately, also concludes with the advice to go see a psychiatrist, to be cured of the illness before it's too late.

In a situation like this, then, where even the most enlightened fathers of the movement are distant or disconnected from the issue – whether out of fear, out of despair over the already precarious conditions of everyone else, out of genuine ignorance, or whatever the reason – the Disquotays are simply invisible, and the message is all too clear: if you're different, you can still join the movement, but if you happen to be different two or three times over, tough luck.

So, when the riots reach Watts in August 1965, the Disquotays take no part in them, and for once at least they avoid taking the beatings themselves (period records, after all, depict military squadrons, streets in flames and scenes of rare violence). But this is still too good an opportunity to pass up! While police crack down on the rest of the population, this group of divas smash the windows of the neighborhood's beauty salons and run off through the alleys with bags full of wigs, makeup, feathered dresses and fake nails. At the sight of such a surreal scene, the police don't even have the nerve to stop them.

Thought of today, the scene is funny, but having to fight tooth and nail to stay alive, and being reduced to stealing just to express one's own identity, is a situation that a proud, superb character like Sylvester cannot stomach for long.

Even on the other side of America, in the lively New York, quality of life for the Black gay community is certainly no better, and still lags well behind the rest of society. But unlike the overly sprawling and disconnected Los Angeles, the main protagonists of the New York movement are moving with greater resolve; the still very much alive today ballroom scene is starting to take shape, thanks to legendary figures like Pepper LaBeija, while on the streets and along the piers of the Hudson River, Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson (pictured here on the left) do everything they can to give homeless trans people some semblance of community and support. It's precisely these last two who are the main driving forces behind the historic Stonewall uprising, which on June 28, 1969 kicks off demands for social redress from the gay community as well. News of the Stonewall events reaches Los Angeles, and together with the much broader flower-power movement of '68 opposing the Vietnam War, it shows that the times are now more than ripe for a change of course. New York is far away and out of reach, but life in Watts is static and certainly won't change any time soon; the only way out, for Sylvester, is to leave for the one place in the world that, at that moment, is capable of combining a decent lifestyle with his artistic leanings: San Francisco.

[Although documentation from the period is scarce, the dramatic and colorful story of the Disquotays has managed to enter the language of the queer community and beyond, thanks precisely to the fact of having had among its ranks a future star like Sylvester. But it's worth noting that, more than fifty years after these events, the situation for those same fringes of the population, in certain parts of America, hasn't improved one bit.

Shot in late 2014 and released the following year, "Check It" is the incredible documentary about the life of a group of gay and transgender teenagers in Washington DC, kids abandoned by their own families and communities from the age of fourteen because of their sexual orientation, who survive by dealing drugs and working the streets just a few miles from the White House. The only difference with the Disquotays is that these kids, today, tired of being beaten bloody on the street and vulnerable to every kind of sexual abuse (and the diseases that come with it), have taken their destiny into their own hands in the only way they know how: by organizing America's first openly gay criminal gang — the Check It gang, precisely — and using violence as a weapon of self-defense. A raw but at times also hilarious vision, not without hope, warmly recommended to anyone wanting to get a sense of the struggles of one of the most overlooked minorities in the Western world, and perhaps, through it, to try to imagine — allowing for the obvious differences — what life must have been like for Sylvester, Duchess and the other figures of that era].

Phase two: San Francisco and the Cockettes, always partial to bearded hippies

Sylvester arrives in San Francisco in 1970; the city is in the full swing of the counter-culture, and the air on the streets is nothing short of electric. His first — and most important — contact happens when he joins the Cockettes, the newly formed avant-garde hippie movement led by a celebrated drag queen named Hibiscus, pictured here alongside (a fitting name: he shows up in a riot of hair, leaves and fruit, but on occasion also dresses as Madama Butterfly and walks around the city with a paper parasol). The Cockettes describe themselves as a "psychedelic gay movement"; for Sylvester, the situation is light years away from the repression he was used to in Watts — here there's no division by sex or race, and no worries about what to wear or how to behave, quite the opposite: the more outrageous the outfit, the better. The Cockettes stage satirical, delirious cabaret shows, the very blueprint on which so much of the drag culture of the years to come will be built, from Leigh Bowery in London's East End to the far more mainstream "Drag Race" by RuPaul. Also famous is the short film "Tricia's Wedding", which the Cockettes shoot in 1971, a psychedelic and irreverent film about the media's obsession with the wedding of Tricia Nixon, daughter of then-President of the United States Richard Nixon.

But during the Cockettes' shows, Sylvester — the great Diva — insists on having a segment all to himself. He appears on stage dressed in elegant evening gowns, with white flowers woven into his hair, embodying a jazz Diva of old in the vein of two of his all-time biggest idols: Billie Holiday and Joséphine Baker.

At first the whole thing is bound to come across as ridiculous, the mock-serious moment when the drag queen of the hour gives herself over to a flood of tears and pheromones. But when Sylvester opens his mouth and starts to sing, the voice that pours out is anything but a parody; the audience is practically lifted off its feet and carried out of the theater, shaken to the soul by the gospel energy and force of a voice that, after years of rejection and life on the streets, has grown stronger and more desperate than ever.

So much for deep throat, this bitch has swallowed an organ pipe!

The difference between Sylvester and the Cockettes, in short, soon becomes clear. While the latter grind through LSD and marijuana even at breakfast, and wrap up their shows with anarchic, carnival-like orgies of naked men and women barking and rolling around in the mud on stage, pushing the concept of art well beyond the limits of good taste, Sylvester categorically refuses to take part in any such vulgar display: his look is elegant, his makeup flawless, his preparation meticulous, spending hours and hours warming up his voice and rehearsing in front of the mirror.

During the Cockettes' tour stop in New York, in November 1971, the city's queer intelligentsia proves anything but receptive to the debauched antics of the Frisco troupe, and even Andy Warhol himself seems quite unenthusiastic about that kind of show. But Sylvester's segment is on everyone's lips; in the short span of a handful of dates, his voice has made the rounds of the entire scene. On his return to Los Angeles, Sylvester leaves the Cockettes to focus on his solo career.

Phase three: glam, rock & blues (and bottles thrown in the face)

The split from the Cockettes is, in any case, neither dramatic nor a bridge-burning one; his former colleagues will go on to remain close friends for life. In fact, it's fair to say that the hippie influence of the Cockettes is still very much alive in Sylvester's first musical phase. After signing an initial deal with A&M Records, our man records a handful of blues and rock demos with a clear psychedelic bent, but the project never takes off. "Why Was I Born" even has the future Pointer Sisters providing backing vocals, but despite the song's already considerable soul punch, A&M rejects the project while Sylvester and his musicians play around town to promote themselves. Famous anecdote: after opening the show for David Bowie's date at the Winterland Ballroom, Bowie himself is said to have remarked:

San Francisco doesn't need me, it's already got Sylvester…

In the end the little group gets noticed by Blue Thumb Records, who decide to back a proper album. Sylvester wants to call it "Scratch My Flower", because the cover has a flower-shaped sticker of the kind that, once peeled off, releases a scented glue (an idea lifted from the famous peel-slowly-and-see Banana of his fan Andy Warhol). But at Blue Thumb they're not at all on board; it's already hard enough to find a market for a Black drag queen singing rock, especially when he insists on being pictured on the cover in platform sandals striking Diva poses, let alone if you throw sexual innuendo into the mix. So they settle on a generic Sylvester And The Hot Band (1973), since the Hot Band is the main new addition: five exclusively white and exclusively straight men, personally chosen by Sylvester to serve as a backdrop to his presence — Bobby Blood on trumpet, Chris Mostert on sax, James Q. Smith on guitar, Travis Fullerton on drums and Kerry Hatch on bass, who also occasionally co-writes the original songs.

In my band there's room for only one Diva, and that Diva is me!

He pronounces judgment. Full stop. Of course, Sylvester And The Hot Band is still a record far from his future glories, as well as being made up exclusively of covers of songs that were fashionable at the time, creating a generic effect that fails to win over the public and doesn't even ride the glam wave in which a character like Sylvester might perhaps have found more favor. "Southern Man" by Neil Young gets a softer, more groove-laden treatment, but Sylvester's voice, buried under guitars and reverb, doesn't stand out as it should: such a baggy production is ill-suited to his clear, clean timbre, especially when he rises into falsetto – these are sounds that are undoubtedly better suited to his old friend Etta James, the belter Patti Labelle, the screaming dirt of Tina Turner or even the strong contralto of Cher during the "3614 Jackson Highway" era. The same disorienting effect is repeated on "A Whiter Shade Of Pale", Procol Harum's timeless super-classic, which in Sylvester's mouth struggles to take flight.

The closing track "My Country 'Tis Of Thee" stands out, though — a song from the American tradition that the Hot Band turns into a tasty jam with almost progressive flavors thanks to the horn arrangements, while Sylvester only comes in around the midpoint of the track to implore the listener with the heartfelt verve of an Aretha Franklin.

On record, then, the energy Sylvester was capable of unleashing live still wasn't being captured. But accounts from the time also tell of a disastrous tour around America in support of the album, especially when the band ventured into the southern states, like Texas and Louisiana. Sylvester and the Hot Band didn't even need to start playing — the audience would throw spit and bottles onstage at the mere sight of a Black man dressed as a woman. For the singer, all this was little more than business as usual, accustomed as he was, his whole life long, to taunts and insults he faced even just going out to buy milk. But for the five men of the Hot Band, the reception was a real cold shower, the stark realization that being different required uncommon courage, and while Sylvester kept marching on as if nothing were wrong, relations within the group grew tense.

There was still time to record a second album, however, Bazaar (1973), which still moves toward rock and blues, but already shows a little something extra. Sylvester sounds more relaxed, the arrangements seem better crafted, while the Pointer Sisters' backing vocals definitely work better. The two original songs written by Hatch stand out in particular; the opener "Down On Your Knees" is a sort of "Proud Mary" transported onto the future stage of "Rocky Horror Picture Show", with a tireless Sylvester pushing forward on a panty-dropping falsetto. Simply lovely, on the other hand, is the ballad "All That I Need", one of those typical melodies from the good old days, which in the mouth of a non-cross-dressing soul singer could have become a minor love-song classic.

The rest is certainly an enjoyable record, at times witty ("Play Something Sweet" by Toussaint), at times melodramatic ("My Life"), but once again it fails to fully reveal the performer's personality.

Bazaar's fortunes turn out to be just as bleak as its predecessor's, and the Hot Band soon falls apart, leaving Sylvester out on his own once again. Rock simply doesn't bring him luck; his artistry needs something else. The ever-perceptive John Waters, then, had seen it right when, after watching a Cockettes show, he had this to say about Sylvester:

This is no hippie with a beard, this is Billie Holiday and Diana Ross on Lsd.

There is a good reissue on the market from Geffen covering the Hot Band period, called The Blue Thumb Collection (2009), which includes both albums in full plus a couple of previously unreleased tracks: the old "Why Was I Born" and a bloodless version of "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye" by Leonard Cohen.

Phase four: the perfect formula (and two tons of fun)

Sylvester's 1973-76 period is dominated by a constant change of line-up, in an attempt to find the right formula to convince the city's record labels to offer him a deal – no easy task, given that he himself would often complain that:

Nobody wants to sign a drag queen!

Indeed, the idea of appearing onstage with other drag queens never really took off; first there was a trio – with Jerry Kirky and Lady Bianca – and then a quartet – with Arnold Elzie, Leroy Davis and Gerry Kirby – but in both cases Sylvester wasn't satisfied, and although his name was already a cult favorite in the city's clubs, the rest of the world outside the Castro was completely unaware he existed.

This period is actually full of meaning for Sylvester's life: his tireless support for the gay rights cause leads him to sing at every demonstration, making him a much-loved figure around town. Despite everything, he will also receive harsh criticism from the more conservative fringes within the gay movement itself, those same fringes of men who benefit from his support but who, ultimately, feel ashamed to be associated with his too-"different" look, and prefer instead to fall in complicit, criminal silence into line with the false security of the much-coveted and entirely artificial "normality" of the heteronormative world (sadly, that's how it goes; even Marsha P. Johnson in New York will receive similar treatment: after literally throwing the first brick at the police at Stonewall in protest and setting off a movement for liberation that is now spreading nationwide, the organizers of one of the first gay pride marches will try to relegate her to the back of the parade, to hide from the rest of the world the unforgivable "scandal" of being a transgender woman).

But Sylvester is unstoppable, and above all has the good sense to tell anyone who levels such accusations at him to go to hell. It's no coincidence that, during this period, he becomes a trusted friend of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to defy fate head-on: he has run again for San Francisco's city council for the third time and, after months of legendary campaigns full of theatrics and twists, will finally be elected in 1977 to the joy and jubilation of the whole neighborhood (but he will be assassinated just a year later by Dan White, his main rival, a staunch conservative and devout religious man).

But the turnaround in Sylvester's personal career comes only gradually; in one of the many attempts to put together a new line-up, his manager at the time – Brent Thomson – organizes auditions to find new backing singers, this time looking only among women. One after another, dozens of anemic, wailing bleached blondes parade across the stage, in bell-bottoms and floral shirts, but Sylvester is bored and rejects them all… until Martha Wash steps onto the stage, a 130-kilo African American mama with a tireless gospel voice and a pair of eyes that can read your soul with a single glance. Sylvester is in ecstasy, and immediately asks her:

Do you happen to have a friend, more or less your size, who can sing like you?

A heavyset friend of Martha's really does exist, her name is Izora Rhodes, and together the two form Two Tons O' Fun – two genuine tons of fun, with the added talent of being able to harmonize like an orchestra, weaving a net sturdy enough to catch even the most tone-deaf singer who might fall through. Add Sylvester's superb voice, and the trio quite literally takes flight toward the Heavens.

This is how one of the most important relationships of Sylvester's life is born: two trusted colleagues and friends who will stay by his side to the end of his days. But not only that; with the Two Tons, the myth of the "African-American backing singers" takes literal shape, a staple that will persist for years to come across the rest of the popular music world – from David Byrne to Jack White and Mariah Carey, whenever there's a need onstage for first-rate vocal support, you'll always find at least a couple of Black women with a gospel/soul background in the back. Here are Sylvester and the Two Tons below, in a riot of flesh, wigs and dazzling smiles:

The trio's new live performances are far more thrilling: the synergy between Sylvester and the Two Tons is simply electrifying and the stage catches fire – just one thing needs to be made clear before every show: Martha sings the low line, Izora the middle one, and Sylvester handles the coloratura soprano part, and woe to anyone who tries to outdo him by singing higher! Finally, after months of small gigs up and down the West Coast, Sylvester and his band get noticed by Harvey Fuqua, a longtime heavyweight of the record industry thanks to his work with Motown Records, and the man responsible for discovering – among others – Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, before officially passing the torch to the legendary Berry Gordy.

Like everyone else, Fuqua isn't entirely convinced by Sylvester's look, but unlike most, his experience in the field has taught him that a vocal talent like that doesn't come along every day. So Fuqua offers Sylvester a contract with Fantasy Records, a famous label of the era to which he has lent his own expertise in soul/r&b (besides Motown, Fuqua was also an integral part of the historic Chess offices in Chicago). But along with the offer of a contract and the money needed to record a proper album comes a plea to the singer to tone down the over-the-top look, just for the cover shoot, in order to try to push the record toward a less niche market. Against all odds, this time Sylvester says yes: it's the first of only two compromises he will ever accept regarding his image over the course of his career. For a couple of hours, the wigs and sequined outfits are swapped for a plain jacket-and-trousers suit, an utterly ordinary short haircut and a very casual pose (though a slightly more attentive eye could easily notice that the contouring of the lips, eyes and perfectly arched brows is clearly not the work of Mother Nature, but rather of Mother Maybelline – a nuance the general public doesn't seem able to catch: judge for yourselves from the photo below).

Despite the restrictive situation, he deserves credit for giving in to Fuqua's requests, because the resulting Sylvester (1977) is a stunning album, without which the rest of his career might never have taken off.

It kicks off at full throttle with "Over And Over", one of the key tracks in the Sylvester philosophy, urging listeners never to give up in the face of any obstacle. Musically, it's a kind of Greco-Roman brass march that unspools over almost seven soaring minutes of disco-soul, with the tireless Two Tons repeating the refrain while Sylvester roams up and down the register – there's even a bridge where the instrumentation is stripped back to just congas and handclaps, before the vocals surge back in full force. In short, by 1977 disco music has already become America's daily bread, and Fuqua knows it well, but Sylvester hardly needs telling twice either, because the genre is essentially a second skin to him – dance music born straight out of the needs of his own gay community, already taking over the scene's clubs with remarkable ease. "Changes" is another vivid example of irresistible disco with a tight groove, cushiony backing vocals and a melodic line full of pleading and bursts of falsetto, and "Down Down Down" does even better, agitated, with sliding violins and piano counterpoint over a galloping rhythm.

But Sylvester isn't only disco music; "I Tried To Forget You" is a swelling emotional moment, "Tipsong" veers into the bucolic thanks to an arrangement of flutes, Latin guitars and castanets. But it's with "Loving Grows Up Slow" that Sylvester delivers one of the most intense vocal performances of his career, one of those good old-fashioned ballads where the romanticism, however overblown, never tips into the saccharine.

Special mention goes to "I Been Down", which is less a sung track than a three-way conversation between Sylvester, Martha and Izora, each complaining to the others about the treatment received at the hands of a man, confiding in one another as if they were in the bathroom touching up their makeup – the whole image of the Black woman with hands on her hips, shaking her neck and her wig, is contained entirely within this track, an attitude English speakers call "sassy" (a stereotype, plain and simple, arguably even a racist one, but one that – no offense intended – is genuinely too much fun).

Sylvester fails to chart, but the two singles pulled from it – "Over And Over" and "Down Down Down" – both reach No. 18 on the US Dance Chart, kicking off his real career in earnest. There's no denying it: countless artists now jumping on the disco bandwagon (including one-hit wonders long since forgotten) are shifting millions of albums week after week – the Casablanca catalogue alone is, at this point, a juggernaut – but sales for Sylvester, a Black drag queen, will never reach the levels of more socially acceptable figures like the Bee Gees or Donna Summer, and will remain confined to the "ghetto" of the Dance Chart rather than the Pop one. Still, Sylvester is no small achievement for Frisco's outcasts, a way of getting a foot in the door and joining in on (his own) party just as things are heating up on the dancefloor. The first album released under the name Sylvester alone is one of the finest of his entire career, a showcase of his versatile style as well as proof of a songwriting pen capable of keeping pace with his vocal talent – only three tracks are covers, the rest all bear his writing or co-writing credit. And from here, things can only get better.

Disco Diva

Having established that disco music is the perfect medium for Sylvester's artistry, now it's just a matter of staying the course, while still pouring gospel and soul into its veins. The next step has a title that might seem obvious – Step II (1978) – but the results exceed every expectation.

Rather than being pictured once again in "vulgar" men's clothing, Sylvester agrees to let the cover of the new album feature an image that doesn't depict him at all – the second compromise with Fantasy Records, still cautious about his "well-hidden" homosexuality. But it's a compromise that proves prophetic. The chosen photo shows a cocktail glass about to shatter against a fluorescent pink tiled floor; one can easily imagine how, moments later, the shards and spilled liquid will be trampled underfoot by the sock-and-sandal combo visible on the left side of the photo. It's the perfect image to capture the way Sylvester finally manages to get himself noticed by the rest of the world, screeching and stomping like a madwoman on a rooftop terrace (as the legendary Raffaella Carrà famously sang) with an explosive album and a couple of singles that will make modern history from the moment they're released.

The new obsession among club-goers is now entirely synthetic; from Europe, Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder have recently released "I Feel Love", the explosive, landmark disco track built on layered synthesizer lines, creating an atmosphere capable of launching the dancefloor into a sci-fi future.

But Sylvester has found his own personal Moroder; his name is Patrick Cowley (pictured here on the left), a shy, mustachioed gay man who, like so many others, came to San Francisco to escape the ignorance of small-town life. Unlike many in that city, the introverted Patrick never strays far from his beloved Kraftwerk records; he's passionate about composing music, and above all about synthesizers, which he's studying at City College – at the moment, his quirky but fascinating and wildly futuristic experiments are being used as soundtracks for cult pornographic films (anyone interested can nowadays find albums like "School Daze", "Muscle Up" and "Candida Cosmica" remastered and reissued by the aptly named Dark Entries). The concept is the same as his European counterpart's: the synthesizer's sound carries a unique allure, the backing track is programmed with a couple of buttons and set to loop, creating a cold, uniform rhythmic fabric that advances with ruthless precision, and only those with enough breath to mount it and bend it to their will can call themselves a true Disco Queen. Sylvester, rather than merely taming it, fires it off into space with a flick of a stiletto heel.

"Dance (Disco Heat)" is the first single taken from Step II, a lean, lively track with a ruthlessly Teutonic beat, on which he and the Two Tons ride tirelessly for almost six minutes of calls and responses, falsettos and tenors, bringing to the dance floor a sound that's brand new yet still steeped in that warmth only the soul of gospel can breathe into the spirit – American and European schools fused together in one single, scorching embrace.

And the heart is still full of gospel; on Step II we find a vibrant ballad like "I Took My Strength From You", a moment of unshakeable faith seasoned with flutes and a sly bed of strings, while the closing "Just You And Me Forever" is one of the simplest, most disarming love songs ever written. Serving as a bridge between them are "Grateful", a wiggling disco moment, and "Was It Something That I Said", the new three-way conversation between Sylvester and the Two Tons O' Fun, once again pondering relationship troubles (Sylvester's tenor register stands out here, buoyed by an innate sweetness and a friendly timbre that immediately invites gossip and confidences, as if sitting under a wisteria at teatime with a slice of red velvet cake).

But with the arrival of "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" things change for good. Originally conceived as a ballad (as can be heard in the "Epilogue" version, also included on the album), the track is sped up and its parts dismantled and reassembled into fluid blocks on Patrick's suggestion, who senses in the lyrics a charge of honest eroticism just waiting to be unleashed on the dance floor in full view of the whole community. The rest is history: an epic chord progression, synth vibrating overhead, and Sylvester intoning one of the most celebrated hooks in all of disco music as he glides across the tiles and takes flight on the wings of an ultrasonic falsetto.

While promoting the single in England, and thus far from Fantasy's timid marketing strategies, Sylvester the Stubborn decides to shoot a promotional video for his hit, and this time there's no holding back: he's seen descending a staircase wrapped in black leather with an uncompromisingly feminine aura, then flouncing about in a snow-white suit like a cocaine-addled mobster, and then appearing covered in shimmering sequins, while all around him on the rink sexy skaters glide by dressed in next to nothing – it's the apotheosis of disco music, a totalizing euphoria that for one brief, utopian moment manages to transcend sex and race in favor of the fullest inclusivity.

A curious detail handed down to posterity is that, among the skaters appearing as extras in the video, there should also be one of the greatest terrorists in the history of Anglo-Saxon art, Cosey Fanni Tutti of Throbbing Gristle. Far from being an ironic presence in the trashy sense of the term, Cosey sees in Sylvester a clear embodiment of the purest freedom of expression, almost a joyful way of subverting the concept of performing gender usually assigned at birth. Then again, how could it be otherwise? The other member of Throbbing Gristle is one Genesis P-Orridge, a nonconformist figure bordering on the mad, who had already changed their pronoun to s/he to sidestep any kind of categorization.

At Fantasy they're tearing their hair out over such a video, but by now it's too late, and more importantly: who cares? It's 1978, the peak year of disco music's expansion, a movement that – let's not forget – was popular first and foremost among the gay fringes of society, so it's only fitting that, among the big names of the movement now gathering acclaim, there's also the perfectly made-up face of Sylvester James. He'll be seen appearing on various TV shows, uncompromisingly feminine in his movements and indifferent to any comment, despite the awkward questions thrown at him by hosts clearly unprepared for the subject. But more often than not the crowd welcomes him with enthusiasm, his good humor is undeniably contagious, and his persona oozes glamour and inclusivity from every pore. For millions of people around the world, Sylvester would represent a genuine loss of innocence, because before him no one had ever considered that a Black man could dress like that, sing like that, behave like that, and hold the reins of his own career wrapped in soft white ermine fur.

Both singles taken from Step II top the American Dance Chart for weeks, with "Mighty Real" becoming a hit pretty much everywhere, especially in Europe, peaking in England but doing well in France too, and even here in Italy, where it enters at No. 24 after Sylvester appears on the Rai TV show "Che combinazione". "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" is The Signature, a track that will be imitated, remixed, copied or outright sampled dozens of times in the years to come, while its chorus will keep resurfacing at regular intervals throughout pop culture for decades, eventually detaching itself from its author's face to enter the pantheon of timeless classics.

Anyone who's just landed on Earth can rely on a full listen of Step II as a document capable of illustrating, in under forty minutes, everything there is to know about disco music: the decoding of a genre through its past, present and future, soul and electronics, romance and eroticism, devotion and libertine spirit, plus the ingredient typical of the Sylvester sound: gospel. Simply perfect.

Annus Mirabilis 1979

The final year of disco music's worldwide dominance finds Sylvester in ever more dazzling form. Success takes him around the world, his bank balance keeps growing in the black for the first time in his life, and for a man so flamboyant and vain the effect is like a balm after years of rejection and abuse. Far from living through an alienating period in which career replaces affection, though, Sylvester never stops spending lavishly on his family and all his friends, one of the most notorious "big spenders" of the era, many say, but perhaps he's simply aware of past hardships and of how fleeting and illusory it all is – like the rest of the African-American community, Sylvester too had been forced to never fully trust the good times, and so his attitude is to live in the present.

And this is perhaps the reason why his musical career keeps moving forward without crystallizing around the formula that has just brought him success. The value of an album like Stars (1979) lies precisely in the way he and Patrick Cowley assemble a four-movement future-disco journey, veering away from the concept of the pop song to embrace the more imaginative suite form (which is still very much in vogue thanks to figures like Cerrone and Moroder himself).

Listening to "Stars" is like running in high heels across the rings of Saturn; the track kicks off like a roller coaster, with Sylvester delivering verse and chorus steeped in an ecstatic peace of the senses, but during the bridge the song starts to break apart and climb toward stardust and floating meteorites, its stripped-down rhythm essentially the seed of the house music to come. With "Body Strong" the theme of love turns carnal, but once again the extended format allows Patrick to indulge his love of instrumental interplay (the crackling string section heard halfway through is gorgeous) and to experiment with the built-in remix formula (a technique perfected a few years earlier by pioneering duo Walter Gibbons/Tom Moulton). The splendid "I (Who Have Nothing)" opens with a steady beat and a distinctly romantic piano idea, before a funky guitar arrives along with an interplay between strings and backing vocals, so that by the time Sylvester finally comes in, the track has already veered toward its most heartfelt emotion, and the listener stays glued to the speaker for all eleven effervescent minutes of its length (an effect made all the more curious by the song's peculiar genesis: Sylvester's version is a transfigured disco-music remake of a classic by the duo Leiber & Stoller that had found fame through the interpretations of Ben E. King, 1963, and Shirley Bassey, 1965, but which was itself an English rewrite of "Uno dei tanti", a song Mogol had entrusted to Joe Sentieri back in '61).

It falls to the almost ghostly, moonlit pseudo-dub of "I Need Somebody To Love Tonight", the most evocative track of the bunch, to close out in style a true highlight of Sylvester's discography, one of those records to brandish whenever the author's image is allowed to overshadow his musical substance, as a reminder that, beyond the undeniably larger-than-life persona, Sylvester was above all an excellent musician and performer. The change of direction isn't even much of a drama for his audience; although Stars remains a cult record today, at the time – thanks to constant play in every discotheque in America – a full three tracks out of four reached the Top 5 of the Dance Chart, cementing Sylvester's image without needing to repeat the previous album's massive success. Things only the Stars can afford, indeed.

But Sylvester's personal crowning achievement comes on March 11, 1979, when the then-mayor of San Francisco – Dianne Feinstein – presents him with the Keys to the City, and that same evening the War Memorial Opera House hosts a concert all his own. This is without doubt the most important day of his life: first the recognition, by his beloved adopted city, of years of tireless work, and then the bastion of serious, white, conservative music that, in his honor, opens its doors to the city's Black, hippie, gay and transgender public for an unforgettable evening of disco, soul, gospel and cabaret. Everyone is on stage: his full touring band, and of course the Two Tons O' Fun on backing vocals and Patrick on keyboards. But also present in the audience is his mother, who has finally buried the hatchet and come to witness in person the triumph of her firstborn son, the one everyone had marked out for the worst and who instead ended up doing better than the entire old congregation of sour-faced bigots back in Watts.

The result of that concert ends up in its entirety on Living Proof (1979), a double LP that oozes emotion and energy from every groove. The cover alone says it all: a photo taken on the steps of the Opera House just before the doors open, with Sylvester at the center in a dazzling outfit pouring himself a glass of champagne, the stylish crowd buzzing with anticipation around him, and a drag queen in glamorous attire with a red boa around her neck holding an elegant black dog on a leash.

The "Ouverture" is an instrumental medley of his most famous songs, meant to introduce the band and warm up the stage, so that when Sylvester finally makes his triumphant entrance, the audience can't help but leap to its feet amid thunderous applause and shouts of appreciation.

The flow of Living Proof is a constant up-and-down of rhythm and release of tension, lively moments alternating with ballads delivered in superb voice, and there's no shortage of interludes where Sylvester revives the cabaret spirit he honed in the days of the Cockettes, entertaining the crowd with funny stories and witty remarks.

The brand-new songs from Stars are showcased alongside several classics, but there are also plenty of covers, such as the Beatles' "Blackbird" and a fantastic version of Barry Manilow's "Could It Be Magic". But the most intense moment is reserved for tributes to his favorite divas: Billie Holiday's "Lover Man (Oh Where Can You Be?)" is reworked into an intense moment of jazz and intimacy across two tempos — slow in the first part, bouncy in the second — while the beloved Patti Labelle's "You Are My Friend" would go on to become a classic for Sylvester himself too; his interpretation of it, dedicated to everyone in the room, sends shivers down the spine. For the grand finale, "Dance (Disco Heat)" and "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)", both running over ten minutes, turn the venue into one giant dancefloor.

It's often said that live albums belong to a category of their own, but since Sylvester is no longer with us, and the reassessment of his work is still confined to a relatively small cult following, Living Proof today remains perhaps the most immediate and easily accessible testament to his overflowing personality and vocal power — the quintessential snapshot of a performer at the height of his joy, captured in the midst of an unforgettable era.

Right after — the years of confusion

We've already discussed the collapse of disco music in more detail in the story of Donna Summer; suffice it to recall here how the Disco Demolition Night, an event that started out as a kind of satire, ended up having a devastating effect on the entire movement, while also revealing, through what might have been an understandable dislike of the genre, the never-dormant seeds of racism and homophobia that flourish among the kind of audience that uses rock music as an excuse to turn it into a symbol of machismo. For Sylvester and the rest of the gay community, the sight of the blazing pyre is unpleasant, but certainly nothing new: a mob of enraged white men burning records by gay and Black artists? Go figure — it's nothing but the same old story of America repeating itself as usual. And Sylvester would indeed land on his feet regardless, since his audience of outcasts still needed people like him, and the music and clubs where they could take refuge to live out their identity.

I realise that gay people have put me on a pedestal and I love it. After all, of all the oppressed minorities, they just have to be the most oppressed. They have all the hassles of finding something or someone to identify with – and they chose me. I like being around gay people and they’ve proven to be some of my closest friends and most loyal audiences.

Wise words indeed, ones that would serve as a warning to many a future popstar (though they'd weigh like pebbles in the shoes of anyone who does a U-turn to cover their own backside in a moment of need — isn't that right, Ms. Cuccarini?). Of course, Sell My Soul (1980) still bears heavy traces of the effects stirred up by the anti-disco movement; the title alone says it all, a clear sign that Sylvester has no intention of surrendering and becoming a piece of furniture from the past, and is ready to sell his soul just to carry on and stay relevant. Only the opening "I Need You", in fact, is still a piece of pure disco music; the rest of the album this time around plays with soul, funk and r&b, which suit the singer's voice well, but which also betray the major absences in the studio: Patrick Cowley, in fact, is currently busy building his futuristic solo projects (which will deserve a mention of their own elsewhere), while Fuqua also persuaded the Two Tons O' Fun to try something on their own, and they landed a couple of hits at the top of the American Dance Chart — "Earth Can Be Just Like Heaven" and the double A-side "I Got The Feeling"/"Just Us".

It might just be a coincidence, but Sell My Soul is now missing exactly that veneer of elegant utopia from times past; the mighty choruses of "I'll Dance To That" recall those of Chaka Khan's "I'm Every Woman", the title track struts along to bouncy funk horns, and even "Doin' It For The Real Thing" comes across very much like a diva of old times grappling with the sounds currently in vogue — after all, one of the biggest names in America right now is none other than Diana Ross, the former Supreme miraculously reborn from the ashes of disco music thanks to hugely successful albums like "The Boss" and especially the platinum-selling "Diana" (home to the smash hits "Upside Down" and "I'm Coming Out"). Particularly distinctive, if anything, is the production of "Change Up", a sly, laid-back ballad typical of certain more crowd-pleasing and sultry soul singers, but where the keyboard and orchestral work creates such a dense texture that in places it almost sounds, twenty years ahead of its time, like the early germs of the downtempo and chill-out atmospheres to come.

Formally speaking, there's nothing to hold against Sell My Soul — it's an honest, well-made record, unfortunately released at a time of enormous upheaval and confusion. The years immediately following the fall of disco music saw the most disparate strands take shape, from new wave, metal and hip-hop to house music and the arrival of synth-pop and the Second British Invasion on the US charts. But heard today, Sell My Soul sounds like the document of a project caught between crossfires, a record not always able to capture the ferment of what was really happening at the time, and as such it has remained somewhat on the sidelines, even among fans and collectors hunting for rediscoveries from that era — to draw a comparison with two contemporary albums by two illustrious colleagues: certainly more successful than Summer's flat "The Wanderer", but infinitely less interesting than Grace Jones's multifaceted "Warm Leatherette".

A completely different matter, however, is the following and beautiful Too Hot To Sleep (1981). With disco now confirmed dead, and with both Patrick and the Two Tons still absent, Sylvester moves even further away from the dancefloor, venturing into the softer, more introverted and shadowy side of his art — but in doing so, this time he delivers one of the finest records of his entire career. The sense of disorientation and complete change of direction is conveyed by the strange and mysterious cover photo: the front of a house lit up at night, with a giant cactus looming in front of it, and the reverb making the upper part of the building shimmer in a hazily psychedelic effect — it looks like a veritable depiction of summer-heat insomnia, when existential doubts, free-running thoughts and erotic frustrations pile up on one another, keeping sleep at bay and sending the mind wandering.

The opening "New Beginnings" and its closing "Reprise" are two brief orchestral moments that wrap, like a soft silk blanket, around a songbook of eight warm, gentle tracks. The tempo has been considerably slowed down and the sound has turned elegantly acoustic, with piano and strings in fine form. The lead backing vocalist is now Jeanie Tracy, another mama with an enormous voice who, like Martha and Izora, would become almost a sister to Sylvester; the duet between the two on "Give It Up (Don't Make Me Wait)", featured here, is one of the finest moments of his career, but "Thinking Right" also caresses the listener with innate charm, thanks above all to Sylvester singing exclusively in his tenor register, effectively transforming into another person.

Though virtually unknown to the rest of the world, "Can't Forget The Love" has the aura of a timeless classic, one of those melodic lines that feel instinctively memorable from the very first listen, as if it had always been a part of us. "Ooo Baby Baby" has backing vocals with a lovers rock flavor, while the title track skips along on a gentle piano groove, "Here Is The Love" is all lounge flourish, and "Can't You See" gives us the most delicate disco-funk.

Too Hot To Sleep is thus a testament to its author's versatility and inspiration, an unprecedented and even adventurous record, but always made from the heart; alongside other hidden gems of the period, such as Gwen McCrae's second, self-titled album also from 1981, Too Hot To Sleep seduces the listener today just as it did back then, a work firmly associable with the rich undergrowth of rare groove. That same year also saw Sylvester contribute as a vocalist on Herbie Hancock's "Magic Number", another little gem of rare groove and synth-funk taken from Hancock's stylish album "Magic Windows".

The success of Too Hot To Sleep, however, is truly minimal, if not altogether nonexistent; the album remains to this day the single most obscure episode of Sylvester's entire career (aside from his time with the Hot Band), and it was reissued as a double package together with Sell My Soul in 1995, and then on an odd compilation alongside the old Sylvester album in 1999. It's a situation our man finds all too distasteful, and one that would convince him to return to the dancefloor with his very next move, in order to reclaim the spotlight he had fought so hard for — fittingly, this same period also saw his historic appearance on "Menergy", the title track of Patrick Cowley's debut album and one of the absolute high points of so-called Hi-NRG.

But the problem of falling earnings didn't end there; at the request of the Two Tons, who were suspicious about the paltry earnings they'd received from Fantasy after launching their own solo careers, Sylvester also did the math and realized that Harvey Fuqua owed him over $200,000 in profits. The lawsuit that followed immediately after is a bitter one, and effectively — in a thoroughly rancorous fashion — seals the dissolution of the contract between Sylvester and Fantasy Records. Fuqua is found guilty of fraud, but the money is already gone: Sylvester will receive only $20,000 in compensation, less than 10% of what he was owed.

The '80/'81 pairing is thus a transitional period. As artistically vibrant as ever, as shown by Too Hot To Sleep, the fall of disco and his absence from the major scenes once again relegates Sylvester to his loyal but limited circle of old. No matter — success is once again just around the corner, while for an audience hungry for a bit of healthy diversity, Sylvester's less flashy years are filled by the presence of another African American in heels and garters: it's the Prince of the "Controversy" and "Dirty Mind" era, the do-it-all little dynamo launching his own dazzling platinum decade with a phantasmagoric mix of rock, funk, new wave, synth-pop and r&b, a formula that would forever change the coordinates of Black music. But to anyone wondering where Prince got the courage and the nerve to take the stage dressed like that, the answer unquestionably points to his most illustrious predecessor: Sylvester James.

Back to Success, the True Story and the Story of a Black Scythe

Sylvester's return to success seems bound to run once again through the discotheque and his partnership with Patrick Cowley, but this time the effort is also aided by his affiliation with the label co-founded by Cowley himself — smaller than Fantasy, but certainly highly expert in the field and already with a decent roster of similarly-styled artists under contract: Megatone Records. All I Need (1982) takes its title from one of the tracks on the record, a fine synth-funk midtempo number with a pronounced bassline and a shape-shifting vocal performance, but the album's real hit would be "Do Ya Wanna Funk", an admirable synthesis of what Hi-NRG truly meant on the West Coast of the early '80s: the overtly erotic suggestion of the title and lyrics, the tireless, fully synthetic backing track, and a sci-fi setting in the arrangements. The track is simply unstoppable in clubs across Europe and America, and soon becomes one of the best-known moments of Sylvester's career, to the point that the entire album would be reissued — and is unanimously recognized today — as Do Ya Wanna Funk. The lavish cover photo helps the cause too, depicting Sylvester posing in full glamour Sphinx-of-Egypt mode, cigarette between his fingers.

The term Hi-NRG was coined from a phrase by Donna Summer, who, during an interview, described her own music as having a "high energy rate," and the term, in its cleverly stylized form, immediately caught on among music journalists. Certainly, Hi-NRG describes the atmosphere of this sound very well: it's a sort of more bombastic, more synthetic version of old-school disco, with less frills in the arrangements and a more pronounced four-to-the-floor beat, a blend that would take over clubs in America and Europe in the early '80s (it would only lose ground to the spread of the more elegant and multifaceted house music).

Sylvester's take on Hi-NRG is of course very vocal and permeated by an unabashed gospel/soul divadom, but the dance steps on the floor follow the genre's established coordinates; we're clearly in that territory with "Hard Up", a bloated, swaggering track that echoes a bit of Olivia Newton-John's sound, and "Don't Stop", perhaps the best track of the bunch, which arrives seasoned with a majestic sonic crescendo in the bridge.

"Be With You" unleashes another one of those killer choruses fit for the soundtrack of some cult film like "Flashdance", the remix version of "Tell Me" rides firmly between Hi-NRG and funk, while for the finale of "Won't You Let Me Love You" the rhythm stays tight, but the atmosphere grows a touch sparser and more elegant (if you set aside the mighty electric guitar rock solo).

Raw and direct, written and performed from the gut with hormones in turmoil: Do Ya Wanna Funk is pure, simple dancefloor fun, where the ups and downs of love and the itches of sex are rattled off one after another with frenetic energy. Do Ya Wanna Funk achieves great success in the club scene, with as many as five tracks entering the Top 5 of the American Dance Chart, a true balm for Sylvester's ego after the difficult two years of transition he'd just been through.

At the same time, Patrick Cowley's career is sailing along nicely with the release of a Hi-NRG/space-disco monument like "Mind Warp", an album that doesn't sell a huge amount but remains to this day a true cult classic and a cornerstone of its reference genres. And the Two Tons O' Fun are once again doing well on their own too: renamed the Weather Girls, in September 1982 they release "It's Raining Men", a track that, thanks in part to its hilarious accompanying video riding the momentum of the newborn Mtv, would over time turn into one of those timeless super-classics known even to the walls, powered by a verse/chorus combo that is nothing short of eternal (so much so that not even Geri Halliwell would manage to fully ruin it when she covered it twenty years later).

In short, after the disorientation caused by the collapse of disco, these four old protagonists all managed to bounce back in grand style, each in their own way. All's well that ends well… but Patrick Cowley is often ill, appears chronically weak and visibly loses weight; the doctors don't know what to prescribe because the cause of his illness is at this point unknown, the most they can do is send him home and recommend rest. His friends stay close and are a constant presence at his Castro apartment/studio, but Sylvester has had to leave for Europe to promote his album, and this time a weak and paler-than-usual Patrick simply couldn't go with him. Next time, they joke to each other. On the evening of November 12, 1982, while Sylvester is getting ready for a show at the historic Heaven in London, the phone call comes: Patrick Cowley is dead. He was just thirty-two years old.

Trouble In Paradise

Trying to describe in a couple of paragraphs the impact of HIV on the gay community — and consequently on the rest of society — is as thankless a task as it is impossible. The discussion should really involve experts in medicine, sociology, philosophy and literature, as well as Freddie Mercury, Elizabeth Taylor and Diana Spencer, the deniers, the conspiracy theorists and religious movements of various stripes — a boiling cauldron in which facts and prejudice travel side by side. As far as it can be summed up, accumulated experience teaches us that today — in the year 2017 — we're living in the so-called undetectable phase, that is, the post-trauma period in which the virus has not yet been defeated, but research has managed to put into circulation drugs that limit its transmission, allowing carriers an almost normal life expectancy. Body and mind coexist in a sort of non-place where HIV is present but invisible, its presence silently looming, and the community is grappling with a new phase in the fight against stigma: prevention, as always and above all, but also the de-dramatization and de-ghettoization of the virus.

But in the early '80s, the lack of information on the subject while science does its work, combined with ignorance and the lack of said prevention, creates a chaos of fear, marginalization and j'accuse in which the only certainty is the growing death toll, which within a short time climbs into the tens of thousands. Doctors at first even coin the term GRID — gay-related immune deficiency — because the majority of patients seem to come precisely from that community (they would soon have to change their minds, when the data clearly showed that the flow of human sexuality is far more fluid than Institutions would like to show us).

Among the many reactions that can occur, on a human level, in the face of large-scale trauma within a community, there are at least two fairly distinct currents: a sense of grief and the desire to withdraw from the world, and the exact opposite of that through so-called denial — the forced and desperate refusal to accept what is happening, so as not to feel its impact on one's own skin. These are, all things considered, reactions that are easy to understand; for a community already widely marginalized and cut out of the dominant family structure, with all the resulting lack of support and the inability to put down roots that follows, sex is not simply a free pleasure for all, but rather a powerfully identity-forming act, a way of recognizing oneself and forging alliances, freeing one's own self from the repressions experienced during one's formative years. The idea that sex, too, could now lead to a slow, agonizing death is a situation too cruel to swallow — especially while the rest of do-gooder society thunders on about some imagined comeuppance: insult added to injury.

All this preamble serves to put into perspective the two Sylvester albums that followed Patrick's death, two records that bear the mark of the profound changes taking place both within the community and in the socio-musical fabric of the era. In certain moments of Call Me (1983) it's truly impossible to ignore that sense of emptiness born of a dull, suffocating grief. The lyrics of "Trouble In Paradise", an emotional track placed right at the album's opening, are supposed to refer to private matters concerning a romantic relationship of Sylvester's, and perhaps they are indeed about that, but undeniably the song immediately takes on other shades of meaning:

I can’t sing to sleep at night

Just keep thinking about you

Wore a ring from my tears – foreign die

And it looks like there’s trouble in paradise

[…]

Where do we go from here?

(Where do we go?)

Now that becomes so wrong, baby

I, I just leave this

Trouble, trouble in paradise, I need a solution

(Trouble)

Trouble, trouble in paradise, so much confusion

(Trouble)

Trouble, trouble in paradise, where do we go from here?

(Trouble)

Trouble, trouble in paradise

(Trouble)

Call Me is not an album that hides itself: the yellow/red cover, with its half-sketched face, brushes up against the pop-art abstraction of Grace Jones, but its grooves are grief-stricken, and at certain moments overloaded with plaster in an attempt to patch over such heavy feelings; the title track is a kind of swollen disco-rock (think a cross between Umberto Tozzi's "Gloria" and Survivor's "Eye Of The Tiger"), while "One Night Only" is one of those hyper-melodramatic ballads where, once again, the lyrics can be read in various ways, since that sense of loss and desperate pleading for even just one more night brings tears to the eyes if we imagine it dedicated to Patrick. But even the bouncy electro-blues of "Too Late", a melodically peppy track rich with gospel backing vocals, hides within its lyrics yet another reference to a situation that's already beyond saving.

An attempt is still made to lighten the mood where possible; "Good Feelin'" is a title that speaks for itself, and its harmonic fabric is 100% Jacksonian (after all, we're now right in the full grip of "Thriller"), while "Power Of Love" is a hope-filled synth-soft-rock number. And then there's "Band Of Gold", a thoroughly utopian and abstract throwback to 70s disco music, produced with the new technology of the moment but with all the stylistic trappings of the past: soaring choruses, a rollercoaster rhythm section, piano and sax proudly on display, and a mini instrumental bridge to give the percussion its moment in the spotlight.

Between highs and lows, the whole of Call Me tells a story of real life, with all the ugliness and hope that entails. But, musically speaking, the album has too many moments steeped in a sound that, to modern ears, now feels truly dated, and therefore holds little interest, even for the most die-hard Sylvester fans looking for a revival thrill. That very same year, for instance, his former backing singers the Pointer Sisters blow right past him with "Break Out", a perfect pop album clearly inspired by Prince, which sells millions of copies thanks to hits like "Jump", "Automatic" and the remix version of "I’m So Excited" — a clear sign o' the times that West Coast discotheques are in disarray and, unfortunately, also in clear decline in terms of quality.

And while the topic would deserve entire books, a small but important mention in these years should go above all to the great new protagonists of the clubs: always African American, always gay, people with less than nothing to lose and therefore — paradoxically — free to pour their heart and soul into what they do. Larry Levan from New York's Paradise Garage, and then his lifelong friend Frankie Knuckles from Chicago's Warehouse, are just the two most famous names of a revolution being fought out on the dancefloor. And this time the phenomenon won't yield to the passage of time: while disco music and Hi-NRG have ended up forgotten, resurfacing today only for the occasional revival, the new idea of house music will change its skin hundreds of times over the years — deep, acid, balearic, future, pick whatever italics you like — yet it remains to this day one of the biggest cultural phenomena on a global scale.

But history teaches us that there's never just a single, watertight line to follow, but rather many streams flowing simultaneously without ever touching, and if on one side someone innovates, on the other someone else keeps plodding down their own rocky road. With the following M-1015 — later reissued as Rock The Box — the sense of denial within the gay community, by then trapped between hospital beds and orphaned of the utopia of disco music, is laid bare to the fullest. Sylvester doesn't write a single word on the whole of Rock The Box, preferring to let himself be carried by a team of (trusted) collaborators into a passive exploration of the pop trends of the moment.

"Rock The Box" is an electronic pastiche dominated by crackling yet fake synthesizers and nightmarish urban oppressions, while "Sex" is a non-song built on moans and phony little yelps. The horrifying "How Do You Like Your Love?" even opens with the famous riff from Beethoven's "Für Elise" redone on synth, before getting lost in an orgy of kitsch noises badly copied from the far more elegant and visionary Eurythmics — how do you like it? Well, if these are the premises, possibly in silence, thanks. We're looking at depictions of intimacy that are truly empty and plastic, boneless flesh rubbed together more out of habit and voyeurism than genuine pleasure. After all, in these times sex really does kill, and even those who want to ignore the situation can't fully shake off the dark shadow of contagion that — perhaps — is creeping through the bodily fluids of whoever happens to be their partner at the time. Sylvester's songs, in this sense, are as starkly truthful as they are difficult to listen to; the fabric of his vocal gift only resurfaces in the still-too-opulent ballad "Shadow Of A Heart".

There's a direct link between early-80s Hi-NRG and the Anglo bubblegum pop that the Stock/Aitken/Waterman team will soon carry to worldwide success, thanks to the likes of Kylie Minogue and the second lineup of Bananarama, and a song like "Take Me To Heaven" mirrors the rest of the whole of Rock The Box: an album that's simply left stuck halfway. Still, that period serves as a blueprint for the future of other self-professed disciples of his, such as Bronski Beat and Pet Shop Boys, who, again from England, will manage to expand upon the shattered remains of Hi-NRG with a flair, elegance and vitality quite unknown to the cardboard-cutout S/A/W squad (and Jimmy Somerville will even cover "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" for his 1989 solo debut "Read My Lips").

Also from 1984, though, is "Stargazing", an imaginative duet between Sylvester and Earlene Bentley released only in the UK: the combination of his falsetto and her low, all-throat tone, which at times recalls a more excited version of Judy Garland, laid over an elegant and futuristic funky-dance backing, creates a cabaret number that's absolutely not to be missed.

The Family Jewels and Tina's Legs

Talking critically about Sylvester's music in the mid-80s is a sad task, one that might even suggest we're dealing with a star in commercial decline. In reality, that's not quite the case; granted that his audience has pretty much always been a narrow niche compared to many other figures in dance music, his personality and his legendary, multi-purpose voice continued to make the rounds on the airwaves, teasing the public and tempting the industry. Proof of this is Mutual Attraction (1986), the album that marks Sylvester's arrival at one of the biggest majors of all time: Warner Bros. In an era when record labels were still making money hand over fist, someone was convinced it was time to give Sylvester a large-scale shot once again — after all, we're not talking about a washed-up relic, but rather a man still under forty, whose explosive personality had managed to carry him through even the harshest storms of changing musical fashions.

But the Warner executives don't go to the office every morning out of charity; "Living For The City," a cover of the Stevie Wonder classic and the first single released, which reached no. 2 on the American Dance Chart, works thanks to a genuinely shameless trick: the track's backing uses the same brief chord sequence as the original, but leans even closer to the atmosphere of "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson, reshaping the harmony just enough to dodge any plagiarism accusations. And that's not even mentioning the version of the classic "Summertime," which is served up with obvious similarities to "Tainted Love" in the Soft Cell version (which in America is one of the best-selling singles of all time...).

Shame that the rest of the record doesn't really offer up anything else worth even a passing curiosity; Mutual Attraction coasts along the predictable pop grooves of those years, between electro-funky-dance syncopations, dips into r&b, and stiff, artificial atmospheres, though always delivered with that sparkling vocal verve: the title track, "Talk To Me," and the sly bass-plus-jazzy-sax line (thanks, Sade) of "Cool Of The Evening" are, all things considered, enjoyable tracks for fans of the genre. Still, in the year of Janet Jackson's "Control," the whole of Mutual Attraction lacks energetic freshness pretty much from the day it came out.

But for people like Sylvester — meaning those who survived the disco era with a memory stretching back to the days of old soul and its crossovers with rock (let's not forget his stint with the Hot Band) — new arrivals like Janet aren't really all that relevant. The leading name for lovers of true Divas now is one, and only one: Tina Turner, the supreme Queen of survivors, a woman who — after taking a brutal beating from Ike and spending over a decade of her career flying under the radar — climbed back to the top of charts the world over at the age of 45, with the same youthful attitude as ever, flaunting a gorgeous pair of legs and an iconic lion's mane of hair (the videos for eternal hits like "What's Love Got To Do With It" and "Private Dancer" are milestones). Sylvester obviously swoons over such a strong, determined woman, and promptly steals her wig style. At Warner Bros, meanwhile, the focus is mainly on what the competition is selling, and at that moment there's another hugely famous Diva doing even better than Tina: Whitney Houston, signed to rival label Arista.

Which explains the video for "Someone Like You," the second bouncy, glossy single pulled from Mutual Attraction: a wig, XL shoulder pads and Tina-style hip-swinging moves, plus lavish studio sets crammed with characters and dancers, just like the ultra-polished video for Whitney's "How Will I Know". The trick works: nearly a decade after his last No. 1, Sylvester climbs back to the top of the American chart. To promote himself, the singer even makes a historic appearance on Joan Rivers' much-talked-about talk show, where he performs the song decked out in a flouncing orange wig and one of those puffed-up, pompous 80s jacket-and-trousers suits. Given that Joan herself was no stranger to gay guests — that same chair had, years earlier, hosted a Boy George dressed like the sole survivor of an explosion at a textile factory — a memorable little exchange immediately unfolds between her and Sylvester:

Joan: [looking at the jewelry on Sylvester's wrist] Oh wow, look at that jewelry...

Sylvester: this is my wedding set!

Joan: Your wedding set... who are you married to?

Sylvester: to Rick! [bursts of applause and laughter] ...oh God, no, sorry... Rick's parents are watching!!

Joan: [staring at the camera] surpriiiise!... are you telling me his parents don't know he's with you? How long have you two been together?

Sylvester: two and a half years

Joan: and what's his last name?

Sylvester: Cranmer

Joan: Cremer?

Sylvester: No, Cranmer, C - R - A - N...

Joan: [staring into the camera] parents of Rick Cranmer, if you'd looked in the closet ten years ago, maybe you wouldn't be so shocked today…

It would be wonderful to remember Sylvester by this final image, an affable and ironic figure beneath a joyously kitsch veneer. Unfortunately, that's not how it goes: a year after this episode, Rick Cranmer himself succumbed to Aids after a rapid decline in health. Sylvester was utterly devastated by the loss of a partner with whom he had found perfect harmony after years of varied relationships (worth recalling: in 1970 he "married" in a San Francisco park in a hippie ceremony that included free love — a farce as far as the American government of the time was concerned, but a deeply symbolic gesture for the rest of the community, one that the same government would go on to formally recognize under the Obama presidency forty years later). But above all, Sylvester was forced to look reality in the face: with Rick's death, the same fate would likely soon befall him too. He categorically refused to get tested, declaring:

I certainly don't need to pay 15$ to be told what I already know

In his final months of life, Sylvester kept going into the studio whenever his body allowed, and gave numerous phone interviews in which he spoke frankly about his illness as his health deteriorated, trying as much as possible to bring media exposure to a spreading epidemic that was relentlessly cutting down thousands of people. One of his last public appearances came during San Francisco's Gay Freedom Parade; Sylvester was by then too weak to walk and had to be wheeled along in a chair, his body thin and emaciated, his head wrapped in a bandana — an act of extreme courage for a Diva like him, who had always insisted on retouching every imperfection in his photographs. But it was a final gesture of solidarity toward his beloved city of San Francisco and the gay community, who shouted his name in a sign of respect as he passed, and the crowd kept singing beneath the open windows of his apartment, while his friend Jeanie cared for him and his remaining friends paid their visits. At his explicit request, even his beloved Patti Labelle came to say goodbye.

In the late afternoon of December 16, 1988, Sylvester's soul left his body to be reunited with his Creator. The farewell ceremony was held at the Love Center Church in Oakland, a gospel church open to all people regardless of their differences, which Sylvester had passionately embraced in his final years, picking back up the thread of that conversation that had been brutally torn from his hands back when he was still a child in Watts.

In hindsight

As stipulated in his will, all future royalties from Sylvester's music are donated to various organizations involved in Aids research and patient care. But a serious, far-reaching celebration of his art, at the time of writing, is still lacking. There is a fine biography by Joshua Gamson titled "The Fabulous Sylvester" (2006) and a few good documentaries, such as the BBC's "The Queens Of Disco", narrated by Graham Norton, while 2014 saw the premiere of an Off-Broadway production titled "Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical" (all sources consulted in the writing of this piece).

Simple and direct, The Original Hits (1989) gathers twelve tracks covering all the key, best-known moments of Sylvester's early career during his Fantasy period (and is today his most easily available album).

The 12 By 12 Collection (1988) instead focuses on his Megatone period in the '80s, though several other scattered compilations exist on the market (including a Greatest Hits released by Dig It International in 1987 for the Italian market).

The albums of original material, on the other hand, have been reissued in pairs in painfully budget packaging, which is a shame, but for now it's the only way to get Sylvester's music in physical format, not counting the old original vinyl records, of course: available on the market are Sylvester/Step II, Sell My Soul/Too Hot To Sleep, and All I Need/Call Me.

But listening to Immortal (1989) is often disappointing. It's a collection of remixes of his most famous '80s dance tracks, plus a few songs recorded in his final years and left unreleased at the time. Music history has its share of intense, introspective artists who managed to put their final testament into song form shortly before dying — famously the last recordings of Billie Holiday, but also the recent cases of David Bowie with "Blackstar" and Leonard Cohen's "You Want It Darker", which moved the heart of the whole world — but Sylvester never really wanted to use his art to take his leave of earthly life. Exactly like Minnie Riperton before him, who passed away from a much-discussed breast cancer after releasing a sinfully good disco-funk album like "Minnie", Sylvester's final recordings almost read as a continuation of his artistic trajectory, conceived and performed as if nothing were amiss — see the tracks included here, "I'm Not Ready" (a perhaps emblematic title, though musically rather plastic) and the stiff '80s pop of "Man Enuff", which could easily have found a place on Mutual Attraction.

Sylvester never had the luxury of introspection; his life was marked by a daily struggle to keep smiling in the face of adversity, since his mere way of being was already an affront to the rest of society, and having to answer for his own identity every single day is an undertaking that demands extraordinary energy. So, from a very young age, the paths of drugs, prostitution, marginalization and bigotry were always running alongside him, stealing friends and relatives away and showing themselves in all their horrifying ugliness. Giving in to such feelings of self-pity and escape from reality, and abandoning that sense of positive hope which helped him carry his life forward with his head held high, would have been the same as dying even more prematurely.

Sylvester, however, had faith. An intense, unshakeable faith, which he managed to hold on to even in the worst moments, and which helped him see beyond the dogmas imposed on him by his fellow human beings, in spite of anyone in this world who feels the need to criticize and judge the essence of others in order to falsely elevate themselves toward some supposed single truth. And this is why "How Great Thou Art" appears on Immortal, an overflowing, vibrant acoustic rendition of an old staple of the Christian world. The author of this piece considers himself firmly secular, but listening to this track speaks for itself; we leave it here, as a final tribute to a personality overflowing with love and hope, who gave so much to this world and received far too little in return:

Ride the wave of great music

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