Huey Lewis Goes Disco

Just a year before Huey Lewis and the News first released music under the name we all know, five-sixths of the band put out a 1979 disco single as Huey Lewis and (the) American Express. Yes, it’s a terrible name.

Disco covers of songs from movies and TV soundtracks were a mini trend.  Meco hit #1 in 1977 with “Theme from Star Wars.” At about the same time, studio musicians Wilton Place Street Band had a smaller hit (#24) with “Disco Lucy,” a cover of the “I Love Lucy” theme.

Huey and the boys jumped on the disco bandwagon with “Exodisco” in 1979, a thumping party version of the theme from “Exodus,” a 1960 Paul Newman movie about the founding of Israel.

If a disco version of Ernest Gold’s Academy Award-winning orchestral score doesn’t sound like a huge hit, it wasn’t – but I think the band knew it was just a giggle. Listen to Huey putting his all into “Exodus, baby!” and “Come on down, down, down!” They’d all played in other bands and in front of plenty of bar crowds and knew how to sell a song as bad as “Exodisco,” – even if disco wasn’t their thing.

Here’s footage of American Express doing “Exodisco” live during the band’s regular Monday night spot at Uncle Charlie’s in San Francisco. The footage was shot with a potato, so I’m not sure who exactly all were on stage that night.

One last bit of trivia – Ernest Gold’s son was Andrew Gold, who wrote the theme to “Golden Girls,” although he didn’t sing the version that opens the sitcom. He also sings the theme to “Mad About You” and plays piano, even though show co-creator Paul Reiser wrote it.