Donna Summer was a struggling singer. Then someone played her demo at an orgy

For Donna Summer, her life and music can be neatly divided into what came before and after Casablanca Records.

Before Casablanca’s Neil Bogart signed her to record “Love to Love You Baby” in 1975, Summer was a struggling American singer in Munich, where she’d moved a few years earlier to star in a German production of the musical “Hair.”

By the time she released “Bad Girls,” her seventh album for Casablanca, in 1979, Summer, who died in 2012, was a global pop star, so much so that when David Geffen launched his own record label a year later, Summer was the first artist he signed.

A new box set, “Donna Summer: The Casablanca Studio Albums Collector’s Edition,” captures all of the music Summer made for Casablanca Records, chart-topping hits and album tracks alike, with producers-songwriters Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte collaborating with Summer to create a remarkable range of music.

“Donna Summer is exceptional,” says Christian John Wikane, who, in addition to writing the liner notes for the new box set, published the nonfiction photo book “A Night at the Disco” in March.

“She did what no other artists during the 1970s did in terms of club music, which was every six months she had a new No. 1 hit on the disco chart,” he says. “And it wasn’t repeating what she did six months prior. It was always a new sound or a different facet of her voice that hadn’t been expressed.

“That’s why I feel that she is so important to the 1970s, because she showed that dance music could give artists a chance to be creative, a chance to show a different side of their personality that maybe they couldn’t do in a more traditional pop or R&B context.”

Summer’s albums for Casablanca were often a source of fantasy for listeners then, Wikane says.

“A way to unlock your imagination as you’re listening or dancing,” he says. “Some artists might have done that for one or two albums, but Donna did it consistently between 1975 and 1979.

“That is why I feel she is such an important figure in the 1970s. But even beyond that, I feel that she influenced generations that are just getting started now.”

In an interview edited for length and clarity, Wikane discussed the innovation of those Casablanca albums, Summer’s relationship with Bogart, the chemistry Summer shared with Moroder and Bellotte, and more.

Q: Donna had been living in Munich for years by the mid-’70s. How’d Neil Bogart find and sign her?

A: It really comes from her producers, Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. Their publisher brought “Love to Love You Baby” to MIDEM, which is the annual music industry conference in Cannes, and Neil Bogart was there. At the time, they were just trying to shop “Love to Love You Baby” to different independent labels. [Summer, who co-wrote the song with the two producers, sang on the demo track.]

So Neil heard it, and just to advance the story, played it at a party one night, which a lot of people say was an orgy more than a party. That gave him the inspiration to call Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte and say, ‘Please expand this to 17 minutes, like a full side of an album.’

He was thinking about how Iron Butterfly and “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” had done that back in 1967 as a full side of an album. And he heard the potential of “Love to Love You Baby” as this sort of sustained musical experience that works for dancing and also worked for other activities.

Q: And just like that, she’s got a contract with Casablanca?

A: I think for Donna, she was surprised that was the song that got her into the door for her home country. I think she did it more, not as a joke, but I don’t think she knew that was the song that would launch her career.

Casablanca was all about marketing, so they came up with the concept of her as the First Lady of Love. Which is why on her early album covers she’s posed provocatively, with her eyes closed and her head back. She was coming from a theatrical background; she knew how to fit into that role, even though personally I don’t think she felt necessarily comfortable doing that.

I think that’s what drove the innovation of these albums at Casablanca. As you progress through the catalog, the albums become much more well-rounded in terms of Donna’s voice, but also what she was singing about.

The first three albums are very much oriented around love and sensuality and hearing her in that very breathy kind of voice. But by the time you get to “I Remember Yesterday” [her fourth Casablanca album], you really hear her voice open up in a way that I don’t think anyone who heard “Love to Love You Baby” would have expected.

Q: All of it, the sensual stuff and what followed, all sold tons of records.

A: Casablanca was very important in launching Donna and kind of giving her an image. This is the same record company that had Kiss and Parliament-Funkadelic. Like characters, basically. So she became this character and then thankfully was able to grow out of that.

Q: There are plenty of stories about Neil Bogart as a wild ’70s record label boss kind of guy. How did they get along?

A: Oh, Donna considered Neil her mentor. When I interviewed Donna for an oral history about Casablanca Records back in 2009, she said that “Neil Bogart was my Clive Davis. He really nurtured me.” So I feel like if they did clash, it was maybe her wanting to exercise more creative input into the records and not just always being the First Lady of Love.

I just think that at a certain point, because she was so successful, Neil was able to give her that space to really transcend, in a very short amount of time, her initial image with the record company and how they were marketing her to the industry.

Q: You mentioned “I Remember Yesterday” as the album where things shifted. Is that the one with “MacArthur Park Suite” on it?

A: No, that came two albums later on “Live and More.” “I Remember Yesterday” has “I Feel Love,” so that’s why a lot of people regard that as an important album. The reason I think it’s an important album is that it shows her paying homage to the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s on side one.

Then, on side two, it’s more a variety of contemporary styles, and with “I Feel Love,” I mean, that still sounds like it’s the future almost 50 years later.

Q: I want to ask you about Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, and how important their collaboration was on these records.

A: I feel there definitely is an alchemy between Donna, Giorgio and Pete that is so unique that I don’t think it could have been replicated in any other way or any other combination. The example that I give as a point of comparison is Dionne Warwick with Burt Bacharach and Hal David. You have the trio creating music that is in a class of its own.

Pete Bellotte was very literary, so the concepts for some of those albums actually came from books he was reading. One of the books was a trilogy, and that’s how he got the idea for “A Love Trilogy.” Another book was based on a [classical music] quartet and that’s how they came up with “The Four Seasons of Love” being four tracks [titled after the seasons].

Giorgio, I feel, was driven by technological innovation, and very much steeped in pop music but always wanting to experiment with that. And then Donna, I feel was just such a chameleon as a singer that she could really shape herself into whatever they came up with.

Q: Why did she leave Casablanca after “Bad Girls” in 1979? Did she and Neil fall out?

A: What she told me when I interviewed her about that in 2009, and she didn’t go into detail, but I think she found that other people at the company, not so much Neil Bogart, were sort of black-marketing her records. And she wasn’t getting the royalties that were due her.

I think when you realize that you’re sort of the record company’s bread and butter and yet the numbers aren’t adding up, it’s like, “OK, well, maybe I need to seek another option here.” Because she was the top artist not only at Casablanca but in the industry.

Q: When you interviewed Donna, how did she view her Casablanca years?

A: I can almost quote it verbatim because I asked her what that experience means to you all these years later of working at Casablanca. Donna said, “Everyone that was there was there for me.” She said it almost like being an only child with loving parents. Like, how much attention was given to her to succeed because she was the company’s top solo artist.

And I think in terms of the music, she talked about how “Last Dance” was very special for her. That was written by Paul Jabara specifically for her to showcase her voice. Paul knew her from back when she was in “Hair,” so Paul knew what her range was and wrote “Last Dance” to showcase that range.

She said there isn’t a night that goes by where I don’t realize Paul wrote that for me. So I think songs like “Last Dance” retained a very special place for her because of why they were written, but then, also what they meant for the audience and the fans. I mean, it’s a story that a lot of people can relate to, wanting to find someone at the end of the night before the night ends.”