First Listen: Chubby Tavares makes us "Smile" with new single
(April 27, 2018) One attribute of disco is that it always had a connection with the music from the Great American Songbook era. The band Chic often celebrated that connection in tunes such as “Dance, Dance Dance” and “Good Times.” While, on the surface, the two genres seem quite dissimilar, there are key similaries: The songbook era featured plenty of songs that became famous during the big band and swing era when ballroom dancing was popular. Disco, with its lush instrumentation and swing, eventually became the ballroom dancing of the 1970s, and so that a singer or group would look to that bygone era for inspiration or even reimagine tracks from the songbook era as disco tunes.
That is what Chubby Tavares, one of the great vocalists of 1970s era music both as a soul and disco singer, does on this disco styled cover of “Smile,” a 1954 number made famous by Nat King Cole. The song, written by Charlie Chaplin in 1936, has an added significance for Tavares, as his mother used to sing it to him when he was a little boy.
Whether as an instrumental, a pop, or disco number, “Smile” has a message the resonates regardless of genre. Check it out here.
By Howard Dukes
Chubby Tavares - "Smile"
