Boney M started off as a one off studio group headed by music impresario Frank Farian born as Franz Reuther July 18, 1941 in Kim, Germany. He lost his father in World War II and turned to the radio to stations that played hits from the United States and the United Kingdom during his adolescence in the 50's.

When he reached the age of majority, the 1960's were rocking and rolling musically and politically. He opted to explore the soul in him and released a few upbeat singles then concentrated on soulful ballads like "Dana, My Love" a German #1 in 1969, then had a hit in 1975 with "Rocky".

Soon he was in the studio perfecting his own version of the German based eurodisco sound. Because Germany lacked a tight horn section, the only other choice to maintain the orchestral grandeur of the song was to use strings. There were excellent classical string musicians who worked nights for bands like Boney M and Silver Convention songs so the horn parts became the string parts, resulting in the luxurious strangely played but hypnotic strings that define the German disco sound. Donna Summer's first two albums had the same sound quality since they were both recorded in Germany.

Frank comes up with "Baby, Do You Wanna Bump" based on the 4/4 measured beat and does it all the vocals by himself but credited the music track to Boney M. Once that hit song hit, the label Ariola America commissioned a full album that led to his engaging a full time group so Maizie Williams, Marcia Barrett, Bobby Farrell and Liz Mitchell became the classic line up who recorded "Daddy Cool".

The song charted at #11 disco in the winter of 1976, spending 13 weeks on that survey and set the scene for the follow up "Ma Baker" that peaked at #31 disco. It entered the Hot100 at #87, the same week Hall & Oates released the future #1 "Rich Girl". "Daddy Cool" peaked at #65 and stayed there for three weeks before dropping completely off the chart.

Farian was very savvy and was concerned that the visuals of the singers had to be as exciting as the music tracks they were singing to. The ladies can all be heard along with Farian, leaving Bobby Farrell to be the sexy macho jock frontman whose main job was to balance out the group's visual dynamics and he ate up the scenery!

I already knew that Frank Farian did the male vocals on all the Boney M songs, so when he admitted Farrell's voice never made it to wax I got confirmation. Bobby did help out on background vocals a couple of times, but never sang lead on the songs of Boney M.

Farian is the man who brought us Milli Vanilli, and he applied the same principle of great visuals and great sounds not from the same source. He hires two hot black men for the pictures and hires professional musicians and vocalists to give that image a brilliant irresistible sheen. When that fell apart, I kept my copy of Milli Vanilli "All Or Nothing" and still have it.

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