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Sylvester
From Outcyclopedia, the free and queer encyclopedia. One of the great divas of the disco era, Sylvester was born Sylvester James in Los Angeles on 6 September, 1946. He began his career performing with the drag troop The Cockettes on New Year's Eve, 1970. Forming the Hot Band, with Patrick Cowley and backup singers Izora Rhodes and Martha Wash, Sylvester began performing in San Francisco clubs and built a following among the gay disco crowd. Often dressed in purple and gold, and sporting a gold fan and cigarette holder, Sylvester cut quite a flamboyant image, making him a perfect icon for the disco era. By 1978, he had two hits under his belt which became instant classics, Dance (Disco Heat) and You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real). The following year he appeared in The Rose with Bette Midler, as one of three drag performers impersonating the Supremes. Another hit song, Can't Stop Dancing, followed, but aside from these, Sylvester's following extended little beyond the gay disco crowd. When disco's popularity declined with the advent of New Wave in the early 80s, so did Sylvester's. Forays into R&B proved unsuccessful. Sylvester was among many members of the entertainment industry to be stricken with AIDS during the early years of the crisis. His last album, Mutual Attraction, was recorded the year before his death. By then, the singer was confined to a wheelchair, but still participated in the Gay Pride parade in the summer of 1988, as he had done in all the San Francisco Pride parades from the beginning. Sylvester finally lost his battle with AIDS on 16 December, 1988. While he had only three hits and did
not command quite the same following as Donna
Summer or the Village
People, Sylvester's influence on the disco phenomenon and on popular
music as a whole cannot be ignored. RuPaul
cites Sylvester as a major influence in his own career, as have other performers,
gay and straight. Hot Band member Patrick Cowley went on to enjoy
a successful career as a record producer before his own death from AIDS
in 1989, and back-up singers Izora Rhodes and Martha Wash found their own
success, first as Two Tons of Fun and then the Weather Girls, recording
what became one of the all-time gay camp hits,
It's Raining Men.
You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) has also been covered by many other
artists, including Jimmy
Sommerville and Sandra
Bernhard. The original version also found a new home on the soundtrack
of the motion picture 54,
about the popular, and notorious, New York disco club. In 2002, a documentary film was produced on Sylvester's life and career, entitled Sylvester: Mighty Real.
Sylvester's achievements demonstrate
all too well how AIDS robs not only its victims of their futures but also
robs the world of their talents. Had Sylvester lived to see
the emergence of the house music style and the nostalgic retro-disco movement,
he may have experienced a rebirth of his career and found a new following
among today's dance club patrons. External links: Internet Movie Database: Sylvester Entry 2 December, 2004. All text is available for use under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (see Copyrights for details). |
