Composition
The song features a lead vocal by Fleming Williams, who left the Hues Corporation shortly after the song was recorded. According to The Billboard Book of Number One Hits by Fred Bronson, the lone female member of the group, H. Ann Kelly, had originally been pegged to sing lead, but this idea was discarded out of fear that groups with female lead singers were less commercially viable. The song also features an important post-Motown performance of James Jamerson.
Hues Corporation member St. Clair Lee claims "It was a song that you could do anything on. You could cuddle or you could get crazy if you wanted to. It was a love song without being a love song. But, it was a Disco hit and it happened because of the discos."
The 'Rock the Boat' dance also a favourite at weddings and birthday parties and involves many people sitting down in a row and 'rowing' a boat to the tune of the song.
Read more about this topic: Rock The Boat (Hues Corporation Song)
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“Vices enter into the composition of virtues as poisons into the composition of certain medicines. Prudence and common sense mix them together, and make excellent use of them against the misfortunes that attend human life.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“The composition of a tragedy requires testicles.”
—Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694–1778)
“There is singularly nothing that makes a difference a difference in beginning and in the middle and in ending except that each generation has something different at which they are all looking. By this I mean so simply that anybody knows it that composition is the difference which makes each and all of them then different from other generations and this is what makes everything different otherwise they are all alike and everybody knows it because everybody says it.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)