Screen13

I might have over-stated the Carson flop, as in the book And Party Every Day, Larry Harris stated that the Carson album "...generated enough money and prestige to keep (Casablanca) afloat" (p. 93), but looking at the success rate of the label, it was still on the brink of fading into history fast. The Carson album went Gold, but it was at a time when it counted shipments not sales, but thanks to some on-air promotion, there were some. Just before Alive gave the company their first justified Gold album thanks to the sales equaling the shipments, there was a bit of the old "The Check Is In the Mail" routine going on - the book details things a bit.

According to my research, Casablanca's ONLY consistent act before Donna Summer and Parliament broke through were Kiss, and that's only just surviving with the first three albums that at the time only sold at an OK level. Reading through Both Sides Now's Discography listing which adds in Billboard chart peaks, their only Pre-Alive Top 40 album was Dressed to Kill, and that took a couple of years to go Gold! That's a list of 29 albums through the course of about one and a half years - a lot of releases, promotion, and lost monies, with very few singles reaching the Top 100.

The financial situation did not allow for a professional producer for Dressed to Kill.

Dressed to Kill (album) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In my opinion, it was either Alive of Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby", but Kiss got there first, although Parliament might have done the trick as well of it were not for them. It established the label very well, and done with a lot going against it, making one of the best examples of Neil Bogart's take-a-chance attitude of the time. With no slight intended to the Summer/Moroder disco classic, thankfully it was an album that was their first major breakthrough - there were a couple of successful singles here and there in Casablanca's history, but as we all know that back then an album was a better way to establish a company and Alive's success meant more backup for both Summer and Parliament.

Consider what came before that did not make it chartwise - The Hudson Brothers with two flop albums and a small hit, Fanny with a Top 20 hit but no charting albums, Long John Baldry with a non-starting career at the label, Larry Santos having a good voice but no material to go up the charts with (He's a very familiar voice in Detroit in The 70's - Appearances on the Hot Fudge Show on WXYZ 7 and the classic "Welcome to your city" TV ads campaign for Detroit being best known), T Rex only stopping at #205 on the albums chart that was a big fall from the Top 20 position of The Slider when he was on Reprise in The US, and a host of others. Not even an album of Lenny Bruce routines (What I Was Arrested For) or Bill Conti's soundtrack to Harry and Tonto did anything, let alone the first albums by Parliament, although Chocolate City showed something of a breakthrough. It's safe to say an opinion that Alive gave life to the label after a shaky first year and a half, although you could say that maybe Parliament's Mothership Connection may also have been the album to do it if events were different.