Nile Rodgers

The guitarist in the awesome "composed, arranged, performed and produced by CHIC" supergroup.  He made a few solo albums on his own, has produced many artists, and has played on dozens of records. Strangely, none of his solo albums have guitar as good as on the group's work, it seems he wanted to stretch out on keyboards and vocals on his own.

Nile's corporate/official web site has an excellent summary of his work.

"Adventures in the Land of the Good Groove"

A solid collection of good grooves, but not great.  I recall Nile was criticized for the naughty lyrics on "Yum Yum" ("Poontang, Poontang, where you want it/ Slept all night with my hand on it/ Give me some of that yum yum/ Before I sleep tonight").
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"B-Movie Matinee"

Nile wanted to use lots of sound effects and clips from B movies, but couldn't get the rights.  Traces of the original plan remain in songs like "Plan 9 (Make 'Em Dance)" and "Stay out of the light".

This has an even brighter synth-pop drive.  "Plan 9 (Make 'Em Dance)" is very reminiscent of his work with Sister Sledge on "When the Boys Meet the Girls".  The clinical feel works a lot better when it's offset against warm female vocals.

Tommy "Rock" Jymi plays on some songs and is credited as co-producer.  Some people theorize that he's  Nile Rodgers working under a different name.

There's one sweet song with a hook, "Wavelength" ...

"Outloud"

Warner Brothers WE 851 LC 0392 ©1987
LC 0392 CD: 9 25 632 - 2 ; Vinyl LP: 925 632 - 1

A couple of people on the 'Net (thanks!) mentioned this supergroup/solo album that Nile was briefly involved in, and I found it on eBay.  The other musicians are Felicia Michele Collins (now in the CBS Orchestra on the Late Show with David Letterman) and Philippe Saisse.

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Nile Production Work

I hate to say it since Microsoft is an evil self-serving destructive force in the software industry and beyond, but their "music central" site is pretty good at tracking down a lot of Nile's work.  Search on Nile Rodgers and you get 69 links, and it's still incomplete.  You can also go to www.imdb.com and find the 7 albums for which Nile wrote music.

For example,

• David Lee Roth's "Your Filthy Little Mouth"; Nile produced it in 1984
• Sheena Easton's album "Do You", Nile produced and wrote some songs.EMI America SJ-17173
• In 1998, a cool-sounding pop song "Hints of Love" by Ryo, a Japanese idoru popstar. Update: I got her CD-ROM from multimedia musical artist and Japanophile Craig Goodman. Nile only produces and plays on the one song, but it's solid and the rest of the album is fun.

NCannon353 says:

I've also seen Nile get credit on albums by Laurie Anderson(Big Science, I believe) Nona Hendryx, Michael Jackson (History) Cyndi Lauper (Change of Heart), etc.
Tommy "Rock" Jymi (who may be a Nile Rodgers pseudonym plays on Stevie Wonder's "Characters" album for a reference to that name.

I don't know much about Carole Davis other than that she is a huge fan of Prince and to some extent sort of a protege of his. He wrote a song for her that is placed on this album. Carole Davis probably never made it big and soon was dropped from Warner I suspect. The album sucks, but perhaps you could use this info for your page!

Movies

Beverly Hills Cop III (1994)
Blue Chips (1994)
Earth Girls Are Easy (1989)
White Hot (1989) (additional music)
                           ... aka Crack in the Mirror (1989)
Coming to America (1988)
Alphabet City (1984)
Soup for One (1982)

Recent Activities

Nile Rodgers is busy doing all kinds of stuff, check out the bottom of the timeline on his site. He:

• acquired Sumthing Records, who released CHIC Live at the Budokan,
• taught a course on the music business,
• is producing videogame soundtracks,
• has played a few gigs around New York City with CHIC alumni.

Appendix: Nile Rodgers on "Best of Fresh Aire 8-31-96"

Best of Fresh Air (8/30/96) - Best of Fresh Air for the weekend of August 30 - September 1, 1996. Record producer and former guitarist for the band Chic, NILE RODGERS. --http://whyy.org/freshair/BOFA/BOFA960830.html

There are two 40-70 second gaps in the transcript (and they aren't commercials).

A few months before the interview CHIC were packing stadiums in Japan, on the tour during which Bernard Edwards died. Terry Gross did not know about his death for most of the interview, but apart from that she does a good job and is familiar with their work.

Nile Rodgers was featured on a VH1 Music of the 70's show the week before ($$ I gotta get a tape of this)

Here are some nuggets from the interview (also see "disco guy"'s great CHIC page for more CHIC biographical information):

CHIC Early Days

They decided that the band had to have an image and a look. They got the name from seeing "KISS", the flashiest group of the day. CHIC was the same letters.

"Everybody Dance" was the first song they ever wrote (!!!!). The original was 10 1/2 minutes ($$I want that 12-incher!) Kept the grooves going as long as they could, so you could stay on the dancefloor for as long as possible with the girl.

The obsession with BPM (beats per minute)  came about from DJ's filing records by speed so that they could keep the groove going.

Nile used to teach Karate and Kung Fu to Black Panthers, he did security at Fillmore East.

They did "Real People in response to the Disco backlash, and that was the beginning of the end. (Yet I like the album, it's a stretch that mostly works.) Nile doesn't even mention the stripped-down grooves of "Take it Off" and "Believer".

S Page, last updated February 5, 2000