The “Golden Hits Of The 70s”
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RICK DEES & HIS CAST OF IDIOTS
“DISCO DUCK (PART 1)”
(RICK DEES)
RSO 857
No. 1 October 16, 1976
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Rigdon Osmond Dees III has made money for years as a “personality” DJ–and as Rick Dees, the man
behind a string of nutty novelty numbers.
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Rick attended North Carolina University, specializing in radio and TV studies. His first spot was at WBGB,
in his hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina. As the “move-’em-out” morning man on WMPS in
Memphis, Dees devised an array of wacky promotions. Reportedly, he holds some sort of world record for
whipping up the largest fruitcake (3,000 lbs.), jelly doughnut (300 lbs.), and lollipop (150 lbs.). “I was
working out in a gym in Memphis when disco was coming out,” Dees explained to Fred Bronson in The
Billboard Book of Number One Hits,“and I also worked in a club called Chesterfield’s, telling jokes and
spinning records. The more I played the songs, the more I knew it might be time for a disco parody. One
of the guys who worked out in the gym did a great duck voice, and I remembered a song called ‘The Duck’
[by JACKIE LEE] back in the ’60s, so I said, how about a ‘Disco Duck’?”
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Dees went home and tossed the idea around for an afternoon. Three months later, he walked the idea into
Fretone Records, a small label owned by Estelle Axton, founder of the Stax organization. “Actually, they
thought I was an idiot,” Dees told Bob Shannon and John Javna in Behind the Hits. “I went into the
studio with a bunch of song ideas, all of them warped. First, I hit them with my song about Elvis
exploding, ‘He Ate too Many Jelly Doughnuts: And later, ‘Disco Duck.” First out of the stall was an item
called “The National Wet Off.” It bombed, but that darn “Disco Duck” didn’t: once it became popular
throughout the South, RSO acquired the track for national release.
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Everywhere one went, that quacker could be heard–except in Memphis, where rival stations refused to
play the disk and where Rick’s own WMPS forbade Dees from spinning it. “I talked about it on my
morning radio show,” Dees told Bronson, “and the station manager came in and said, ‘We think that’s a
conflict of interest–you’re fired.'”
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WHBQ-AM, his former station’s chief competitor, swiftly hired Rick. Dees later transferred to KHJ in Los
Angeles and has since moved to KIIS-FM, the top radio station in the City of Angels; where he plays “the
best of the eight-dees and nine-dees.” Rick has hosted TVs “Solid Gold;’ for a season, ABC’s late-night
series “Into the Night,” for a moment, and thereafter appeared on an internationally syndicated Top 40
countdown radio program for the United Stations.
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