Like Gloria Gaynor and Linda Clifford, Loleatta Holloway was one of the dance divas you turned to in the late '70s and early '80s if you liked your disco drenched with soul. In Holloway's hands, disco was a logical extension of Northern soul; it merely added another floor to the house that big-voiced goddesses like Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Gladys Knight, Irma Thomas, and Martha Reeves had built. Thankfully, Holloway's influence didn't end with the 1970s. Queen of the Night: The Ultimate Club Collection reminds us how ...
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Like Gloria Gaynor and Linda Clifford, Loleatta Holloway was one of the dance divas you turned to in the late '70s and early '80s if you liked your disco drenched with soul. In Holloway's hands, disco was a logical extension of Northern soul; it merely added another floor to the house that big-voiced goddesses like Aretha Franklin, Etta James, Gladys Knight, Irma Thomas, and Martha Reeves had built. Thankfully, Holloway's influence didn't end with the 1970s. Queen of the Night: The Ultimate Club Collection reminds us how much she influenced house music, hip-house, and dance-pop in the 1980s and '90s. This CD is, for the most part, a collection of remixes. The Right Stuff provides Tom Molton's famous 1980 mix of "Love Sensation" (which has been sampled to death) and the original 1979 version of the classic Dan Hartman/Holloway duet "Vertigo/Relight My Fire," but other late-'70s and early-'80s gems (including the 1976 hit "Dreamin'") are given high-tech house or hip-house makeovers. On this disc, Morales D'Master's 2000 remix of Black Box's 1990 smash "Ride on Time" (which sampled "Love Sensation") is right at home with DJ Johnny Vicious' 1994 club hit "Stand Up" (which was based on "Dreamin'") and Junior Vasquez's Holloway-minded single "Gotta Be #1" (a club hit in 1992). Queen of the Night: The Ultimate Club Collection isn't meant to be a greatest-hits package -- those who need an introduction to Loleatta Holloway would be much better off starting out with Runaway: The Best of Loleatta Holloway. This club-oriented CD, in fact, is probably too esoteric for anyone who has only a casual interest in Holloway's work. But for serious club hounds, Queen of the Night: The Ultimate Club Collection is an interesting release that shows us just how long lasting the singer's influence has been. ~ Alex Henderson, Rovi
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