Carl Douglas ~ Kung Fu Fighting 1974 Disco Purrfection Version

Carl Douglas was born May 10, 1942 in Kingston, Jamaica. His family moved to California as a child and then to London, England for his teen years. Here he began vocal training and developed a passion for jazz music with Sam Cooke and Otis Redding as his influences. He also sang in a gospel choir on Sundays. He was studying to be an engineer and was join his father when his friends began to encourage him to sing and try the open mike noons at London’s Two I’s Coffee Bar during lunch hour. This was where he was asked to join Big Stampede, an all white band except for Carl. The band took him on in 1964 and changed the name to Carl Douglas and Big Stampede releasing “Crazy Feeeling“ in 1966 on Go Records in the UK and Okeh in the US. 1967 found him releasing “Something For Nothing“ and then “Sell My Soul To The Devil“ followed in 1967 and was the band’s last waxing. After that he toured Europe with Explosion and then Gonzales (who would go on to have a disco hit with “Haven’t Stopped Dancing Yet“ in 1979. This is where Biddu, a producer from India was looking for a vocalist to record a song written by Larry Weiss (Rhinestone Cowboy) called “I Want To Give You My Everything“ when they realized that they needed a B side. Carl already had lyrics to “Kung Fu Fighting“ in hand so they recorded it in ten minutes, adding the hoos and haas to make it sound authentic like the karate chops like in the wildly popular Bruce Lee movies. Radio basically snubbed it at first, but once the clubs embraced the song, it took off from radio finally added it to their playlists and then Carl found himself on top the music heap at #1 for two weeks in 1974. This is where the record labels got confirmation that the clubs were now breaking songs too and were a force to be reckoned with.