| "Kung Fu Fighting" | ||||||||||
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| File:Kung Fu Fighting.jpg | ||||||||||
| Single by Carl Douglas | ||||||||||
| Released | 1974 | |||||||||
| Genre | Disco | |||||||||
| Length | 03:13 | |||||||||
| Label | 20th Century Records | |||||||||
| Producer | Biddu Appaiah | |||||||||
| Carl Douglas singles chronology | ||||||||||
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"Kung Fu Fighting" is a song written and performed by Carl Douglas and Vivian Hawke. It was released as a single in 1974, at the cusp of a chopsocky film craze, and quickly rose to the top of British and American charts. "Kung Fu Fighting" was also number one on the soul singles chart for one week.[1] The song also is famous for its use of the quintessential Oriental Riff, a short musical phrase that is used to signify Chinese culture.
It originally was meant to be a B-side to I Want to Give You My Everything by Brooklyn songwriter Larry Weiss, and was recorded in the last ten minutes of his studio time.[2][3] This song has been featured prominently in pop culture including Mott's Clamato advertisements.
Douglas states that his inspiration to write the song was affected by three factors: he had seen a kung fu movie, later visited a jazz concert by Oscar Peterson, and was suffering from side-effects of pain killers (Douglas had injured his foot playing football).[4] Another account gives his inspiration simply as seeing two kids in London doing kung fu moves.[2]
Kung Fu Fighting was rated #100 in VH1's "100 Greatest one-hit wonders, and number 1 in the UK Channel 4's Top 10 One Hit Wonders list in 2000, the same channel's 50 Greatest One Hit Wonders poll in 2006 and Bring Back ... the one-hit Wonders, for which Carl Douglas performed the song in a live concert.
Videos[]
References[]
- ↑ Whitburn, Joel (2004).
Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add the title of a book, film, album, magazine, or TV series to an article, it should be italicized by adding two single apostrophes on either side ('' ''). Titles of television episodes, short stories and songs should be placed within quotation marks. More detail can be found in the Wikipedia Manual of Style. Top R&B/Hip-Hop Singles: 1942-2004. Record Research. p. 170.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Kung Fu Fighting, SongFacts.com
- ↑ Bronson, Fred. The Billboard Book of Number One Hits. 4th ed. New York: Billboard Books, 1997. 385.
- ↑ [1]
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This page uses content from Wikipedia. The original article was at Kung Fu Fighting. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WikiHero, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. |