I don’t pretend to be an expert on this, and I won’t attempt any involved analysis, but here’s my interpretation. In the beginning, a discotheque was merely a club that played records instead of having a live band. In the early days, Uncle Sam’s was a disco (I’m going to use a small “d” disco here) sometimes, but there were many nights through 1975 where live bands (mostly Jesse Brady and Sterling) played live. It was the format, not the characteristic of the music.
The trend of bars that just played records (disco with a small d) started cropping up at the end of 1974, apparently – an article in the December 1974/January 1975 issue of the Insider by Editor Peter Dwyer announced “Discos are the coming thing.” The three “discos” mentioned in the paragraph were:
- The Red Eye Saloon disco bar “featuring rock music,” at 1019 Washington Ave.
- Zelda’s, an affiliate of the Spaghetti Emporium, on 4th Street South. Zelda was the person who would manage and run the disco board.
- The Tea Room adjoined the Locker Room, a 24-hour steam bath. The Tea Room, located at 315 First Ave. No., was open midnight to 4am, Wednesday to Sunday.
Of course all Uncle Sam’s clubs had been offering dancing to records for a few years now. They were all the same, as described by Billboard magazine, December 21, 1974:
Dancing to records backed by the live drummer is the whole lure. Each Uncle Sam’s has a large dance area averaging about 60 by 12 feet. A computerized chase-rotate-and-flash electric circuit matches the 40-foot wall of lights and multi-colored lighting under the foot-high transparent plexiglass dance floor with the rhythm of the record played. Overhead, six strobe lights are calibrated to match the rhythm. There are stationary black lights and several bubble machines in the dance area.