If you know Dance music, enough said: “Ten Percent” was the first commercially available 12-inch single.
• Double Exposure – Ten Per Cent (Special Disco Mix) (i.e. the Walter Gibbons mix)
In 1976, Salsoul Records released their eighth release, Walter Gibbons’ remix of Double Exposure’s disco song “Ten Percent”. “Ten Percent” was the first commercially available 12-inch single.
The actual title of this record is Ten Per Cent, not Ten Percent.
The 12-inch single was reserved for DJs until the release of “Ten Percent.” Disco had already begun to exploit the 12-inch’s allowance for higher volumes, better sound quality, and longer playing time, but no record companies had previously seen commercial value in the new format.
Ken Cayre, the head of Salsoul Records, decided to sign a number of famous musicians and bands to the label, hoping to “consolidate the success of the faceless Salsoul Orchestra”, and Double Exposure was chosen as the newly signed band whose first release, “Ten Percent,” would feature the orchestra and be promoted with a 12-inch single as well as the typical seven-inch format. Walter Gibbons was a DJ, not a producer, but his innovative skills, along with his punctuality and serious nature, got Gibbons the “Ten Percent” assignment at Salsoul Records. One of his original techniques was “taking two records and working them back and forth in order to extend the drum breaks,” a technique he applied to the “Ten Percent” mix, which displeased the original songwriter, Allan Felder, but which was supported by Salsoul in the front-page story in which Billboard magazine covered the release. It was “mostly an exercise in stretching the original track out,” and Gibbons transformed it from a “four-minute song into a nine-minute-forty-five-second-cut-and-paste roller coaster.”
When Gibbons first played the “Ten Percent” 12″ remix at Gallery21, where he was a regular DJ, one witness said “it sounded so new, going backwards and forwards. It built and built like it would never stop. The dance floor just exploded.”
Double Exposure is an American, Philadelphia-based disco and soul group. They are best known for their 1976 hit, “Ten Percent”.
The group formed in 1961 with Leonard “Butch” Davis, Chuck Whittington, Jimmy Williams and Joe Harris. They were originally known as the United Image and released two singles, “Love’s Creeping Up on Me” on Stax Records in 1971 and “The African Bump” on Branding Iron Records in 1972.
They were signed to Salsoul Records in 1975 and released their debut album, Ten Percent in 1976. The album featured the title track, which was remixed by Walter Gibbons and reached No. 54 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 2 on the dance/disco charts. The tracks “Everyman (Has to Carry His Own Weight) and “My Love Is Free” were also popular club songs.
In 2001, a dance group called M&S used samples from Double Exposure’s “Everyman” in their song called “Salsoul Nugget”.
Massive Tunes 