Meco

Producer and studio musician Meco fused the era's two biggest cultural obsessions when a disco treatment of the Star Wars theme propelled him to sudden stardom. Born Meco Monardo in Johnsonburg, Pennsylvania in 1939, he began playing trombone at nine and later received a scholarship to the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York. While there he started a jazz trio alongside classmates Chuck Mangione and Ron Carter, then joined the West Point Army Band. Between 1965 and 1974 he earned his living as a session musician and picked up arranging assignments, most prominently on Tommy James' "Crystal Blue Persuasion," while also writing and playing music for numerous television commercials.

His first major success came in 1974 when he co-produced Gloria Gaynor's smash "Never Can Say Goodbye," which he soon followed with the Carol Douglas hit "Doctor's Orders." After catching the George Lucas film Star Wars on opening day in 1977, Meco grew fixated, returning to the theater repeatedly; though impressed by John Williams' score, he believed it held little commercial appeal and reached out to Casablanca Records president Neil Bogart to propose a disco adaptation. Teaming with longtime Broadway arranger Harold Wheeler, he cut Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk, and the lead single "Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band" quickly climbed to number one. Though he later applied the same approach to scores from films such as The Wizard of Oz and Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Meco stayed most strongly identified with Star Wars, even releasing a popular holiday album drawn from the movie. He stepped away from music in 1985 and later worked as a commodities broker in Florida.