The Casablanca 'Casbah' record label motif (above) and the generic 7" single sleeve (below right).

Casablanca Records

Casablanca Records and Filmworks specialised in many disco acts and its US label was home to (amongst others) Donna Summer, Giorgio, Roberta Kelly, Munich Machine, Stephanie Mills, Parliament, Lipps Inc, Cameo, Village People, Ritchie Family, Cher, Patrick Juvet, Meco, Irene Cara - as well as Moroder's own solo projects.

In a 1998 article in the British music magazine 'Q' Ian Cranna wrote:

If one word has come to symbolise the glorious, garish hedonism of the disco era, it is Casablanca, the big-spending, super-snorting record label run by New York self-styled publicity genius Neil Bogart. 

Part of the same Brooklyn generation that gave the world Calvin Klein and Donna Karan, Bogart (born Bogatz) created enough of a stir as a promotions man at MGM to be made general manger of the new Buddah label at just 24. After Buddah was sold, Bogart moved to California and persuaded Warner Bros to bankroll his own label, Casablanca. 

It quickly emerged that Bogart was obsessed with promotion. He immediately staffed his label with promotions people and gave each one a Mercedes. Casablanca was launched with a $45,000 party. Unfortunately, Bogart didn't have the business acumen to go with his flair for theatre. 

Still hitless after 18 months, Casablanca parted from its backers over their lack of enthusiasm for Bogart's new signings Kiss. Attracted more by the novelty element of Donna Summer's simulated orgasm than any love of the music, Bogart acquired a tune called 'Love To Love You Baby'. Initial sales were not encouraging but, legend has it, Bogart asked for a longer version and the resulting 17 minute edit became a New York disco classic. 

Radio play followed and Casablanca had lift-off. By Summer 1976, the Village People (another novelty idea Bogart had bought) were having huge hits as Casablanca commercialised disco and took it into the charts. 

Success fed the Casablanca fantasy, where every day was party day. Visitors to its Hollywood offices were greeted by a stuffed camel and an enormous poster of Bogart (Humphrey, that is). Ceiling fans, palm trees, cane thrones and Moroccan rugs completed the scene. Loud music blasted out constantly, phones rang off the hook and an executive added to the atmosphere by striking a large gong every time a Casablanca record was added to a radio station playlist. 

Then there were the drugs. Promo veteran Danny Davis (a non-indulger) recalls that at three o'clock in the afternoon, "an adorable little girl would come up and take your order for the following day's drug supply". Davis also recalls meetings in which nothing was achieved but a gramme and a half of cocaine disappeared - and that was before they started on the Quaaludes and beer. 

To Bogart costly, larger-than-life stunts were the order of the day. When Bogart brought Donna Summer to New York to promote her hit album 'Love To Love You Baby', he had a life-size cake made in her image, flown from Los Angeles in two first-class seats and met by a freezer ambulance. When the Village People were riding high with 'In The Navy', Bogart turned up at a record industry convention dressed as an admiral, with his staff in matching sailor suits. Bogart even bought a film studio to launch a motion-picture arm of Casablanca. 

By 1979 Casablanca was living on borrowed time. The gimmicky Village People were fading fast, Kiss were stalling and Donna Summer was leaving for Geffen (but not before suing, claiming she had been financially defrauded - all her lawyers had been provided by Casablanca and her manger was Bogart's wife). 

Today, Bogart is remembered with some affection. Though still in litigation with his estate, Donna Summer sang at his (1982) funeral, and even now the Neil Bogart Cancer Foundation is heavily supported by the record industry. 

"No one else was accessible like Casablanca," says Jim Fourrat (currently vice-president of A&R at Mercury). "There wasn't a single other dance or disco label that broke through into the mainstream, that went to Hollywood and made movies. Bogart took it out of the underground, out of minority culture, and made disco mainstream."