1977 album artwork (above) from 'Once Upon A Time' by Donna Summer, produced by Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. Two succesful singles 'I Love You' and 'Rumour Has It' were taken from this Casablanca Records release.
A European greatest hits album (illustrated right) which focused on Summer's previous hits was also released in 1977, on various locally licenced labels.
In the UK, this led to the odd situation of Summer in competition with herself in the singles and albums charts.
Donna Summer
By 1978 Giorgio Moroder, Donna Summer and Pete Bellotte had produced seven albums together, plus assorted extra non-album tracks. Their greatest success 'Bad Girls' (which contained the perennial favourite 'Hot Stuff") was only a few months away...
In many ways, the highly inventive and hugely productive team of Summer, Moroder and Bellotte of the 1970s (eleven albums in eight years, five of them doubles) can be seen to parallel the similar chart success of Dionne Warwick, Burt Bacharach and Hal David who had dominated the charts a decade earlier: 33 US chart entries between 1963 and 1971.
At the time of this 1978 interview Summer's hugely successful 'Live And More' concert and studio album had just been released - spawning the hit singles 'MacArthur Park' and 'Heaven Knows'.
This second single, featuring Brooklyn Dreams on backing vocals, differed extensively from the album version of 'Heaven Knows' (which only appears as a two minute sequence within the eighteen minute 'MacArthur Park' suite) and features a fuller introduction and an instrumental bridge.
The song also turned up, remixed slightly, on a Brooklyn Dreams' album with all the vocal parts switched around resulting in Donna Summer singing the backing vocals.