#ThrowbackThursday – Today we go back to 1976 with a track that put the funk into funky – Rose Royce’s chart smashing hit Car Wash. It was the vocals of Gwen Dickey and the 7 introductory handclaps that everyone loved and hooked onto. The song is so full of energy and so funky that it’s very difficult to tire of hearing it, no matter how many times it is mixed and mashed.

Written and produced by Norman Whitfield, it was the group’s debut single and one of the most notable successes of the disco era – the lead single from their first album, the Car Wash Soundtrack. It went to Nº1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and Nº1 on the R&B charts, it reached Nº9 on the UK charts a year later in 1977. Christina Aguilera and Missy Elliott covered the song in 2004 for the Shark Tale soundtrack.

The film Car Wash introduced comedian Richard Pryor into the mainstream and became a word-of-mouth success, costing $2 million and turning in a gross profit of $20 million.

Creation 5 users: the audio for Car Wash is already in C5’s Throwback playlist, to watch the clip from the movie above with C5, just tap here.


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