These posts are about the songs that fell just short of crossing the key line of chart success, entering the Billboard Top 40. Every song featured in this series peaked at number 41.

Joseph Tucci was a fledging music producer based in Long Island when he connected with drummer Gary Turnier in the late nineteen-seventies. Both eager to break into the music business, they put their best efforts towards creating the sort of disco workout that was then dominating the charts. The two cowrote a song called “Keep On Dancin,'” as blatant of a club night call to action as there ever was. They recorded a version of the song entirely on their own, layering it up with an exuberant array of sounds, and shopped it around to different record labels to resounding indifference. Finally, they found a taker in Sam Records, an independent New York label founded by Romanian immigrant Sam Weiss a couple years earlier. Tucci uses the pseudonym Eric Matthews for his writing credit, and the single was issued under the artist name Gary’s Gang.

Not long after Tucci and Turnier signed Gary’s Gang to Sam Records, the little label entered into a distribution agreement with Columbia Records. Suddenly, “Keep On Dancin'” had the weight of a major label behind it. The single leapt to the top spot of the Billboard National Disco Action Top 40 chart, spending one week there between extended runs at #1 by Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” and Rod Stewart’s “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” The hits by Gaynor and Stewart also claimed the peak position on the main Billboard chart. “Keep On Dancin'” didn’t fare as well there, sputtering out right before the precipice of the Top 40.

In response to the popularity of “Keep On Dancin’,” Tucci and Turnier assembled a touring act version of Gary’s Gang comprised of seven members adorned in old-timey gangster outfits. Tucci and Turnier were originally part of that cohort that went on the road, but they quickly withdrew from that part of the showbiz grind to concentrate on making new music in the Tucci’s home studio. Gary’s Gang officially released two LPs in 1979 and even took another song, “Let’s Lovedance Tonight,” to the top of the disco charts, but they never made another appearance on the Billboard Hot 100.

Other entries in this series can be found by clicking on the “Top 40 Smash Near Misses” tag.