Full disclosure (as nobody said in the Seventies): I didn’t like disco at the time. But it was an inescapable part of my my late teens.

So even though I never bought any of the records, they soundtracked that long hot summer of ’76 from radios across the country.

This is one of them. I remember the song, but I had forgotten what Melba Moore looked like. I really should have remembered that sensational outfit.

I now learn that she’s both a four-octave singer and award-winning actor whose career has crossed mediums, genres and generations.

since her history-making Broadway debut in Hair in the mid-Sixties, when she became the first black woman to replace a white leading lady – Diane Keaton.

By the time she recorded this effervescent disco number in 1976 Melba had already made history as the first black woman to replace a white leading lady on Broadway.

She took over the role from Diane Keaton in 1967 – and went on to win a Tony Award – and the first of two Grammy nominations – for her role in another Broadway musical, Purlie, in 1970.

Beatrice Melba Hill was born in New York City to Teddy Hill, a saxophonist, big-band leader and Harlem nightclub manager, and singer Bonnie Davis who had a no.1 R&B hit (with Teddy) called Don’t Stop Now way back in 1943.

Melba (as she became) learned to dance and play piano as a small child and became a music teacher, going on to sing jingles and backing vocals before getting her own record deal.

Moving from drama to music, she was equally successful, enjoying two hit singles – This Is It and Lean on Me – both written and produced by Van McCoy, the latter earning her a second Grammy nomination.

In the Eighties, when she was known mostly for her music (she had a couple more hits with Love’s Comin’ At Ya and Mind Up Tonight), Moore continued to handle stage and screen work.

She appeared alongside Eartha Kitt in Timbuktu! and played parts in The Love Boat, Falcon Crest, Les Misérables. She even had her own sitcom, Melba.

She went back to stage work in the Nineties, most notably with Les Misérables and her autobiographical one-woman musical Sweet Songs of the Soul, and cotinues to juggle her parallel careers in drama and music today.