"One day in Berlin ... Eno came running in and said, 'I have heard the sound of the future.' ... he puts on 'I Feel Love', by Donna Summer ... He said, 'This is it, look no further. This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next fifteen years.' Which was more or less right." -- David Bowie
Another one of my earliest music memories is my mom's cassette of Donna Summer's "On The Radio: Greatest Hits Volumes I & II," another one we wore out, just like Whitney Houston's debut, which I unfortunately I had to reference in another dedication post not so very long ago.
Donna Summer was so much more than the "Queen of Disco," but hey, not everyone gets such stately honorific, and I see it as no slight whatsoever that disco is what she's known for. Such a beautiful voice, and so many great songs. So many great memories are associated with her music in my mind.
Despite the undeniable awesomeness of all of the classic '70s disco and the mid-'80s pop-rock, I think my favorite Donna track remains her latter-day club rendition of of "Con Te Partiro" that she recorded in 1999. (Not crazy about the video though, and can't find the live version from her VH1 special where she debuted it). Rest in peace, Donna.
UPDATE: Then again, in the last several days, I find myself returning to the full 18 minute "MacArthur Park Suite." Taking such an oddball song and doing something even more ambitious with it than even its original Richard Harris incarnation - by weaving the other songs, "One Of A Kind" and "Heaven Knows" in and out of it - and creating something incredibly fun and joyous makes it, as one of the commenters on the YouTube video below states, "the Himalayas of disco."
