Sylvester, Jeanie Tracy, and the Two Tons: Disco Magic
metroweekly.comStep II, which would become a huge hit thanks to disco smashes “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” and “Dance (Disco Heat).”“Before the album was out, he was doing shows around San Francisco, and so I opened,” Tracy recalls. “He had never really heard me sing or do a show.
So upon that is when he told Harvey, ‘I want her to join the group.'”Tracy found her spot between the Two Tons, singing the melody part of the background. “As Martha was the high end, and Izora was definitely the bottom end,” Tracy says, chuckling. “And my first show was the opera house.
But I hadn’t become a Ton yet.”The group’s performance on Sunday, March 11, 1979, at the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House is legendary.
Sylvester had long dreamed of commanding the opera house stage, and, by all accounts, the sold-out concert that night was indeed a dream.Though only a few thousand were present to experience it, the show was recorded for posterity and released in 1979 as Living Proof, a double-record live album that spawned a new hit for Sylvester with his moving cover of Patti Labelle’s “You Are My Friend.”Now, thanks to the discovery of six original multi-track reels of the performance, Craft Recordings is releasing Live at the Opera House, featuring newly re-mastered audio, and, for the first time, all 13 songs from the March 11, 1979 performance.The set — out on vinyl, CD, and digital — also includes a recording of the mid-concert ceremony where Sylvester was awarded the Key to San Francisco by a representative of Mayor Dianne Feinstein.
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