Live At The Marquee - A Chancer's Guide to Chic feat. Nile Rodgers

Chic feat. Nile Rodgers play Live At The Marquee tonight

The band Chic were formed in 1976 by guitarist Nile Rodgers and bassist Bernard Edwards. The title of the first song recorded as Chic was Everybody Dance which was on their first album. They were later joined by drummer Tony Thompson, keyboardist Raymond Jones and vocalist Norma Jean Wright and began working as a support band.

Under contract with Atlantic Records, the band released their self-titled album Chic in 1977. During late 1978, the band released the album C'est Chic, containing one of its better-known tracks, Le Freak. It was created in a jam session in Edwards' apartment, after they had failed on New Years Eve 1977 to meet with Grace Jones at New York's nightclub Studio 54. The song became a huge hit for the band, resulting in a number one single and selling more than six million copies. It was the best-selling single album ever of Atlantic's parent company, Warner Music, until Madonna's Vogue in 1990.

The next year, the group released the Risqué album and the lead track Good Times, one of the most influential songs of the era. It has been sampled since by many dance and hip-hop acts, as well as being the inspiration for Queen's Another One Bites the Dust, Blondie's Rapture, Captain Sensible's Wot? and the bass line for Daft Punk Around the World.

On the back of their success with Chic, Edwards and Rodgers were working on other tracks for various artists. These songs would go on to be huge disco hits also such as Sister Sledge’s We Are Family and I’m Coming Out for Diana Ross. Rodgers also co-produced David Bowie's 1983 album Let's Dance and was also responsible largely for the early success of Madonna during 1984 with her Like a Virgin album. During 1996, Rodgers was honored as the Top Producer in the World in Billboard Magazine.

Chic released four new albums during the 2000s: The Very Best of Chic, Good Times: The Very Best of the Hits & the Remixes, A Night in Amsterdam, and The Definitive Groove Collection. Chic has been nominated for inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nine times: 2003, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013 and 2014.

In October 2010, Rodgers began his fight with prostate cancer. In October 2011, he released his autobiography entitled Le Freak: An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco, and Destiny. On July 29, 2013, Rodgers posted on Twitter that he was cancer free.

In 2013, Chic feat. Nile Rodgers played Glastonbury. Noel Gallagher of Oasis fame said at the time: "My favorite act at this year’s Glastonbury, when I went, was not the Rolling Stones, as great as they were; was not the Arctic Monkeys, as good as they were; was not Disclosure, as good as they were; but it was Chic. They were fucking mega. Absolutely out of this world." 

Rodgers co-wrote and performed on three songs off Daft Punk's 2013 Grammy Award winning Album of the Year Random Access Memories including the Grammy Record of the Year Get Lucky with the duo and Pharrell Williams.