But, in reality Rochelle, Debbie, and Annette are not goddesses. They are three very beautiful, mesmerizing, young women who sing their hearts out, pump it up with sensuous choreography, and capture your emotions, channeling them into a frenzy.
Disco is nothing new to First Choice. Rochelle, the group’s lead singer and elected spokeswoman, says “We’ve been in ‘disco,’ or what you call ‘disco’ all along, before it hit really big.”
Gospel music has obviously influenced First Choice’s style. You can hear it in “Hold Your Horses,” their latest album that is hitting and crossing over the top ten of disco, rhythm and blues, and popular charts all over the country, or in their earlier hits, “Dr. Love,” and “Armed and Extremely Dangerous.” “Double Cross” from “Hold Your Horses,” has recently been released as a single, and is sprinting right to the top of the charts.
Rochelle says, “We sang in a gospel group in high school. Gospel is the backbone of First Choice. We all came from churches, and the sound will always be in our voices.
“ When we sang in high school, and people said we sounded good together, that we should do something about it, we didn’t pay much attention at first. Then we started winning all those talent shows (the group entered three shows in five months, placing first in each), and we began to think maybe we should listen to all those folks.”
First Choice did more than listen. Their career moved like a Derby winner coming from behind in the home stretch. Within a few years, they were playing top concert halls all over the country. They wowed sell-out crowd on tours with Teddy Pendergrass and Helen Reddy, and did a standing-room-only show with Deodato at Carnegie Hall.
Performing live is more than a thrill for First Choice. “It’s the most exciting and invigorating feeling in the world,” Rochelle says. “The energy is unbelievable…it makes you fly.”
Success hasn’t spoiled the ladies of First Choice. “We always knew we would be where we are. To go to the top, you’ve got to have talent, energy, and interest. You’ve got to want it, and be in it all the way – and all three of us love and want this right now.
“We’re also aware of the people that we’re working with, and of our responsibility to those people who have put us where we are, who believed in us and supported us. Without them, there could have been no ‘group.’”
First Choice is currently flying on a winged stallion in sell-out concerts under the inscrutably flashing eyes of an Egyptian boy-king. The King Tut mask dominates the set of their act, and a lot of labor went into making it: over 600 hours (working 10 hours a day), over 1,500 sheets of gold leaf (more than $3,000 worth, and over two tons of clay, all adding up to a whopping $25,000.00! The mask stands more then 7 ½ feet tall and is over eight feet wide. It comes with its own security guard.
When First Choice began recording, the Salsoul artists were picked by Cash Box and Record World magazines at the “Best New Female R&B Group.” Subsequently, both publications awarded First Choice the “Top R&B Female Single’ honors two years in a row – unprecedented recognition for a disco group. Billboard, the record industry’s bible, says First Choice’s act “is particularly strong, and the vocal arrangements effective…vocals swelled sensuously around the rhythm. Far from being characterless dance tunes, (their songs) exemplified disco music’s growing sophistication.”
But, in the final analysis, it is First Choice’s instant rapport with audiences that make them a hit in the concert tour. Starting with soft, mellow, and always sexy tunes, they speed up the energy and arouse the emotions with a unified and driving beat climaxing in a strong, harsh disco thrill.
“Everyone can understand our lyrics,” Rochelle says, “and we sing about different types of love – good love, bad love, up-and-down love, gut-gripping real love. Everyone has gone through some kind of experience in love, and it feels good to share that type of music. People are telling us that they can actually understand our lyrics as we work and get into them.”
First Choice’s love affair with its audiences is a solid one, a bond so strong even wild horses couldn’t break it.