Donna Summer - Try Me, I Know We Can Make It (12" Edit)

An edit of Donna Summer's 18 minute album version of Try Me, I Know We Can Make It. Final image: Fin Costello-Redferns In 1975 Donna Summer's label boss Neil Bogart tasked her producers - Pete Bellotte and Giorgio Moroder - with extending Love to Love You Baby to the length of one side of an LP. The song became one of the first disco hits to exist in two forms; a tight 7" version and an evolving extended version. The basic idea was to keep the groove going using every trick in the book. Bellotte and Moroder were for the most part successful. For 13 of the 17 minute running time they found creative ways to build up and break down and draw-out the song. They cut a very big corner by rounding out the mix by attaching a complete reprise (with some subtle modifications) of the opening 'song' part of Love to Love You Baby. The dramatic stop at 13 minutes feels like such a right place to end it. This annoyed me so much that I chopped it off for my own library and later found out that GTO Records did exactly the same when compiling 'The Best of Donna Summer' in 1977. Since it was a huge success they decided to repeat the formula for Try Me, I Know We Can Make It. Try Me is even longer at 18 minutes long and its extended structure was created with more expertise. The song cleverly shifts from the opening 'Try Me' section, through the 'I Know', and 'We Can Make It' then finally on to the 'Try Me, I Know We Can Make It' conclusion. It's brilliant because it's one long song with only short instrumental passages to break it up. For Love to Love You Baby Donna's voice disappears for large sections, but on this song she's up front and centre. Unfortunately Bellotte and Moroder ran out of ideas in the closing stretch. At the 15m 30s mark the song awkwardly brings back the 'I Know' section and with it it goes off the boil. I guess I just don't like reprises because the reprises of Spring Affair (on Four Seasons of Love) and the reprise of I Remember Yesterday get on my nerves too. It's all padding. Anyway, after all that I had been thinking of creating a shorter edit of Try Me for some time. My inspiration was the 8 minute 'Come Dancing' edit of Love to Love You Baby from 1984. At heart the extended LP versions of Love to Love You Baby and Try Me reflect the mid-70s concept of an extended version. They are long epics that float along on a pulse. They soon became dated in comparison to the extended disco mixes of the late 70s which are tighter and work harder to earn your attention. This mix is my concept for a 12" version. I've attempted to tighten it without losing the song's essentials. To assemble it I first recreated the brilliant 7" edit then added back in sections until I had a mix I was satisfied with. I eventually put together 5 edits. I will upload the purist's 15m 30s edit which only chops out the final 2.5 minutes at a later date. *Written by Pete Bellotte, Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer. *Produced by Pete Bellotte and Giorgio Moroder. *I don't monetise these videos. Any revenue goes to the publishers and the artists, as they should.*