Dance With Me: How Peter Brown’s 1977 Disco Classic Captured the Moment Just Before Saturday Night Fever Blew It All Up

The Twelve Inch 155 : Dance With Me (Peter Brown)

“What did disco really sound like in 1977—before Saturday Night Fever turned it into a global cash grab?”

That’s not a rhetorical question. Seriously, think about it. Before John Travolta strutted across a Brooklyn dancefloor and the Bee Gees’ falsettos dripped from every radio speaker, disco was already everywhere. But it hadn’t yet gone fully mainstream. It was still on the cusp—a massive, thriving subculture poised to burst into something even bigger.

And right at the heart of that moment was Peter Brown, a soft-spoken, multi-instrumentalist from the Midwest who somehow found himself in the sweaty center of Miami’s burgeoning disco scene.

His 1977 twelve-inch “Dance With Me” didn’t just soundtrack the clubs—it captured that rare window when disco was still underground cool, still countercultural, still art. Before Hollywood polished it into a plastic fantasy, disco was raw, diverse, and alive. “Dance With Me” was one of its most stylish and forward-thinking invitations.