of classics is ‘Love Is the Message.’ All things disco were never the same after [Moulton’s] take on it.” Danny Krivit’s famous edit of “Love Is the Message” focused on the supreme groove of that piano part. “Tom’s work was key to me,” Krivit says. “He always respected the original and its musical flow.” Moulton says as much, noting, “I’ve always been funny about that: having it sound like it was recorded that way as opposed to sounding like an edit. So it wasn’t an abrupt thing that would completely change this trance you were in—I didn’t want to break that mood.” He goes on, “I wanted to give DJs elements that I knew would be exciting in clubs. I know how effective it is to build up to something and then break it down.” Warming to the subject, he explains, “It’s like going over a cliff and you have a rope or a bungee cord that you’re tied to. You don’t know if it’s going to break or what’s going to happen! Then all of a sudden, something starts to build and you have something to stand on. It was fun creating these things.” Suffice it to say, Tom Moulton was having a lot of fun. There is no definitive reckoning of the number of songs he mixed—even disregarding his numerous uncredited efforts, the discography runs to the hundreds, if not thousands. “I don’t think he even knows how many,” Danny Krivit comments. It includes monster hits from the Trammps (“Disco Inferno”), Loleatta Holloway (“Love Sensation”), South Shore Commission (“Free Man”), Grace Jones (“La Vie en Rose”), Double Exposure (“My Love Is Free”), First Choice (“Dr. Love”), Dan Hartman (“Instant Replay”), and the Andrea True Connection (“More, More, More”). Throughout it all, he stuck with his simple formula: “I try to put in the elements that people would like. Like the breakdown. Even I got off on that. I looked at it as making music, not as making ‘disco records.’ ” He emphasizes, “I always made records you can dance to, not ‘disco’ records. It still had to be a listening record. I never wanted to tarnish that and cross the line to where it’s no longer a listening record. ‘A Tom Moulton Mix’ meant that you were getting something special. It was going to sound like a million dollars; it was well thought out and well planned. That’s what I wanted that name to mean.” For the millions of music lovers who have gotten off on his mixes, the definition fits to a “T.” .
This article originally appeared in Wax Poetics Issue 45, 2011.
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