MiamiTickets.co · Local knowledge
The Hialeah Warehouse That Sent Disco Around the World
Harry Wayne Casey’s early work at Henry Stone’s Hialeah operation involved opening boxes and packing records for shipment. He also wanted to make one.
Stone ran a record distribution and recording business. Casey spent time there, met bassist and engineer Richard Finch, and began experimenting with him in the studio when it was available, often late at night. Those sessions became part of the beginning of KC and the Sunshine Band.
The Hialeah setting matters because the music business under one roof involved more than recording a song. Stone had built labels, publishing interests and distribution connections. Records could be created, pressed, packed and sent out from the operation surrounding the studio. For young musicians, that meant access to equipment and a route for their work to reach listeners.
One of Casey and Finch’s compositions found its voice when Stone and TK colleague Steve Alaimo suggested that singer George McCrae record it. “Rock Your Baby” became a major pop and R&B hit in 1974. KC and the Sunshine Band followed with its own run of dance records, including “Get Down Tonight” and “That’s the Way (I Like It).” The records became international hits, though the operation that helped launch them remained rooted in Hialeah.
Stone’s story was larger than disco. His labels also recorded and released blues, gospel and R&B, including work by Betty Wright and Timmy Thomas. TK Records became his best-known success, but it grew out of years spent learning how to find artists and get records into circulation.
It is tempting to tell the Sunshine Band’s rise as a sudden discovery. The better story has a warehouse floor, a studio used after hours, two young collaborators and someone willing to let them work. Listeners encountered the finished records on radio and dance floors. In Hialeah, the songs had first been ideas that Casey and Finch were trying to make sound right.
Miami’s 1970s dance music did not spring from an anonymous party. People built the records and the business behind them, box by box and session by session.