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Vinyl, which had been spinning round and round for years, was about to undergo a real revolution. "The twelve-inch happened by accident," says Tom Moulton. "I was cutting a reference disc for Al Downing's 'I'll Be Holding On' and Jose Rodriguez ran out of seven-inch blanks." Rodriguez suggested that they put the material onto a twelve-inch blank. "I said, 'Oh, it's a shame, the single only uses up a little bit of space.'" To which Rodriguez replied, "We'll just open it up and spread out the grooves." The result? "I almost died because the level was so loud." Steve D'Acquisto, Walter Gibbons, Bobby Guttadaro, Richie Kaczor and David Rodriguez were the first DJs to hear the result. "They used to come over to my apartment every Friday to hear my week's work," says Moulton. "I played them the twelve-inch and they loved it." Yet while the increase in volume was revelatory, the Al Downing acetate hadn't exploited the format's potential to accommodate longer recordings, and even the improvement in sound quality was lost when Chess records eventually released Moulton's five-and-a-half minute "disco mix" on a forty-five towards the end of 1974.

A flurry of extended recordings ensued. At the beginning of May 1975, Atlantic Records released a DJ-only "Disco Disc" series of long-playing seven-inch singles that included album cuts of "Mad Love" by Barrabas and "Disco Queen" by Hot Chocolate, and a week later the same label released special versions of "Ease On Down the Road" by Consumer Rapport and "Tornado" from The Wiz original cast recording — again as non-commercial long-playing seven-inch singles. Warners simultaneously announced that it was going to issue an extended version of "Dance, Dance, Dance" by Calhoon on a ten-inch format at 33 1/3 RPM, although a series of delays resulted in the record being released at the beginning of July on a one-sided twelve-inch disco that ran at six minutes nineteen seconds.

By that time Mel Cheren had stepped in to transform Moulton's fortuitous mistake into every DJ's dream when he released Bobby Moore's "Call Me Your Anything Man" as a twelve-inch single — the first twelve-inch single — in the middle of June. "Scepter Records is launching a policy of servicing discos with 12-inch 45s to keep the recording level at a maximum as often as possible," Billboard reported. "According to Stanley Greenberg of the label, Scepter has found that to produce a single of more than five minutes in length, the recording level requires lowering. With the new, larger singles, the problem is hopefully remedied." Even if the record's George McCrae-style production values were unexceptional, the format amounted a major breakthrough. As Vince Aletti reported in his "Disco File" column, Moore's "long disco mix runs just over six minutes and will be shipped to DJs on special 12-inch records at 33 1/3 to give it its best, hottest sound — something other record companies have been talking about doing for the disco market but that Scepter is the first to carry out."

Yet, while extended recordings could now be generated specifically for the dance floor without having to squeeze onto the constricted grooves of a forty-five or experience life alongside a collection of inferior album cuts, the new-born format suffered a symbolic setback when the following month Scepter released Disco Gold. Containing some of Moulton's finest work to date, including a mesmerising six-and-a-half minute version of Patti Jo's "Make Me Believe in You" (a Curtis Mayfield production that was originally released on Wand in 1973), Disco Gold was a long-playing album rather than a series of twelve-inch singles. DJs were more than mollified by Cheren's decision to pay them a special tribute on the back cover — "Thanks. For without your help this album would not be possible" — but it wasn't until the spring of 1976 that the twelve-inch single became a for-sale commodity, when Ken Cayre attempted to consolidate the success of the faceless Salsoul Orchestra by signing a string of recognizable stars and bands, one of which he decided to promote via the new format.

Once again Philadelphia proved to be a rich source of talent for Carey when Norman Harris introduced him to Double Exposure, one of his own discoveries. Determined to make the most of the new signing, the label mogul decided to push Double Exposure's first release — "Ten Percent," arranged by Harris, produced by Baker, Harris and Young, and featuring the Salsoul Orchestra — on both the traditional seven-inch and the nascent twelve-inch formats. This was the first time that any record company had attempted to sell the "giant single," and the Salsoul head compounded the risk by employing a DJ who had never set foot in a studio to mastermind the reediting process. "I asked the boss of Atlantic the key to success. He said, 'Walk slowly and hope you bump into a genius.'" Cayre followed his advice and bumped into Walter Gibbons who, true to his profession, was visiting record labels like a believer visits a house of prayer. "Walter was a big fan of Salsoul," says Cayre, "He would regularly come to the office for records." Denise Chapman, now head of promotions at the label, became the DJ's point of contact, and the two of them hit it off. "A lot of the girls got into a Betty Davis bitchiness, but not Walter," says Chapman. "He just loved the music and went to his own beat." Crucially, Gibbons "took everything seriously" and "would show up on time," and these qualities — which weren't exactly common in your average DJ — persuaded Cayre and Chapman to give him the "Ten Percent" assignment. "At the time no other studio had allowed a non-producer to mix a record," says Cayre, "but we had confidence in Walter, and it was clear that the DJs understood how dance crowds responded to records."

A tiny, shy twenty-two-year-old from Brooklyn, Gibbons didn't have the charismatic pulling power of Cappello, Guttadaro, Levan, Mancuso, Savarese or Siano and he'd spent most of his short DJing career bouncing around a series of unremarkable commercial clubs including the Outside Inn in Queens and Galaxy 21 on Twenty-third Street. "David Todd was Walter's DJ hero," says Kenny Carpenter, who got a job working the lights at Galaxy 21 on his first visit to the club. "Walter used to visit David in Philadelphia. He always said that David could hold the beat of a mix longer than anybody else." Gibbons didn't attract much attention until he started to push "2 Pigs and a Hog" from the Cooley High soundtrack, which he introduced to Hector LeBron (Limelight), Tony Smith (Barefoot Boy) and Tony Gioe (Hollywood). "The cut is only 1:46, but the DJs play it two or three times in a row, making it longer," reported Moulton in October 1975. "The LP has been around for several months and Walter believed in the record enough to try and convince others." Gibbons also believed in the percussion-heavy "Happy Song" by Rare Earth and Jermaine Jackson's "Erucu," and by the end of the year his technique of taking two records and working them back and forth in order to extend the drum breaks beyond the horizon of New York's tribal imaginary had earned him the reputation of being a highly-skilled original. "Walter was so innovative," says Carpenter. "He would buy two copies of a record like 'Happy Song' and he would loop the thirty second conga section."

The rhythmic crescendo at Galaxy 21 intensified in February 1976 when the club's owner, George Freeman, hired Fran