Despite the success of “Hot Shot,” and several other songs from the album, things weren’t “kosher at all,” says Kahn about the business side of things. They had a falling out with West End Records who wouldn’t account for the sales of the record. Relations between Kahns, Borusiewicz, and Young became strained when outside promoters and parties interested in Young’s career divided the team. Their relationship lasted though, somewhat strained, however, until she passed away in 1991.
“Our bomb exploded at the peak of disco and crashed and burned miserably – I mean, Ethel Merman was singing disco. Everybody was putting their music to disco. It became a multi-million dollar industry but soon every one ran for the hills. The whole bottom fell out with the exception of Madonna and Donna Summer,” says Kahn.
Young passed away in 1991, and in July, 1994, Borusiewicz passed away from complications of AIDS at the young age of 42. Walter Kahn, died in 2013 from kidney failure. In the mid-Eighties Kahn was an independent producer. In 1973 he won a Grammy Award for Best Soul Gospel Performance for The Dixie Hummingbirds’ recording of “Love Me Like A Rock.”
Kahn walked away from the music business from 1983 to run his family’s business. While he gave up the music business, he didn’t give up on music, and in 2007 he began performing again. An accomplished jazz musician, he also started teaching jazz improvisation to immediate and advanced pianists, something he tells me he’s learned as much from himself, as his students have. His All Star Jazz Trio performs regularly in Philly. Over the last several years he played regularly at The Rittenhouse Hotel, and the lounge at The Prime Rib.
In December, Kahn and the trio (featuring Philly jazz stalwarts Bruce Klauber and Bruce Kaminsky) released an album with jazz singer Peggy King, Songs a La King. The group recently performed their record release party at Square On Square and held a Wednesday nigh residency at Square on Square throughout February.
Kahn, who met Peggy in 2013, urged her to record songs from the great American standards songbook. “I’m so excited to be working with Peggy. She’s going to be 86, but she still sounds like she did when she was 25. It’s wonderful.” Kahn and Klauber co-produced the record, recorded in Kahn’s studio.
“It’s been great getting Hot Shot back out in the ears of older disco fans and new audiences,” says Kahn. Over the last decade the song has been remixed by various producers, and it landed back on the Billbaord charts posthumously in 2008 for Young on the Billboard charts. Additionally, it was sampled by Daft Punk on “Indo Silver Club,” on their 1997 Homework album.
Pick up the remastered version of Hot Shot here, and watch Young perform it during an Action AIDS benefit at the Mandell Theatre below in September, 1990. It was her last known performance, four months before she died. The original video for “Hot Shot” was filmed at the DCA club in Philly. “We found the original video in a television studio in Holland,” Kahn says, “Where the song was number one last year.” Watch the video here.
