Baccara

Baccara was a Spanish female vocal duo formed in 1977 by Spanish artists Mayte Mateos and María Mendiola. The duo rapidly achieved international success with their debut single "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie", which reached number one across much of Europe and became the best-selling single of all time by a female duo, eventually selling more than 16 million copies worldwide. A successful follow-up single and European tour led to a number of album releases, numerous television appearances and the duo's selection to in the Eurovision Song Contest 1978.
Despite a substantial following in Spain, Germany and Japan, by 1981 their blend of disco, pop and Spanish folk music was no longer fashionable, and by 1983 Mateos and Mendiola were both working on solo projects. Achieving little success as solo artists, the two formed duos of their own: separate incarnations of the original Baccara appeared during the middle of the decade, with Mendiola fronting New Baccara and Mateos keeping the duo's original name. During the 1990s, New Baccara reverted to Baccara and as a consequence both Mateos and Mendiola headed different duos with the same name. Both principals subsequently had prolonged but separate legacy careers based on nostalgia and their earlier fame.
Mendiola's Baccara has seen more international recognition, releasing a string of Hi-NRG club hits such as "Fantasy Boy", "Call Me Up" and "Touch Me" in the late 1980s and the later UK club hit "Wind Beneath My Wings". Mateos' Baccara has released few new recordings, but has remained in demand for television and live appearances in countries such as Spain and Germany, where the original Baccara developed a loyal fan base, performing the duo's back-catalogue and modernised versions of traditional Spanish songs.

Formation

In 1976, María Mendiola proposed to her colleague Mayte Mateos the formation of a separate singing and dancing duo. After leaving the ballet company, the duo's initial act was simply that of variety show dancers. Their first television appearance was on the Palmarés light entertainment programme and they were engaged at a nightclub in the Aragon city of Zaragoza, but their contract was cancelled when the club manager decided that they were "too elegant" for the style of the show. Mateos and Mendiola relocated to the Canary Islands in search of work. Here they found that there was an audience for the performance of traditional Spanish music and dance in a form that was adapted to suit international tastes.
The duo were spotted by Leon Deane, manager of the German subsidiary of record company RCA, while performing flamenco dance and traditional Spanish songs for mostly German tourists in the Tres Islas Hotel on the island of Fuerteventura. María, who was the only one who spoke English, served as a bridge between the promotion managers and the duo to reach an agreement. Deane invited them to Hamburg so they could do a voice test at the record company. He was the prime mover behind what became Baccara, developing their stage performance while recruiting their instrumental support. Mateos and Mendiola were retitled Baccara, after the name of the black rose, in reference to the women's dark Spanish appearance.
Leon Deane is generally credited with the Baccara formula—consisting of breathy lyrics, lush backing, a disco beat and the striking image of two women dancing. While drawing lightly on Spanish flamenco song and dance tradition, the formula was rooted in 1970s disco music.

Baccara (1977–1981)

Together with fellow writer Frank Dostal, Rolf Soja penned their début single "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie" and most of their other 1970s hits. Recorded in the Netherlands and released in 1977, "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie" was an enormous pan-European hit and was a prime example of the phenomenon that is known as the "summer hit". It is also an example of the Euro disco genre, described in The Independent newspaper in 1999 as follows :

This mind-bending Common Market melding of foreign accents, bad diction, bizarre arrangements and lightweight production, usually top-heavy with strings

"Yes Sir, …" reached the top of the charts in Germany, the Netherlands, the UK, Sweden, Belgium, and Switzerland, and number three in France. Baccara sold more than 16 million copies of "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie" and featured in the 1977 edition of the Guinness Book of Records as the highest-selling female musical duo to date. They were the first female duo to reach number one in the UK, and had the only number one by a Spanish artist in the UK until Julio Iglesias, four years later.
Later that year, a self-titled album, written and produced by Soja and Dostal, was released. The album Baccara was the first platinum selling album—actually double platinum in 1978—by a foreign group in Finland. In 2013, the album still remains the sixth biggest selling album of all time in Finland.
A follow-up single, "Sorry, I'm a Lady", was also an international hit, peaking at the top of the charts in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium and reaching the top ten in the UK, Sweden and Switzerland. Most of Baccara's recordings were sung in English although they also recorded in Spanish, German and French. They recorded different language versions of some songs.
Touring in Europe during the late 1970s helped the duo establish a firm fan base in Germany and the Scandinavian countries, and their Spanish-flavoured interpretation of the disco sound also brought them recognition in Japan and Russia. Baccara represented West Germany at the eighth World Popular Song Festival held in November 1977 – until it ended in 1989 the largest such contest in the world. Their song, "Mad in Madrid", came 14th out of 37 participating countries.
In 1978 the second Baccara album, Light My Fire, was released across Europe, and while not matching the international success of the first, it spawned the single "Parlez-vous français ?" which was selected on a national final to at the Eurovision Song Contest 1978. Despite full marks in the contest from Italy, Portugal, and Spain the duo finished in seventh place. However high sales, particularly in Denmark, Sweden, and Belgium, meant that the single was a commercial success.
Further recognition came in 1978 when Baccara was granted Germany's most prestigious media award, Burda Publishing Group's Bambi prize. The duo made regular television appearances, becoming weekly guests on Sacha Distel's show in the UK, and on Musikladen in Germany. 1978 was the high point of Baccara's artistic and commercial success. Late that year the duo released the single "The Devil Sent You to Lorado" with "Somewhere in Paradise" as its B side. Both of these Baccara recordings have become iconic. "Somewhere in Paradise" is regularly played by Christian radio stations while "The Devil…" is sometimes identified with the gay community. A Spanish-language version of "The Devil…" was released at the same time as the English one, and both the original English version and "Somewhere in Paradise" subsequently featured on the duo's first greatest hits compilation, The Hits of Baccara, released under the name Los Éxitos de Baccara in Spain and South America.
In 1979, the album Colours and the separately-recorded single "Eins plus eins ist eins", released to mark the United Nations' International Year of the Child and celebrate the 20th anniversary of the UN adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Although still successful, sales of these and other releases in 1979 were disappointing.
Baccara's fourth and final album in the band's original incarnation was Bad Boys, released in 1981. By this time, the disco sound had been overshadowed by newer music movements such as punk, new wave and synthpop in much of Europe and interest was largely confined to those countries where the duo had an established fan base, notably Germany. The album was not released in the UK or US; they never achieved any recognition in the US despite some of their songs being given significant airplay. One music critic suggested that the Baccara formula lacked artistic depth but had been "mined for all it was worth" over two years until public interest moved on to other things. The same critic also drew attention to an element of "anti-feminist subservience" in the lyrics of some Baccara songs.
The New Musical Express commented in May 2002 : "Think what you like about Baccara, seen today their 1978 Eurovision performance has a certain style while their competition from that event looks dated and amateurish".

Split

The 1980 single release of "Sleepy-Time-Toy" led to a disagreement within Baccara over the vocal mix used. Mendiola complained that her voice was not given sufficient prominence in the song's arrangement and sued RCA for breach of contract. Mendiola's case was that the song should not have been released as a Baccara recording when it amounted to a Mateos solo. A court hearing in Munich resulted in 250,000 records being recalled from dealers and a revised recording with a new vocal mix being issued in place of the original. A 28-second instrumental bridge was removed from the start of the recording and the vocals were remixed so as to give Mendiola and Mateos equal prominence. The artwork for the single's cover appears to have remained unchanged. The single failed to chart successfully.
As a result of the dispute, relationships between all parties involved were damaged. One consequence of this was that Soja and Dostal were not involved with Baccara's final album. The duo recorded Bad Boys with Bruce Baxter and Graham Sacher in the UK. Neither the album nor its spin-off single "Colorado" were successful. In 1981, after RCA declined to renew their contract, Mateos and Mendiola ended their professional partnership and both launched solo careers.
By 1988, both artists had released a series of singles and one studio album each of their own – Mendiola with Born Again and Mateos with Spanish Dreams under the name Mayte Mathée – which saw moderate success among Baccara's original fan base. Mateos' Spanish Dreams was re-released on CD in Germany in the 2000s under the title Noche Latina but Mendiola's Born Again still remains unreleased in digital format. However, there remained a demand for Baccara's music, particularly on the European television circuit, and by the end of the decade both Mateos and Mendiola had formed their own versions of Baccara with new singing partners. Despite a series of name and line-up changes, both Baccara duos continued to perform around Europe and have released new albums. Both have also made re-recordings of their hits for various minor record labels, which are regularly re-packaged and re-issued under the original Baccara name, occasionally with photos of the original duo, Mateos and Mendiola, on the album covers. However, the original song versions – those recorded between 1977 and 1981 – remain the property of Sony Music Entertainment, which now holds the rights to the RCA back catalogue.
On the occasion of Baccara's 30th Anniversary, Sony-BMG Germany released a comprehensive three CD box set on 31 August 2007. This collection includes 50 RCA original recordings. Several songs such as "Mad in Madrid", "Amoureux", "Baila tú", "En el año 2000", "Eins plus eins ist eins" and "Candido" made their debut on CD. The only tracks missing from this otherwise comprehensive career retrospective are the US 12" versions of "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie" and "Sorry, I'm a Lady" from debut album Baccara, the full 12 minute album version of "Baby, Why Don't You Reach Out?"/"Light My Fire" and the extended album version of "Darling" from 1978's Light My Fire and the extended 12" versions of "Body-Talk" and "By 1999" from 1979's Colours.
After the split, Mateos and Mendiola never performed together again.