Skunk Baxter Helped Donna Summer’s ‘Hot Stuff’ Hit on $35 Guitar

Jeff “Skunk” Baxter recalled how he helped make Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” a hit using a $35 guitar.

And the Steely Dan co-founder, who went on to work with the Doobie Brothers, said he nearly hadn’t bothered attending the session for Summer’s 1979 album Bad Girls.

The single was Summer’s second of four No. 1 hits. It opened her music to new listeners with a more rock-oriented sound as she crossed over from disco music under the auspices of Italian producer Giorgio Moroder.

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“It almost didn’t happen,” Baxter told Vertex Effects in a recent interview (below). “My assistant forgot to tell me that Giorgio had called. I saw it on a message pad. So I called him back; I said, ‘What kind of music is it?’”

On being told it was disco, the guitarist’s response was muted, because he and his musical partner Jay Graydon had played a lot of sessions in the genre. “[N]ot to be snotty about it – but Jay and I [would] get together on a Monday and decide what riff we’re gonna play, for the whole week!” he explained. “To us it was all the same.”

So he told Moroder: “There’s a million guitar players who can do this. If you want something different, then I’m happy to do it. But I’d like to have some space.” The producer’s reply was: “Play whatever you want.”

The next issue was that Baxter was moving into a new house at the time, meaning he didn’t have access to his guitars. He went down to the nearby Hollywood branch of Guitar Center and spoke to the manager. “I said, ‘Paul, I need a guitar – now!’ So he laughed [and] pointed to a box in the middle of the store. The box said, ‘Buy me – $25.’ It had a bunch of weird guitars in it.”

Did ‘Skunk’ Baxter Know ‘Hot Stuff’ Was a Hit?

For some reason he was drawn to an instrument that didn’t even have matching tuning pegs. “I picked it up, plugged it in, played it – ‘Okay, fine.’ I gave him $35. Bought a six-pack of Bud, went down to Rusk studios. And they played me the song… I turned everything up to 10, plugged the guitar in and said, ‘Roll tape.’ That was it – one take.”

Asked if he’d known how successful “Hot Stuff” would be, Baxter allowed: “I don’t think I had any foresight… After it was over, I thought, ‘Wow, this is different.’ And I said to Giorgio, ‘I think I know what you wanted to do.’ … [H]e said, ‘Absolutely.’”

He reflected: “All we can do is sew the body back up and see what happens!”

Listen to Donna Summer Perform ‘Hot Stuff’

Watch Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter’s Vertex Effects Interview