The Andrea True Connection -

The Andrea True Connection was an American disco group that released the 1976/77 albums More, More, More and White Witch on Buddah. Singer Andrea True (July 26, 1943 — Nov. 7, 2011) conceived the project with producer Gregg Diamond during a stay in Jamaica, where an impromptu recording session yielded the global hit “More, More, More.” She scored further hits with “N.Y., You Got Me Dancing” and “What’s Your Name, What’s Your Number.” Her rock-oriented final release, War Machine, appeared in 1980 on Ricordi International.

Members: Andrea True, Christopher Carroll, Joe Barbosa, Ken Wallace, Ralph Agresta, Tom Carey

Background

Andrea Marie Truden was born on July 26, 1943, in Nashville, the only child of Slovenian migrant parents. Her mother, Anne, sang professionally and recorded with 1940s polka accordionist Frankie Yankovic.

True attended St. Cecilia Academy, an all-girls Catholic school for the performing arts, where she studied classical piano and served as vice president of TV production. At 15, she hosted the WLAC television program Teen Beat. In 1960, the Radio and Television Council of Middle Tennessee honored her work in local media. She enrolled as a music major at George Peabody College.

Her father, Frank, was an engineer who died when True was 16 years old. At 19, she married an academic and left college to support her husband’s career. They moved to Oklahoma and then settled and soon divorced in New York, where she pursued film work, initially to no avail. Removed from her straight-laced Midwest upbringing, she embraced the sexual revolution and fell in with the city’s emerging stag-film culture.

In the late 1960s, True appeared in Scandinavian adult films. She made her American blue-screen debut with the 1972 8mm flick Head Nurse. Outside that circuit, she appeared as an extra in The Way We Were and 40 Carats. In 1974, she starred in The Seduction of Lynn Carter and (as Inger Kissin) co-starred with Linda Lovelace in Deep Throat Part II. Despite this path, her interests remained in music.

Jamaica, “More, More, More,” and the Andrea True Connection

In 1975, True visited Jamaica to star in a series of real-estate commercials. Due to the US embargo imposed on the regime of the island’s recently elected Prime Minister, Michael Manley, Jamaican customs forbade asset transfers by foreign nationals. With earnings to spend, she purchased local studio time. She touched base with a stateside musical contact, Gregg Diamond, a recent Jobriath soundman and budding producer.

Her stranded cash became the seed money for “More, More, More,” a Diamond composition recorded after-hours at Federal Records Studio, Kingston, with lush, airy vocals by a tired Andrea True. Federal first issued the song as a 1975 two-sided single, distributed to club DJs and spun to instant crowd enthusiasm.

The Andrea True Connection took shape around that record as a studio unit. True fronted the project while Diamond handled the central music role as writer, producer, arranger, keyboardist, and percussionist. The credited Buddah-era lineup included saxophonist Enrique Moore and Mighty Sparrow trumpeter James Smart. Gregg’s brother, drummer Godfrey Diamond, engineered the project, which also involved two further Jobriath associates: bassist Jim Gregory and former Stories guitarist Steve Love.

In 1976, Tom Moulton remixed “More, More, More” for the international market. The song became an international disco hit with Top 10 placements in the UK (No. 5), Ireland (No. 6), and Germany (No. 10). In the US, “More, More, More” reached No. 1 on the Dance Club Songs chart, No. 3 on the Cashbox Top 100, and No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100.

More, More, More

Andrea True Connection released their debut album, More, More, More, in May 1976 on Buddah.

Gregg Diamond wrote and arranged the album, built around steady kick-drum pressure, clipped guitar rhythm, horn punctuation, and lush string overlays. Andrea True delivers breathy lead lines while bassist Jim Gregory locks the tracks to a straight four-beat pull. Serial percussionist Jimmy Maelen (ex-Ambergris) appears on the deep cuts.

“Party Line” and “Keep It Up Longer” maintain compact dance form before the full-length album cut of “More, More, More,” which closes the first half. “Fill Me Up (Heart to Heart)” and “Call Me” consume Side B as extended pieces with instrumental sequences.

A1. “Party Line” (6:50)
A2. “Keep It Up Longer” (4:36)
A3. “More, More, More” (6:15) — Andrea coos the line “Ooooh, how do you like your love” with a soft imposed 7th (F) over a brass-laden backdrop in G, which drops to F as she imparts a semi-tone (E) on the word “love,” sung with sultry elongation. On the bridge, they shift to B♭/F-dominant (“So if you want to know, how I really feel”) and drop to G (“get the camera rolling, get the action going”) as she conjures blue-screen production. The chorus shifts between C and Fmaj7, climaxing with her soaring octave delivery of “looooove.” Midway, James Smart plays a jazz-tinged trumpet solo in B♭.

B1. “Fill Me Up (Heart to Heart)” (10:03)
B2. “Call Me” (7:28)

Tom Moultin remixed the title track in November 1975 at Mediasound and Electric Lady in New York. The Diamond brothers sound-shaped the remaining tracks at nearby Sundragon Studios. Godfrey worked in sequence on 1975/76 albums by the Crown Heights Affair, Kool & the Gang, Rupert Holmes (self-titled), and Holmes-produced titles by Sparks and John Miles (Stranger In the City).

More, More, More displays True in an angelic white gown, captured by veteran rock portrait photographer Joel Brodsky, whose images also grace contemporary sleeves for Denise LaSalle, Melba Moore (This Is It), Phyllis Hyman (self-titled), and Spanky Wilson (Specialty of the House). The backside pictures True in a puffy gold blouse and satin orange cape.

Buddah issued “More, More, More” (b/w “More, More, More” Part 2) as a 7-inch in February 1976. It placed at No. 17 on the year-end Billboard chart. Andrea True mimed the single edit amid gold-lit metallic blinds for the German show Musikladen. The split-screen, diamond-scope clip remains her most viewed on-screen performance.

In July 1976, Buddah lifted “Party Line” as a second single (b/w “Call Me”). It reached No. 9 on the Dance Club Songs chart, No. 80 on the Billboard Hot 100, and No. 90 in Canada. On August 24, a nine-piece Andrea True Connection performed both singles along with “Fill Me Up (Heart to Heart)” for the November 6, 1976, broadcast of Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert.

More, More, More reached No. 47 on the Billboard 200 and No. 39 on Canada’s RPM album chart.

Gregg Diamond oversaw one further True single and then formed Bionic Boogie with Steve Love, who also appeared on Has It All, the 1977 comeback album by Garnet Mimms with the erotic dance-floor steamer “What It Is.”

White Witch

Andrea True Connection released their second album, White Witch, in late 1977 on Buddah.

On this album they linked with former Ten Wheel Drive keyboardist Michael Zager, who produced Side A and co-wrote two songs with Alvin Fields.

Shorter song forms dominate the first half, where clipped rhythm figures and keyboard pulses hold the beat in tight, radio-scale shapes. Andrea True places close vocal lines across that pull. Side B opens the structure with the six-minute drive of “N.Y., You Got Me Dancing,” then closes on the title track and a Lou Reed cover.

A1. “What’s Your Name, What’s Your Number” (6:36) — Roger Cook, Bobby Woods
A2. “You Make Love Worthwhile” (4:33) — Robert Brown, Doug Cosman
A3. “Life Is What You Make It” (3:21) — Fields, Zager
A4. “It’s All Up to You” (3:04) — Fields, Zager

B1. “N.Y., You Got Me Dancing” (6:04) — Gregg Diamond
B2. “White Witch” (3:18) — Val Burke, Andrea True
B3. “Sally Can’t Dance” (3:06) — originated as the title track to Reed’s 1974 fourth solo album.

Sessions occurred at Sundragon Studios, where Zager produced, arranged, and conducted Side A. “N.Y., You Got Me Dancing” stems from an earlier session with Greg Diamond. True herself co-produced the title track with former Mother Night bassist Val Burke, a late-period member of Spooky Tooth. Tom Moulton mixed the record at Sigma Sound Studios. Zager worked in sequence on 1977 titles by Paul Davis, Seawind, Wild Cherry, and the Roulette tax-scam single “Benihana,” a sensual disco track by actress Marilyn Chambers.

White Witch features an illustration of True in a cape with a lion apparition: a reference to The Chronicles of Narnia, the 1950s portal fantasy series by British novelist C. S. Lewis, whose central character in the first installment, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, inspired the album title. True donned the actual wardrobe in a Brodsky photoshoot sourced for the album’s French release.

“N.Y., You Got Me Dancing” first appeared in February 1977 as an advance single (b/w “Keep It Up Longer”). It reached No. 4 on the Dance Club Songs chart, No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100, and No. 89 in Canada. A brown-haired True mimed the song in a purple-sequined slit dress for the German ZDF music program Disco.

In December, “What’s Your Name, What’s Your Number” became the second single (b/w “Fill Me Up (Heart to Heart)”) and reached No. 9 on the Dance Club Songs chart and No. 56 on the Billboard Hot 100. Abroad, the single reached No. 34 in the UK and No. 15 in Italy, where a gypsy-attired True mimed the song for the Rai 1 program Discoring, transmitted in black and white.

White Witch guitarist Bruce Kulick did subsequent stints in Blackjack, Good Rats, and joined Kiss in time for their 1985 release Asylum. Bassist Tom Carey continued with True for her next album.

War Machine

Andrea True released her third and final album, War Machine, in 1980 on Ricordi International.

True shifts the project into a guitar-led set with Moog lines, layered backing choruses, and a firmer drum attack inspired by new wave. Side one packs four short cuts into 15 minutes. Side two runs five songs and places the title track near the end of the sequence. The liner notes state: “This album is dedicated to world peace and finding alternate solutions to energy problems and wars!”

A1. “Open Up Baby” (3:00) — Christopher Bruschi
A2. “Hootchie Kootchie Floozies” (4:20) — Tony D’Ambra, Andrea True
A3. “The Unkindest Cut” (3:52) — Tom Bakas, Gene Harlot, Andrea True
A4. “Whatever Happened to Love?” (4:18) — Andrea True

B1. “Makin’ Music for Money” (4:24) — is a 1973 song by American singer–songwriter Alex Harvey; covered in 1974 by Kenny Rogers & First Edition and reinterpreted in 1976 by Celia Yancey.
B2. “But Is That Love?” (3:28) — Tom Bakas, Gene Harlot, Andrea True
B3. “Still Goin’ Down” (3:22) — Robert W. Brown
B4. “War Machine” (4:48) — Robert W. Brown
B5. “Rock ’n Roll / Let It Go” (4:01) — Tom Carey

Andrea True recorded the first six tracks at Homegrown Studios in New Jersey with engineers Robert Buontempo and Gary Pinckney. She cut the last three tracks at Media Studios in New York City with engineers Godfrey Diamond and Michael Barbiero. Douglas Epstein handled the final mixes. Sam Ginsberg completed the final mix on “Still Goin’ Down.”

War Machine remained limited to the Italian market. Ricordi International lifted “War Machine” as a single (b/w “The Unkindest Cut”). The video portrays True as a WAAC, intercut with WWII stock footage and scenes of her band in military fatigue.

In 1981, Atom issued “Make My Music for Me” (b/w “Whatever Happened to Love?”) as a 7-inch in Austria under the retitled form of album track “Makin’ Music for Money.”

Postlude

Soon after War Machine, Andrea True moved to Miami, where she continued as a club singer until a throat goiter ended her music ambitions. After years of undocumented quiet life, she reappeared in New York for two sold-out 1994 shows at the Paramount Theatre, sparking short-lived talk of new music. Meanwhile, “More, More, More” regained popularity as a sentimental artifact of the disco era.

In 2000, a 57-year-old True performed “What’s Your Name, What’s Your Number” on Italian TV. She also appeared on the VH-1 specials 100 Greatest Dance Songs and Where Are They Now? In 2002, documentary reporters Ashley West and April Hall tracked True down for a final interview (released posthumously in 2017 on their Rialto Report podcast→). Her later work included astrology and substance abuse counseling.

True spent her final years in Woodstock, NY, where she lived for a time with close-friend Valerie Marron (1955–2008), a fellow veteran of 70s blue-screen cinema.

True died of heart failure on November 7, 2011, at age 68.

Discography: