This is one of those things I never thought I’d see. At the very least it can be filed under “Things that I never really thought about thinking I’d never see” if that makes any sense. That this unlikely thing exists is a cause for wonderment and joy, nevertheless.

What am I talking about? In the clip below, you can practically see the birth of the Eurodisco genre, when the French duo Bimbo Jet (Claude Morgan and Laurent Rossi) play along with some exuberant dancers on a mid-70s TV variety show. It’s one of only two TV performances I can find of it online by the original artists. The number they are performing is their massive, massive, massive worldwide #1 hit “El Bimbo.” The song was released in France in 1974 and sold well over a million copies. It took about a year for it to take off elsewhere, but when it did take off, the peppy song topped the charts all over the place, even in America, where Bimbo Jet scored themselves a #1 on the Billboard Disco chart and a #2 in the Hot Dance Club Play charts. On the overall Hot 100 chart, “El Bimbo” climbed to #43, not bad for something that would have sounded spectacularly out of place on AM or FM radio at the time.

Many people know this song today as something that they hear street musicians play. This is the original. It slays on the dancefloor. Every DJ worth their salt has played “El Bimbo” and seen people go nuts for it. It’s a guaranteed crowd pleaser. I mean, look how freakin’ HAPPY these people are!
 

 
“El Bimbo” has been covered a lot. Even the Ventures covered it. Pop easy listening orchestra maestro Paul Mauriat had a hit with his cover version of “El Bimbo” which was famously used in Anatoly Petrov and Sever Gansovsky’s gorgeous 1977 Soviet anti-military animation “Polygon.” It was also used to great effect in several of the Police Academy films:
 

 
Thank you Nate Cimmino of West Orange, New Jersey!