The history of pop music contains thousands of stories. But if you read through enough of them, you’ll start to notice a lot of repetition. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if you see a post here in the next few weeks about a record label complaining that they don’t hear a single, or an unexpected hit coming from a B-side, or a single failing due to distribution issues.

So it’s refreshing when something different comes along. An adult film star and Jamaican economic policies? I somehow doubt we’re going to see a story like this again anytime soon.

Growing up in Nashville, Andrea Truden found herself surrounded by music. Not only did she live in Music City, USA, but her mother also sang professionally, even featuring alongside Frankie Yankovic, King of the Polka. Andrea studied classical piano as a child and attended a school focused on performing arts, later receiving a college degree in music.

All she wanted to do was be a singer.

But after moving to New York and failing to find opportunities in her chosen creative field, Andrea had to get creative with her field, and she did this by starring in adult films. In the early 1970s, erotic films enjoyed a brief period of legitimacy and the work allowed Andrea not only to make a living, but also, on occasion, to record a demo in her continuing attempt to make it in music.

Andrea also sought out more mainstream work when she could, and in 1975 flew to Jamaica in order to shoot some commercials for a real estate agency. In seemingly unrelated news, the country had recently elected a Prime Minister named Michael Manley, who happened to support Fidel Castro’s Communist regime in Cuba. Since the US was staunchly anti-Castro and feared socialist dominoes falling in the Caribbean, they imposed economic sanctions against Jamaica. As retaliation, Manley enacted a law which said no money earned by foreigners while working in Jamaica could be taken out of the country.

All of this occurred while Andrea filmed her commercials and drank pina coladas on the beach. Only while preparing for departure did she learn that she now possessed a large amount of money with no way to get it home. Her options included forfeiting her assets (no way), or buying a planeload of souvenirs (impractical). But she cleverly thought of another method to get the money out.

Andrea called up a producer friend named Gregg Diamond whom she’d met in New York and asked him to fly out to Jamaica and produce a demo recording for her. Together they’d rent time at a studio and use local musicians to work on a song called “More, More, More.” If the government insisted, she would spend her money in Jamaica, but she would leave with tapes valued at an equal amount. In fact, time would prove them to be worth far more than her original paycheck.

Once safely back in New York, Andrea and Gregg shopped the tape around town. Record companies liked the demo, but not enough to release it in its current form or to spend money on it to make improvements. Finally, Buddah Records said they’d release “More, More, More,” but only on the condition that Tom Moulton — who’d recently mixed The Trampps’ massive hit “Disco Inferno” — could remix the Jamaican demo. Moulton shortened the track, made Andrea’s vocal a little sweeter and breathier, and generally sprinkled magic audio dust over the whole thing.

Released only to discos in February of 1976, “More, More, More” burned up the dancefloors and forced Buddah to release the single nationwide in the spring. It promptly hit #4 on the Hot 100 (#1 on the dance chart). Andrea True and her Connection scored a few more big dance hits, but when disco fell out of favor, so did her music. But she accomplished her childhood dream, even if she took a roundabout way to get there.

So get the action going… with The Andrea True Connection.

Of course, the song also gained a lot of attention in 1999 when Len sampled the bridge for “Steal My Sunshine” (which we talked about here).