The members of Toto were studio rats who quickly gained a reputation for sounding sterile and corporate. While that is true to an extent, the Toto folks also had an ear for funk. Granted, it was a meticulous form of funk, but there’s no doubt that they cooked up some tasty grooves; as evidenced by their work on Boz Scaggs’ landmark blue-eyed soul classic Silk Degrees, Cheryl Lynn’s iconic disco debut “Got To Be Real”, and their own “Georgy Porgy”. This tasty morsel of laid-back disco made it to the top 20 on Billboard‘s R&B charts in 1979.

Lynn paid Toto back for providing her with a huge hit by singing the chorus and adding ad-libs to “Georgy Porgy”. Her special style of vocal-ese (you will never ever confuse Cheryl Lynn with another singer) adds a little extra stank to the mid-tempo groove cooked up by Team Toto and certainly provides an unique complement to Steve Lukather’s Scaggs-esque singing style.

So while “Africa” and “Rosanna” might be the first tunes that come to mind when you think of Toto, let’s not forget that they took “Georgy Porgy” to dance floors nationwide and created a classic out of a nursery rhyme. Luther Vandross didn’t forget. Nor did Eric Benet. Or MC Lyte.