This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: – ···scholar·JSTOR(July 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Chicago 13 is the eleventh studio album by the American band Chicago, released in 1979. As the follow-up to Hot Streets, Chicago 13 would be the band's final release featuring lead guitarist Donnie Dacus, who had followed the late founding member, guitarist Terry Kath. All band members would contribute to the songwriting (one of only two albums where this is the case, with the other being Chicago VII).
After recording sessions in Morin-Heights, Quebec and Hollywood, Chicago 13—which saw the band return to numbering its albums and displaying its logo—was released that August and was preceded by Donnie Dacus's "Must Have Been Crazy" as lead single. Chicago 13 is the first Chicago album to bear no significant hit singles. The opening track, the disco-fueled "Street Player" was also released as a single but it failed to chart, making it the band's first single to miss the charts altogether.
Despite negative reviews, Chicago 13 reached No. 21 and went gold. Although it was the band's first album to miss the Top 20 and was then the lowest charting release since their debut album. Shortly after the tour to support the album ended, Dacus was fired from the band without explanation.
In 2003, Chicago 13 was remastered and reissued by Rhino Records with a B-Side, featuring Dacus's "Closer to You" (an outtake from the Hot Streets sessions), and the 12-inch single mix of "Street Player" as bonus tracks. The songs "Street Player" and "Closer to You" had previously been released by other artists: "Street Player" by Rufus, who originally recorded it before Chicago, and "Closer" by Stephen Stills, though with Donnie Dacus on lead vocals. "Street Player" did eventually reach hit status, being sampled for both the 1995 hit "The Bomb! (These Sounds Fall into My Mind)" by The Bucketheads, the 2009 hit "I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)" by Pitbull and the 2013 remix by dance music producer "Tradelove".[4]
P.C. Moblee – lead vocals on "Window Dreamin'" and "Aloha Mama" (Moblee was actually Peter Cetera singing in a lower register. His appearance on the album is credited as "courtesy of the Peter Cetera Vocal Company").