"Disco Duck" is a satirical disco novelty song performed by Memphis disc jockey Rick Dees and His Cast of Idiots. It became a number-one hit on the Hot 100 for one week in October 1976 (and ranked #99 out of the 100 most popular songs of the year according to Billboardmagazine). It also made the top 20 on the BillboardHot Soul Singles chart, peaking at number 15. "Disco Duck" was initially released in the south by Estelle Axton's Fretone label but was later released by RSO Records for national and international distribution.

Written by Dees, "Disco Duck" was inspired by a 1960s novelty dance song called "The Duck", recorded by Jackie Lee in 1965. According to Dees, it took one day to write the song, but three months to convince anyone to perform it.

Combining orchestral disco styles with a Donald Duck-esque voice as the main plot point, the story within "Disco Duck" centers around a man at a dance party who is overcome by the urge to get up and "get down" in a duck-like manner. When the music stops, he sits down, but when he decides to get up and dance again, he finds that everyone in the room is now doing his dance.

A misconception about Disco Duckis that the voice of the duck itself was provided by Clarence Nash, the voice of Donald Duck in many Walt Disney cartoons, but several times the Disney company said Nash had nothing to do with the record. The voice was performed by Ken Pruitt, an acquaintance of Dees, as stated on the label of the RSO release.

"Disco Duck" became a nationwide hit in the United States by September 1976. On the BillboardHot 100 singles chart, it peaked at number one on October 16, 1976, for one week, held the number-two spot for the following four weeks and remained in the Top 10 for a total of ten weeks.

For all its success, "Disco Duck" was shunned by radio stations in Memphis, including WMPS-AM, the station Dees worked for at the time. Station management forbade Dees from playing the song on his own show and rival stations refused to play it for fear of promoting the competition. When Dees talked about the song on his show one morning, the program director fired him, citing conflict of interest. After a brief mandatory hiatus, Dees was hired by WHBQ-AM, WMPS's primary competition in Memphis.

By the time "Disco Duck" become a hit, Dees and his "Idiots" started making the rounds of the popular TV music shows to promote the song. On American Bandstandand similar shows, Dees lip-synched to the recording, alone on stage with an unseen person animating a duck hand puppet. But when he appeared on The Midnight Specialhe gathered together a band, backup singers and possibly Pruitt, the voice of the duck on the record, and performed the song live.

"Disco Duck" even made an appearance in the film, Saturday Night Fever, in a dance club scene in which a group of senior citizens were learning to dance disco-style. It was also featured in a deleted scene added back to the PG version. According to Dees, his manager at the time made the unwise decision to cancel plans to include the song on the film's soundtrack because of fears that it would compete with sales of Dees's own album.

The 1979 Disney-produced album Mickey Mouse Disco, a late entry into the disco genre, featured a track called "Macho Duck," (inspired mostly by the Village People hit, Macho Man) with the voice of Nash on the track, in response.

"Disco Duck" was covered in 1977 by D.J. Scott and Willem, a German Parody Version called "Tarzan Ist Wieder Da".

Also in 1977, Peter Pan Records put out a series of children's records featuring Irwin the Disco Duck.

"Disco Duck" was referenced in an episode of Animaniacswhen the Warner siblings attend a karaoke club and Dot Warner flips through the book, saying "See if they have Disco Duck."

In the Beverly Hills 90210episode, "Duke's Bad Boy", Steve Sanders insults David Silver's producer by asking if his last hit was "Disco Duck".

DJ Shadow sampled "Disco Duck's" trademark riff on the track "Right Thing/GDMFSOB", on his 2002 album The Private Press.

Live performance by Rick Dees on