Donna Summer’s Uneven ‘Rainbow’: Lost and Found : DONNA SUMMER “I’m a Rainbow” Casablanca (**)

Karen Carpenter’s 1979 solo recording with producer Phil Ramone isn’t the only “lost” album that’s been unearthed recently. If you check the Donna Summer bins in your local record store, you may be surprised to find her lost album.

We’re talking about “I’m a Rainbow,” the double album she recorded in 1981 with Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, the production-writing team that also worked with Summer on some of the most appealing dance-flavored albums of the ‘70s, including “Once Upon a Time” and “Bad Girls.”

“I’m a Rainbow” was scheduled to be Summer’s follow-up to “The Wanderer,” which was her first album for Geffen Records after years at Casablanca Records. But the album was never released and Summer went into the studio with producer Quincy Jones to make the album “Donna Summer.”

Though the Jones collection turned out to be uneven, it probably made sense for Summer to take a hiatus from the Moroder/Bellotte team at the time, because most of “I’m a Rainbow” sounds tired.

Not all of it, though.

Like some of her earlier hits, “People Talk”--one of the strongest tracks on “Rainbow”--mixes marvelously the Moroder/Bellotte musical tension with a strong dose of ABBA-like bounce. As usual, Summer’s vocal injects the recording with character and style. At least three other tracks--”Walk On (Keep On Movin’),” “To Turn the Stone” and “Romeo”--also deserve to be on any best-of Summer package.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).