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TIME TO JACK: CHIP E ON THE BIRTH OF CHICAGO HOUSE

WRITTEN BY AMW.FM ON MAY 18, 2016


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FROM THE DJ HISTORY ARCHIVES: THE INFLUENTIAL DJ/PRODUCER TALKS AT LENGTH ABOUT
RON HARDY, FRANKIE KNUCKLES AND THE EARLY DAYS OF “CHICAGO JACK”

Chip E Courtesy of Chip E

From his position working behind the counter at Importes, Etc, Irwin “Chip E”
Eberhart saw up close and was instrumental in some of the key changes in
Chicago’s dance music scene. Most of the city’s most popular DJs,
including Frankie Knuckles, Ron Hardy and the Hot Mix 5, were customers, as well
as contemporaries such as Jesse Saunders and Steve “Silk” Hurley.

It was alongside these DJs and would-be producers that Eberhart played a role in
defining what would became Chicago’s greatest musical export of the 1980s: house
music. After tinkering with drum machines and “cheap kids synths” he headed into
the studio and made his first record in late 1984, the self-released Jack
Trax EP, which contained the early anthem “It’s House” and “Time To Jack,”
helping to define the drum-machine driven Chicago house blueprint.

When house started blowing up in the UK in 1986, Eberhart regularly travelled to
Europe to DJ. A year later, he helped produce Frankie Knuckles’ first solo
record, “You Can’t Hide,” a house music cover of Teddy Pendergrass’s Philly soul
anthem “You Can’t Hide From Yourself.” Under the familiar Chip E alias, he
continued to be a popular draw as a DJ in the UK and Italy until the mid-1990s
when he decided to take a break from the industry.

DJ History

While visiting London in 2005, Eberhart sat down with Bill Brewster and Frank
Broughton to recount his memories of the birth of house, talking at length about
now legendary clubs and DJs, and the real story of how the genre got its name.

First of all, tell us a little about your background.

I was born in Chicago in 1966. I grew up on the South Side. Most of the guys who
helped start house music grew up in the South Side of Chicago. They were pretty
much from middle class working families. I started off going to parochial
schools, Catholic schools – private schools I guess you could call them.

For a short time I went to high school in LA. When I was there it opened my eyes
up to the new wave sound. I came back to Chicago and I guess it was more disco
and such. Then I went to college to study marketing and music. I worked in a
music shop, Importes, Etc, while I was in college and I also DJed. So if you put
that together – the music shop, the DJing and the marketing – I had a good sense
of the business of it as well as what people wanted on the floor.

How did you get into music first?

Being a child of the 1960s, my parents listened to a lot of bossa nova. To this
day Antônio Carlos Jobim is still one of my favorite artists. My parents had
eclectic tastes and listened to all sorts of things. When I started in high
school, DJing was new and it was kind of cool. All my friends would cut class to
go to a guy’s house to play records and so I’d do that. I thought I was mixing,
but really I was just doing train wrecks.

I was fortunate because I had a friend who introduced me to Importes, Etc and
all the good music. Since I had all the good music, they always asked me to come
by. I was doing train wrecks for a long time until finally a guy at Importes,
Etc called Brett Wilcox listened to one of my tapes and said, “You know, this
sucks, but I can teach you how to mix. You know, I taught Frankie [Knuckles]?” I
was like, “Really? You taught Frankie?” He said, “Yeah and I got his old decks!”
They were a pair of old Technics 1100s. So I went over. Within about 20 minutes
I went from knowing nothing about mixing except, “These are two decks and this
is a mixer,” to actually understanding phrases and how to segue. It was a big
eye-opener.

What kind of places were you DJing?

Mostly high school parties – sock hops we would call them – in high school
gymnasiums. I started playing small places. There’s a place called the Candy
Store where I played, and later the Playground. That was where Jesse
Saunders and Farley [Jackmaster Funk] started DJing.

What age group would go to the high school parties?

I guess it was mostly 13 to 18 – let me step back a little bit. That was
actually my second introduction to the music. My first introduction was actually
when I was about 11 and I went to this place called the Loft. I was working for
this high school newspaper. I got interested in doing stuff for the newspaper
when I was about nine years old. I was watching a public broadcast show about
this citywide high school newspaper. It was distributed throughout the city and
had different staff members for each school.

> There were all these people dancing and having fun. I thought, “Wow, this is
> something I really wanna be a part of.” From that point on I was hooked.

I was into photography so I thought, “I wanna be a part of that.” So I hopped on
the L Train and went downtown, took some of my pictures and said, “I wanna be on
the staff,” and they were like, “Oh, that’s so cute, come back and see us when
you’re in high school.” I was like, “No, I wanna be on the staff now!” I was
very persistent and eventually they gave me a couple of assignments and I
prevailed. There was a guy there by the name of Eric Bradshaw who was throwing
parties. He had a group called Vertigo and they threw parties at the Loft, which
was on 14th and Michigan.

That’s downtown isn’t it?

Yeah. Their preferred DJs were the Chosen Few, who were essentially Wayne
Williams, Tony Hatchett, Jesse Saunders and Alan King. Later they added Andrew
Hatchett. I was 11 or 12 the first night I went in there. It’s amazing Eric got
me in there because I had no business being in there. Everybody there was
between 15 and 18. I remember it just like it was yesterday. It was packed full
of people, it was a proper loft, and the floor was moving up and down because
there were way too many people in there. The music was pounding, they were
playing Martin Circus’ “Disco Circus” and Alan King was on the decks. There were
all these people sweating and dancing and having fun and I thought, “Wow, this
is something I really wanna be a part of.” From that point on I was hooked.

Martin Circus – Disco Circus

Did you go to any other clubs around that time?

I went to the Warehouse once. I remember hearing First Choice “Let No Man Put
Asunder” for the first time.

It wasn’t going a long time was it?

It started around ’79 and went on to about ’83. Here I’m gonna blow all the
myths, because really house music has very little to do with the Warehouse.

Controversial! Did you get to see Ron Hardy during his disco phase? Did you go
to Den One?

No, I never made it to that. I first came across him in about ’83 when the the
R2 (Reactor 2) Underground first opened, it later became the Music Box. I don’t
know if you guys know, but Robert Williams, owner of the Warehouse, also had a
club called the Music Box in Texas and he would go back and forth between them.
Eventually, he decided he wanted to open a Music Box in Chicago and he brought
Ron Hardy in because he had Frankie Knuckles at the Warehouse. At that point the
Warehouse was kinda winding down – they had some problems with the building and
weren’t able to renew their lease. Frankie decided he wanted to move on and do
something different and that’s when he went on to the Power Plant. So Robert
found this guy Ron Hardy.

Same ownership? Frankie and Ron were rivals weren’t they?

That’s what people thought: that they were rivals. But they really were good
friends. For instance, they really didn’t compete much – Power Plant was a
Friday night crowd, Music Box was Saturday. On Friday you might find Ronnie
hanging out at the Power Plant and on Saturday Frankie at the Music Box. They
were great friends. Everybody else on the outside tried to make them out as
rivals.

But that’s good for business anyway isn’t it?

Yeah. So where were we?

You just dropped the bombshell that the Warehouse didn’t have much to do with
house. What do you mean by that?

A lot of things. Here’s where the term house music comes from: it’s related to
the Warehouse but you have to realize that house music came at least two years
after the club closed down, so the Warehouse never had the opportunity to play
house music. Frankie played R&B, disco, funk, soul, he even played country and
western, but he never played house music [at the Warehouse]. The way the term
house came into being was through Importes, Etc: I was one of the buyers there
at the time. It’s important to note that before there was house music, the genre
of dance music, there was a culture in Chicago of the kids and young adults that
attended the Warehouse parties, and they were known as “house.” This is where
much of the confusion happens, between defining the origins of “house music” and
“house culture.”

> We were talking about disco records. We said, “All you gotta do is make a
> record and put “house” on it and it’s gonna fly off the shelves.”

Kids were coming in looking for the older disco music. They’d come in and say,
“I want some of that music played at the Warehouse,” and this was referring to
disco music. We found that if we put up signs that said, “As heard at the
Warehouse,” the records would fly out of the racks. Eventually that got cut down
to just, “The ’house.” That became the vernacular. But we were talking about
disco records. It was basically myself, Farley, Steve Hurley and Jesse Saunders,
and we said, “You know what, all you gotta do is make a record and put “house”
on it and it’s gonna fly off the shelves.” So I thought, ”Why don’t I make some
new music and call it house?” That’s essentially what I did.

Steve, Jesse and Farley have probably three years on me so they would’ve had the
opportunities to go to the Warehouse, but they avoided it because they were very
homophobic at the time and the Warehouse was known as a very gay place. We
weren’t gay so, you know, we didn’t go. But we understood the power of
marketing. We all understood the power of using that word “house.” So we all
kinda gravitated towards that and making our own music. So true enough, Jesse
made one of the first records he calls house music, but I kinda think it’s not
’cos “On & On” was a remake of a bootleg by some guys in Florida called Mach. So
how can you remake something that already existed and call it something new, you
know?

Jesse Saunders – On and On

But if people receive it as new then it can be perceived as new. The story he
told me was that it was his theme tune that he used to open with and then
someone stole it, so he was like, “I don’t wanna lose my theme tune,” so he
reconstructed it.

Wayne Williams, his half-brother, is really important to the story. Wayne did go
to the Warehouse and Den One and these places. And Wayne is the guy who brought
this music back to the South Side.

So he’s basically the guy who was going to the Warehouse and bringing the music
back to the straight clubs?

Exactly. Also he was helping out guys on the radio, like Herb Kent. So he was
introducing it to an even broader audience, this disco music as well as new wave
and what we called punk-out music. So my understanding of it, from what Wayne
has said, is that [the original bootleg by Mach] “On & On” was actually Wayne’s
record and Jesse would play it. Wayne eventually said, “You know what, you can’t
play it any more,” so Jesse said, “That’s OK, I’ll make it.”

So he went away, got a drum machine and ran into Vince Lawrence. Vince’s father
was already in the record business, so they had all the connections. They ran
into Larry Sherman and he could press the records. Myself, Steve and Farley, we
saw this, so I can say he was not the inventor of house music, but he was
certainly one of the pioneers. He was pretty integral to starting the scene in
Chicago where people were making their own music in their own houses.

I always understood that because he was from Chicago, people heard his record on
the radio and thought, “Shit, we can do this.” It might not have been good, it
might not have been house, but it was made in Chicago, in a bedroom by someone
they all knew.

Yeah, exactly. It was definitely an inspiration. You just put one and two
together. But it was really not good. People only bought the record because
there were some good DJ tools on the B side. Frankie never played it, Ronnie
never played it. You’d be hard pressed to find it on any mixtape in the last 30
years. We didn’t play it then, and nobody plays it now. It’s not the blueprint
for house music!

What about Jamie Principle then, he was making stuff early on. Wasn’t he before
Jesse?

It was about the same time. Jesse’s record came out first, then we heard Jamie’s
music at the Power Plant. For years and years it was played off tape.

That’s one of the controversies, isn’t it, how much Frankie had to do with it?

There should be no controversy: Jamie did it all himself. Frankie’s first
production was a remix for Salsoul of First Choice’s “Let No Man Put Asunder”
[in 1984]. Jamie is a musical genius. Jamie was a big Prince fan. And if you
remember one of Prince’s names was Jamie Starr, and Principle is from Prince–

Oh, really!

I won’t tell his first name but I’ll tell you the sign on his parents’ house
says, “the Waltons!”

Isn’t it Byron?

Brian, actually. Jamie’s music wasn’t really influenced by the Warehouse or the
Power Plant because he didn’t go to those clubs either. He came from a pretty
conservative and religious family so he wasn’t allowed to do those things. It
was a friend who took them to Frankie. So Frankie really had nothing to do with
Jamie’s music.

So Jamie never heard his music played in clubs?

Not for a long time.

How was Frankie received when he arrived? The story that’s always told is that
Chicago’s scene wasn’t as sophisticated as New York so straight away he was a
star. Is that true?

No. It was the venue, really. It’s not that Frankie wasn’t a good DJ, but for
one thing he wasn’t really mixing back then. He was kind of playing records
like David Mancuso. There was no segueing, no beatmatching at all. Robert
Williams came from New York and he kind of tried to bring the New York scene in
via the Warehouse. I don’t know if you know, but the original name of it was US
Studios.

Didn’t it move around?

Yes, it was in different lofts and warehouses, so the Warehouse was really a
nickname. Its official name was actually US Studios. All the flyers would say US
Studios but everyone would call it the Warehouse.

So what do you think needs telling then, what’s the truth?

Well, 20 years ago I probably wouldn’t have known myself and I wouldn’t have
known to express what I did know. We were all either in our late teens or early
twenties when the press first came to find out the story of house music. So we
said, you know, “Oh Frankie… The Warehouse…”

> They were taking disco and turning it into electronic music. What we did was
> take it to the next phase.

Well, it’s really the Power Plant. The Warehouse is where it takes its name but
it’s the Music Box and Power Plant where it got played. More than anything I
guess it’s about electronic equipment becoming affordable. When were you aware
that all of that was going on?

I think it was about 1983. Disco had died out around ’81, but you still had
Italo disco, Claudio Simonetti, Doctor’s Cat, Klein & MBO and all that stuff.
They were taking disco and turning it into electronic music. What we did was
take it to the next phase, so it’s disco, Italo disco and then house. In about
’83 everyone jumped all over the Roland drum machines, the Roland sampler, and
before the Roland sampler or at the same time was the Ensoniq.

As far as sampling was concerned you had Trevor Horn who was using
the Fairlight and then you had Synclavier, which was also very expensive. But
for under $2,000 you had the Ensoniq Mirage, a polyphonic sampling keyboard, and
for under $200 you had the Boss sampling pedal. They actually made it for guitar
players, but it had about eight miliseconds of sampling on it, which was enough
to do “It’s House” or “Like This.”

Chip E. Feat. K. Joy – Like This (House Mix)

It had an external trigger to it so I would trigger it off the snare drum off
the 909. So my first introduction to sampling was the pedal. Later Joe Smooth,
who was a frequent customer at Importes, Etc, had this prototype that was the
Ensoniq Mirage. So we said, “Why don’t you come in the studio with us and make a
record?” That was how that happened.

Earlier we were talking about Frankie’s first production, his remix of First
Choice. Again that was primarily this guy Erasmo Rivera. Erasmo did a lot of
reel-to-reel tape edits for Frankie. They didn’t do any new production on it,
they didn’t do any new vocals – they just took the existing music and did tape
edits of it. Then you take Jamie’s music and Frankie didn’t have anything to do
with that other than playing it. So at this point, to say Frankie invented house
music is like saying Dick Clark invented rock & roll. He played it, but he
didn’t invent it. His first actual record didn’t come out until 1986 and that
was “You Can’t Hide.” I actually produced that for him.

The importance of him playing house music, as a catalyst, is very important.

Oh yeah. I just wanted to clarify his position, because it was not as a musician
or producer initially.

I think the description of him as the “Godfather of House” is quite apt, because
it doesn’t necessarily suggest he created it, but he was an overseer.

Yeah. I think that’s fair, and that’s why my moniker is “Architect of House
Music.”

When did you start working at Importes, Etc?

Late ’82 or early ’83.

Why was it called Importes, Etc? Was it opened specifically as an import store?

Yeah. It started off as a record pool. Paul Weisberg had a record pool called
IRS. Independent Record Services. Eventually he saw a business opportunity, so
he thought he could sell these records to the general public. I can’t remember
the name of the guy but the company was called Cap Exports.

When did he open it?

About ’81 I think. Gramaphone had been established earlier but they didn’t move
into the dance music arena till later.

Why was Italo disco so big in Chicago? It’s the only place in the US where it
was so big.

Well, because of the Hot Mix 5. They were some of the first DJs in the country
beatmatching and Italo disco records, because they were so synthesized, were
really easy to mix. Anything that came out, you’d put them on the decks and they
just worked. You guys are DJs so you know what it’s like trying to mix disco
records. They’re all over the place.

> We were young and these guys had chequebooks. We didn’t look at them as
> villains – we looked at them as saviours.

I guess in New York you had hip-hop taking the place of disco where Chicago was
never a hip-hop town.

Right. Can I go back to this middle-class clique that started house music? Most
of the guys like me who started house music, our parents were professionals, so
we had the means to go and get these synthesizers and we were educated so we
knew how to use them. But that hurt us, too, because we were smart, so when
people came round who wanted to exploit us, we were too smart to let anyone
exploit us. So when people came round with offers, we were like, “No, no, we’re
not interested.” In the hip-hop industry, when those guys came along, they were
like, “yes,” and now hip-hop is huge.

Russell Simmons might have been exploiting them but he was exploiting them to
build their careers and to build a scene that stood for hip-hop. No one really
did that for house music. The only people were Larry Sherman and Rocky Jones and
we all know about them.

I think you’re right. We didn’t have a Russell Simmons.

What was the attitude to Larry and Rocky early on?

Well, you know, we were young and these guys had chequebooks. We didn’t look at
them as villains. We looked at them as saviours. They were giving us a way to
exploit our music to some extent.

What sort of advances were they offering back then?

Between $500 and $1,500.

Pretty small then. Did you ever see any royalties?

Beyond advances, no.

What about when they were licensed to London Records over here?

Never.

Did you ever challenge them or take them to court?

Not really.

You know when you had the advance, did you have to sign a contract or was it all
done on the back of a cigarette packet?

No, it was done on a licensing agreement. It was challengeable, but I don’t know
if you know JB Ross. Have you heard this name? He was their solicitor. Basically
Rocky or Larry would come up with a contract, then they’d say, “Go over to JB,
he’ll help you sort out the contract.” You didn’t understand that that was their
solicitor, who’s working on their behalf. Most of the contracts were five or ten
years licenses and they’ve all expired now.

Rocky Jones ran a record pool, didn’t he?

Yeah. I think he started off being very genuine in his intentions. I think he
was corrupted by the power. All of a sudden he had the capability of finding
these artists in Chicago and selling their music all over the world. The MIDEM
conference [in France] was critical in house spreading worldwide, outside of
London and the UK. This was before the internet and it was a way of getting to
all the markets at one time.

Tell us about the first time you saw Ron Hardy DJ.

I think some friends of mine had taken me to the Music Box. I think it was one
of the nights that Frankie was hanging out with him. It was very dark and
narrow. It just had an incredible soundsystem and minimal lighting, compared to
what contemporary clubs were. It had a couple of Mars lights, like police
lights, and a couple of strobes. The music was incredible and the energy in the
place was just unbelievable. It reminded me of the Loft – pounding music,
dancing and sweating. It was nothing like the other clubs, which I called S&M
clubs because people went there to “Stand And Model.” People would put on their
Versace suits and they wanted to look good, they didn’t want to sweat.

Even at the Power Plant?

It was kind of like that. People wanted to dance and have a good time, but they
didn’t want to sweat too much. The Music Box was down and dirty. A lot of times
people would carry separate “sweat clothes” because they knew. They’d carry
towels with them, too.

Do you remember the kind of music he was playing?

He was playing Sylvester “Don’t Stop” and he was playing a version with an edit
on the breakdown – it just went on and on forever. The next day was when I
discovered Importes, Etc, like Columbus discovering America, because after I
heard that song I asked my friend, “Where do I get music like this?” I picked up
my two copies of “Don’t Stop.” He was playing First Choice, “Together Forever”
by Exodus and MFSB’s “Love Is The Message.”

Sylvester – Don’t Stop

And he was pitching MFSB right up?

I think that was a lot later. You hear the stories about him being on drugs and
pitching things up, that may have come later, but for all the times I was a
patron of the club he played everything pretty much at normal speed or whatever
was appropriate to the mix. And he wasn’t really doing a lot of drugs. The drugs
came later with the popularity and esteem.

Pierre told a story about when he made “Acid Tracks” he sat on the front for two
hours waiting for Ron to turn up. There was that kind of adoration among people.

Yeah, there was that. There was a sense that if you wanted to get a hit, if you
wanted to get people to hear your music then you had to get it played at the
Music Box. Also with Ronnie and Frankie as well, these were guys who were pretty
open, but Frankie not as much as Ronnie. Frankie you really had to be in the
inner circle to get something played. I was very fortunate because I worked at
Importes, Etc, so he was one of my customers.

How would you describe the difference between the Friday and the Saturday and
between the two of them?

Ronnie was kind of skinny and Frankie was kind of fat. They really did play
similarly, but Ronnie would take more chances. I could go on a Friday night and
take a tape to Frankie and he might wait around for two or three hours, listen
to it in the headphones and say, “I think I can fit it in here.” With Ronnie, I
could take him a tape and within ten to 15 minutes he would put it on. Then he’d
play it several times in the night. He was much more courageous in his style of
playing.

The one thing I noticed listening to tapes of the two of them is in the style of
edits that Ronnie played, which were really repetitive and very “house.” Was
there a difference in the style of edits they used?

Neither Ronnie nor Frankie did any of their own editing. Erasmo did editing for
both of them, but there were a lot of people who gave both of them edits of
mixes.

> When Robert Williams started the Music Box, he specifically started it for a
> younger, more mixed crowd. You had black, white, Latino, gay, straight
> whatever.

The ones Ronnie played are definitely different in style to Frankie’s.

I think that was because of his audience. It was a younger crowd. Frankie’s
crowd had followed him from the Warehouse and went to the Power Plant. They were
older. When Robert Williams started the Music Box, he specifically started it
for a younger crowd and for a more mixed crowd. You had black, white, Latino,
gay, straight whatever.

Hip-hop didn’t really take off in Chicago for a long time, but that hip hop
sensibility was there. There were even battles, weren’t there?

Oh definitely. From the early ’80s, when the Hot Mix 5 first went to the New
Music Summit [in New York], they just took over because they were the first guys
who were really beatmatching. Farley in particular – he just had an incredible
style with scratching and all these tricks of the time like triples, phasing and
backspinning. For instance on “Like This,” one of the reasons we put the
“L-l-l-like This” vocal at the beginning was because we knew DJs liked little
pieces like that that they could manipulate.

How much did the Hot Mix 5 influence taste in Chicago? Were they more important
than Knuckles and Hardy because their audience was bigger?

Yes, because they were on the radio. Later they had a daily lunchtime slot, but
originally it was part of a show on Saturday nights. Armando Rivera was the host
and it was called Saturday Night Live Ain’t No Jive Dance Party.

So their part was a section in his show?

No it was the whole show on Saturday night. The whole city was tuned into the
Hot Mix 5’s show and if you had to go out you made sure somebody was taping it
for you.

How much were their tastes were shaped by Hardy and Knuckles?

I would say not much at first; Harley and Jesse were big followers of the
Warehouse. Again I was working at Importes, Etc, so I know what the guys are
coming in and looking for cause there was essentially only two records stores.
If you were a DJ in Chicago you had to come to Importes, Etc. There was no way
around it. The Hot Mix 5 were members of the IRS record pool.

So they had an allegiance to the store?

Exactly. So I knew what all the guys were playing. I’d say that four of the five
– Kenny Jason, Ralphi Rosario, Scott Sills and Mickey Oliver – weren’t too
influenced by anything other than what was sold at the store. They were looking
for Italo disco. Farley, being the only black member from the South Side, was
more influenced by, and understood the importance of, clubs like the Music Box,
Power Plant and the Warehouse. He was the one who would play more of the older
disco tunes. The other guys not at all; they would play mainly Italo, some
Philly sounds and maybe some New York records.

Were there records that they played a lot that weren’t played in clubs?

Well, initially everything they played was not played in clubs but within six
months it became the club style. They changed the music. Some of the early songs
were Capricorn’s “I Need Love,” all the Kasso stuff and Doctor’s Cat’s “Feel The
Drive.” That Mix Your Own Stars record was also huge.

Mix Your Own Stars – Track One (119 BPM)

What was that?

It was a Dutch compilation of rhythm tracks. These were nothing more than drum
tracks. The most popular track was one that was called “119” because it was 119
BPM. And the track just went “do-do-doo-chak-chak-chak,
do-do-doo-chak-chak-chak,” and it was huge. It was just a bass drum, a little
snare, some toms and a clap. You could pack a dancefloor just by playing this.
It was one of the early inspirations for house music.

It was an achievable sound, too, for budding producers.

Exactly. Not only that but it just fit. All the Italian tracks were using Roland
drum machines so it was very easy to mix in and out of, with any record.

When we interviewed Derrick May he said that Importes had a really big
mail-order business. Is this true?

Yes.

He also said that they were really good at describing records because of this.

I don’t know about that, because I didn’t work on that part. They had a couple
of guys who dealt with that. There were a lot of ads in Dance Music Report.

What was the inspiration for you personally to start making tracks?

Marketing class, where I learnt how you had to create a need for a product
first. Also from taking a drum machine to clubs and finding out I could play any
rhythm track and people would go crazy. I had a Boss Dr. Rhythm drum machine and
a Casio VL-Tone keyboard, not even a professional one – it was a little toy for
kids.

I made tracks with these two things, put them on reel-to-reel and I remember
taking them to Jesse Saunders because he lived down the same street as me. He
said, “I think you should find a new hobby.” That just energised me. I took the
track to Ronnie and he played it and people went crazy. I’m not sure if it was
because Jesse was hating on me or didn’t understand what house music was.
Anyway, I would hang out in the basement with Vince and Jesse and one day when
Jesse wasn’t there, Vince said, “I’ll show you how to programme an 808.” Then he
said, “Here, take it home with you.” I took Jesse’s 808 and with my drum
programming on there we played at clubs. People went crazy.

Using it as a DJ tool?

Yeah. This was ’83.

Who was first to do that? Farley says it was his thing and Jesse says it was
him.

I’d say probably Jesse with an 808, but Farley got a Linn because he wanted to
be different. Then it was probably Steve and maybe me. My mom spent a lot of
time on the West Coast because she worked in advertising and when she went on a
commercial shoot, my brother and I would have these little basement parties. We
thought we were DJing and this guy Steve Hurley, who didn’t live too far away,
came by and one of his friends said, “Can Steve get on the turntables?” I’m
like, “I’m not letting him get on – this is my party!” Anyway he went on and
tore it up. He was great and I was really jealous.

How quickly did the kids in Chicago realize how successful their music was?

When the English press started coming over. And then when we first started
coming over to England, which seemed like almost monthly. The Hippodrome was the
first. I can’t remember the names of any others. In Chicago, house was played in
underground clubs and on the radio sometimes, but when we came over here they
were playing it in elevators and on TV, on Top of the Pops.

Was there any sense when you were working on those records early on that this
music would have such a massive impact?

We didn’t think it would go on for 20 years. It was something for the moment.
When you’re young you don’t think about the future.

How did things fade out in Chicago?

It had a lot to do with the press, I think. They were reporting it as a black
gay thing. It put those bookends on house music: house music is a thing for
black gay people. It was for everybody, but no straight person wanted to be
identified as gay just as a gay person wouldn’t want to be identified as
straight. It was the ’80s. Crack and AIDS were always in the headlines, it made
gay synonymous with AIDS, which was very wrong.

Do you think it was linked to disco?

I would say that it was initially that. When New York started doing house music
they called it “garage,” so they kind of separated themselves from it and it
didn’t have the stigmatism of being black gay music. New York was a tight-knit
community where in Chicago there was a lot of stealing and fighting. Still too
much of that today. Hopefully we move forward.

This interview took place in London in May 2005. © DJ History

By Bill Brewsterand Frank Broughton on January 8, 2019

Source: Redbullmusicacademy

Tagged as Chicago History House music

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