“In the beginning there was Jack, and Jack had a groove.” Chicago. 1977. The Warehouse. NYC native Frankie Knuckles. That’s what you need to know about the origins of house music. Jack hadn’t built the house yet, but the foundation was being laid. Larry Levan was in NYC at the Paradise Garage playing this blend of European electronic dance, like Kraftwerk, Depeche Mode and the Human League, and disco and David Mancuso was throwing his legendary NYC party, The Loft.
It’s no coincidence that Frankie Knuckles was dubbed the Godfather of House Music. His influence early on was felt across the genre as he experimented with different sounds and rhythms, ultimately coming up with the popular 4/4 tempo using pre-recorded drum tracks. Ultimately, house music was born of a fusion of jazz, gospel, funk, hip hop, European dance pop and disco and while it was not quite embraced in the early 80’s, later in the decade and definitely in the early 90’s, it had definitely birthed a massive underground scene in cities like Chicago, Detroit, NYC and across Europe.
By the early 90’s, Larry Levan was gone, but in his wake, new innovators had taken up the call and made house music a global phenomenon. I remember my first exposure to house music was at a nightclub in NYC called Tracks on 19th Street in 1988. The first time I went there, an 18 year old boy just learning about life as a gay man in NYC and here were all these people, predominantly black and latino, dancing to this music that was so heavily percussive, but rhythmic as hell. It wasn’t long before I was regularly coming to this club to enjoy this sound that I had discovered here. It became my go to on Friday nights and I recall so many great times there.
Jack Grows Up
Throughout the late 80’s and early 90’s in NYC, house music could be heard everywhere in many different forms and I was there, living it and I LOVED it. For me, it was the best time for house music. During a conversation with Curtis Atchison of Midnight Society, a DJ and music producer, we agreed that this time period was great for house music because it was growing and evolving as a NEW genre of dance music.
Producers were incredibly creative during this period as they were testing the waters to see what would work, trying to discover the magic formula. DJ’s like David Morales and Junior Vasquez became part of the squadron that was helping to continue changing the core of the music, while still keeping the core essence intact. Frankie Knuckles was still ever present although at this point he was an international star.
Throughout the early 90’s, I was able to experience some of the best house music I’d ever heard. Nights spent at NYC’s Sound Factory, Roxy, Twilo, Tunnel and Palladium (for Junior Vasquez’ LEGENDARY Arena parties) were euphoric. The music was mind blowing and the energy these DJs ruled over on the dance floor was magical.
Other DJs, like Danny Tenaglia, Peter Rauhofer and a whole new breed of European DJs were also in on the action, but taking things to another place. Production teams like Clivilles & Cole, Masters At Work, and Razor & Guido ruled the dance floors for most of the decade.
I remember the first time I heard the C&C Music Factory Remix of Whitney Houston’s cover of Chaka Khan’s I’m Every Woman on the dance floor at Sound Factory and the chills that song sent through me, the smooth soulful bass of the Frankie Knuckles’ The Whistle Song with that melody that just set roots in your brain and never let go. It was that blend of rhythm, soul, brain rattling kick drums and the baseline that drove me nuts and transported me to another place.
Eventually, a more ethereal and electronic sound, less organic but no less entrancing, was entering the realm of house music. It was heavier on the trance and percussion. A lot of people would feel that some of the soul was lost with the more experimental, electronic sounds began to take shape. It was a rebirth of techno, the emergence of progressive house and a period when house began to leak into the mainstream.
This was when songs like Jay Dee’s Plastic Dreams, Lectroluv’s Dream Drums, and DJ Pierre’s Atom Bomb hit the dance floor and took you on a different journey. If you were lucky enough, you came across DJ’s on the dance floors that could take you on BOTH journeys.
Where Jack Is and Where He’s Going?
As we entered into the new decade certain formulas have begun to work and the commercialization of house music and the “introduction” of EDM began to take hold and marks the road that has led house music to where it is now. We’ve experienced a homogenization of the genre with what I jokingly refer to as super producers who find a formula that works on the dance charts and begin to repeat the exact same formula, with minor tweaks here and there, and regurgitate it over and over again to the public who devours it like candy.
Producers like David Guetta, Calvin Harris, and Dave Audé are extremely successful for this reason. At the same time, because of this homogenization of house music, a new cycle is beginning.
There is a new movement to bring back the funky, soulful sounds that created the obsession in so many of us in the late 80’s and early 90’s. Perhaps driven by the loss of Frankie Knuckles, and the resurgence of Nu Disco, a new generation of house heads is being exposed to the sounds of classic house music and in turn, old school producers, Todd Terry, David Morales, Little Louie Vega, Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez, along with producers like Copyright, Rene Amesz and Chocolate Puma are bringing us full circle and taking us back to when Jack had a groove.
