House

House music originated in the underground club scene of Chicago in the mid 1980s. The genre was named after 'The Warehouse', a dance club where it is widely accepted that DJ Frankie Knuckles pioneered the style.

Frankie Knuckles (b. 1955 in the Bronx, New York ) first started DJ'ing in New York in 1971. He moved to Chicago in 1977 where he became the resident DJ at The Warehouse. Knuckles quickly gained respect in the underground Chicago club scene when he employed some of the traditional New York DJ'ing techniques of beat-mixing and the use of percussion fills (which were supplied from a separate turntable) to 'spruce up the sound of traditional soul'^[1].

Knuckles pioneered the house music sound, using a drum machine to generate a straight four on the floor beat, over which he played traditional 'philly' and 'garage'^[2] disco songs for the Warehouse's predominately gay audience. He was able to create new versions of existing popular songs, which (through the use of the rhythmical backing track) made the songs seem less pop-oriented and more suited to the dance club^[3]. Other DJ's employed in the larger 'straight' disco clubs on the Southside of Chicago soon replicated his rhythmically-orientated approach, spreading Knuckles' new style to a larger audience. In 1983 Knuckles opened his own club, the 'Power Planet', introducing his new sound to several 'South Side' music producers (such as Marshall Jefferson, Larry Heard, Adonis and Steve 'Silk' Hurley). These producers all achieved chart success when they adopted the new rhythmical technique.

Jesse Saunders and co-writer Vince Lawrence developed Knuckles' ideas further and are accredited with the first so-called contemporary 'house music' releases. Jesse Saunders was born on the south side of Chicago and started DJing whilst still at high school. Working with his brother he DJ'ed at high schools all over the Chicago area. Heavily influenced by the DJ'ing techniques of Frankie Knuckles, Saunders began playing more disco-oriented music, and created 'pause-button mega-mixes using funk and disco records'^[4]. Saunders decided to re-create a version of one of his bootleg mixes (stolen during a performance) using a drum machine and synthesisers. The resulting song ('Fantasy') attracted the attention of local electro group Z Factor. They persuaded Saunders to join their band and the song was released on Mitchbal Records in 1983. The record, although popular within the close-knit disco community, received little attention from outside the Chicago area. Saunders' subsequent releases include 'On and On' (released on his own label, Jes-Say Records) which, like the previous release, became a club hit and influenced dozens of producers to seek release deals.

While Frankie Knuckles pioneered the sound of house music, DJ, Ron Hardy is considered to have 'created the environment for the house explosion'. Hardy, who 'was entrancing a largely gay, uptown crowd at the Music Box'^[5] developed a new rhythmical sound that differed to Knuckles' (which was still very much based in disco).

Hardy was the DJ that went for the rawest, wildest rhythm tracks he could find and he made The Music Box the inspirational temple for pretty much every DJ and producer that was to come out of the Chicago scene^[6].

The early 1980s saw an increased interest from radio stations - in particular WBMX, who broadcast a house music program after midnight every day of the week. The show was hosted by Farley 'Jackmaster' Funk, and gave the music another outlet (apart from that of the dance club) - thereby assisting house music's rapid growth in popularity. Farley was quickly joined by the Hot Mix 5 (Mickey Oliver, Ralphie Rosario, Mario Diaz, Julian Perez, and Steve Hurley) and by 1985 house had made the transition from the underground gay scene to the larger general dance community in Chicago. At this stage house music (in Chicago at least) was largely driven by African Americans, although a limited number of Hispanic DJs and a very small number of White DJ's were involved^[7].

The first house single to reach the charts was recorded by seminal Chicago DJ and producer, Farley 'Jackmaster' Funk. His cover version of Isaac Hayes' 'Love Can't Turn Around' made the Top Ten in the UK in 1986. This chart success came as a major surprise to Chicago house lovers, who were unaware that England's emerging dance culture had eagerly adopted Chicago's house style^[8].

In January 1987 Jim Silk's 'Jack Your Body' reached #1 on the UK charts. The word 'Jack' (which originally described a style of dance people did to house music) soon seemed to appear in many of the house song titles (e.g. 'Jack The Box', 'Jack The House', 'Jack To The Sound'). The reason for its widespread use is likely to have been related to the rhythmical percussive properties of the sound of the word, especially when it was used in a stuttered manner (''J-J-J-J-JJack-Jack-Jack-Jack')^[9].

By the late 1980s New York was starting to threaten Chicago's control over the dance music scene. New York's 'Garage' music employed the use of gospel style vocals, which gave it a greater sense of emotion. Garage (often described as more soulful than Chicago house) became influential and led to the creation of a new sub genre entitled 'Deep House'. The emerging trend for vocals in house music (in part to assist in achieving charting success) was reflected in the seminal 'Let The Music Use You', mixed by Frankie Knuckles and sung by Ricky Dillard. The song was used a year later as the anthem for the United Kingdom's 'Summer Of Love', dance culture explosion.

By 1987 house was no longer limited to the American cities of Chicago or New York. England's enthusiasm for electronic dance music led to the creation of numerous UK-created house compositions. 'Pump up the Volume' by M/A/R/R/S became the first English house song to reach #1 - spending three weeks at the #1 spot in 1987. With all this chart success, it was not long before the inevitable commercial exploitations of the style took place. Cheeseman describes these releases as 'a number of hideous stars-on-45 style megamixes of all the house hits'^[10].

House music in America during the 1980s had remained a very underground phenomenon, with club DJ's left to dictate the genre's direction. This grass root-level control was instrumental in the development of two further sub-genres. The first (heavily influenced by the European electrobeat of the mid 1980s) was developed in Detroit and called 'techno'. The second, 'acid', was promoted by Chicago house DJ Ron Hardy when he worked as the resident DJ at the Music Box.