EPISODE 07: THE WAREHOUSE (CHICAGO HOUSE)
Greetings friends, and welcome to another episode of Nightclubbing with your host Cherry Pie, broadcasting from Lower Grand Radio in Oakland, CA. In today’s episode we’re exploring house music origins, centered around Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Earlier in this season, we explored the disco and proto-house of NYC’s Paradise Garage and the acid house rave beginnings at Manchester’s Hacienda, and this episode is ~kind of~ coming full circle on this little web of sound. We’re going back in time to before The Hacienda, around the same time as the Garage to 1977 Chicago. Actually, let’s start even further back then that.
If you remember from the first episode of this show, we focus on the visionary DJ and producer Larry Levan, who had a lifelong friend he grew up with in NYC; a guy called Frankie Nichols. Knuckles (formerly Nichols) first learned his craft playing alternate for his buddy Levan at New York’s Continental Baths, and would become to club’s main DJ when Levan left for another gig in 1974, where Knuckles would continue to spin regularly until the club closed in 1976. Around this time, Levan was contacted by the owners of The Warehouse in Chicago, a warehouse party which had built itself a permanent home, and was offered a residency. Since Levan was already committed to the idea of Paradise Garage and in the early planning stages, he declined. In his place he recommended Frankie Knuckles, and told his friend it would be a great opportunity.
In March 1977, Knuckles went out to play for the opening night, and then another night the next week. Both nights went well, he decided he liked Chicago, and was offered a permanent job at The Warehouse. Knuckles says “At that point, I realized I had to think about what I wanted to do. If I really wanted to uproot from NYC and move there. Then actually when I looked at it, I didn’t have anything holding me here. I figured, what the hell. I gave myself 5 years and if I couldn’t make it in 5 years, then I could always come back home.”
Before those 5 years had passed, Frankie Knuckles had become famous in Chicago. Along with popularizing the funky, soulful and dangerous side of disco, which the city rarely heard, he also imported it’s sprit, fostering among these polite, god-fearing Midwesterners the communal, emancipating hedonism of disco’s gay underground. In doing this he was the catalyst for an unprecedented explosion of musical creativity. His club would give its name to a new genre of music; he would become known as its godfather. The music was house.
For a long time, the word ‘house’ referred to not a particular style of music, but so much as to an attitude. If a song was ‘house’ it was music from a cool club, it was underground, it was something you’d never hear on the radio. In Chicago the right club would be ‘house’, and if you went there, you’d be ‘house’ and so would your friends. Chip E, an early house producer, claims the name came about from his methods of labeling records at the record store he worked at in 1982. ‘Kid were coming in looking for the older disco music. They’d say ‘“I want some of the music plated at The Warehouse” and this was referring to disco music. And so we found that if we put up a sign that said “As Heard at The Warehouse”, the records would just fly off the racks. Eventually that got cut down to just “The House”, and that became the vernacular.’
In 1979, what’s referred to as Disco Demolition Night happens at Chicago’s Comiskey Park. This is what I’m talking about in the intro to this show, this is a true story, this actually happened. A white radio host blows up a dumpster of black records, mostly disco, as a promotional stunt, which incites a white riot, and it makes the national news. This is a really important nugget in the timeline of dance music history, a real turning point in the popular digestion of musical trends. There’s a great podcast episode that details this event if you’re interested, I’ll link it on the show page on my website. What you need to know is that in Chicago, as the 70s became the 80s, if you were black and gay, your church may well have been Frankie Knuckles’s Warehouse. Disco is gradually falling out of fashion, and sent underground and reborn as a new genre. Knuckle’s said ‘I view house as disco’s revenge’.
Musically, house is born of disco songs remixed, with the same essence – it’s rhythms, basslines and spirit. The earliest house songs were created by using a reel to reel tape recorder to record different parts of the song and layer them over the original track to create extended intros and outros, and musical breaks. The remixed songs became more complex and more refined as the techniques were mastered and finessed by people like Frankie Knuckles, and Ron Hardy-- another prominent DJ who massively aided in the progression of house music. Eventually DJs and young clubgoers got their hands on drum machines, the choice drum machine being the Roland TR-808, lovingly known as 808, and bass synthesizers which would create the first acid house tracks towards the mid 80s. If you remember from The Hacienda episode, the choice bass synthesizer was the Roland TB-303, which was a commercial failure, but was much beloved by Chicago’s earliest pioneers of electronic music. I highly recommend listening to the Hacienda episode of Nightclubbing, as a companion to this one. I’m also going to link an interactive timeline map of electronic music, where you can explore all the various parent genres and subgenres, and listen to examples.
I love this episode, and could go on and on about the origins and evolution of house music, but alas we only have 90 minutes and I want to get to listening to some music. Today I am going to be focusing on the early mid 1980s into the 2nd wave of house in the 1990s, mostly tracks made by artists from Chicago, a couple tracks that were popular in clubs like The Warehouse, The Power Plant and The Music Box, and modern tracks in the style of Chicago house that I like.
After the Warehouse doubled its admission fee in late 1982, it grew more commercial. Knuckles decided to leave and start his own club the Power Plant, and later the Powerhouse, to which his devoted followers followed. In response, the Warehouse's owners renamed it the Muzic Box and hired a new DJ named Ron Hardy, who became quite influential for the development of house music himself. Chicago House is also referred to as Classic House, as it’s the first of its kind, and inspired countless subgenres. It’s influence can be heard everywhere today – all over popular music on the radio. The electronic music world at large is thriving across the world.
TRACK LIST:
Frankie Knuckles — Your Love
Mr. Fingers — Mystery of Love
Phuture — Acid Tracks
Cajmere, Jamie Jones Vault Remix — Percolator
Chip E — Like This
Joe Smooth — Promised Land
Mission Control — Outta Limits
Adonis — No Way Back
Harddrive — Deep Inside
Marshall Jeffs — Move Ya Body (The House Music Anthem)
Frankie Knuckles w/ Jamie Principle — It’s a Cold World
Jamie Principle — Waiting On My Angel
ESG — Moody (Space Out)
Jesse Saunders — On & On
Cece Rogers — Someday
Mr. Fingers — Do You Feel It?
a young Frankie Knuckles.
early form of warehouse parties, before The Warehouse.
The Warehouse!
Partygoers at The Warehouse, early 1980s.
Ron Hardy, an early Chicago house pioneer.
Frankie Knuckles <3.