Day 176: From Knuckles to Deadmau5-the story of House Music

     After Steve Dahl won his one-man war against Disco music(but not before a certain radio station played Donna Summer's " Last Dance" on a 24-hour loop),  disco started to fall into decline as a presence on the playlists of local clubs. Some clubs, however, continued to play the music, and in fact several of the city's more accomplished DJs would edit together cuts of themselves mixing together various older disco songs onto vinyl or cassette tapes. By 1984, one DJ named Jesse Saunders  was running his own smaller record label which he used to release his mixes. At one point, he released a mix titled "On and On", which was a mash up of several different disco records from the Seventies. This served as Saunders' signature track, as all of the other DJs in the city either didn't have it or didn't play it. The composition of the track incorporated heavy electronic influence, and by 1985, "On and On" was considered a fundamental piece of House Music.

     But just where did the term House come from? For this origin story, we have to go back even further, to 1977. In that year, a new entry was made into the Chicago nightclub scene when The Warehouse opened up. Large amounts of Black and Latino men patronized the club to hear the mixes that were being spun by resident DJ Frankie Knuckles. Alas, the music couldn't go on forever, and The Warehouse closed its doors for good in 1983.  Being that you can't keep a good DJ down, Knuckles soon started spinning records at a new club named The Power House. Soon thereafter, he was driving around with friends when he saw a sign in the window of a bar proclaiming "we play house music". One of his friends insinuated that the proclamation was rooted in the fact that this music was based off of the club music that had been spun by Knuckles at The Warehouse. A rival claim alleges that another local DJ put a sign in front of his bar advertising the playing of house music, so named because it was the type of music one would play in the comfort of their own home.

     One final theory corroborates the Knuckles story. According to several record store owners, the name came from the way that records were labeled, which had several of Knuckles' tracks labeled "As heard at The Warehouse". This was later shortened to just "House".  Today the legacy of House music lives on in some of the most popular Top 40 artists out there, such as David Guetta, Calvin Harris, and Deadmau5.  But even with all of those big names and starry resumes, remember one thing.  It all started in Chicago.