RIP Frankie Knuckles, The Godfather of House

Roland Clark once said that he wanted to be “House President,” but that designation surely belongs to Frankie Knuckles, the Chicago DJ who not only was responsible for its name, but also for its sound and its longevity. Born in 1955 in the Bronx, Frankie Warren Knuckles, Jr. was present or instrumental in so many dance music flashpoints that it’s almost hard to fathom: Playing at the Continental Baths with Larry Levan, birthing house music in Chicago, further popularizing the re-edit as an essential DJ tool, a Grammy Award-winning remixer as part of the Def Mix crew… The list goes on.

What Knuckles will be remembered for above all else is his time DJing at Chicago’s Warehouse. Like Knuckles, though, the space had its roots in New York. The Warehouse was owned by Robert Williams, a regular of David Mancuso’s Loft and a juvenile counselor who once found himself dealing with a young Knuckles and Larry Levan. The two DJs were childhood friends, and had gotten in trouble for stealing doughnuts from a truck after a late night of clubbing.

In his 2011 lecture at the Red Bull Music Academy, Knuckles said that Williams “took us under his wing and watched us very closely to make sure nothing happened to us” at that point. By the late ’70s, Williams had moved to Chicago and Levan was making a name for himself in New York, DJing at the Continental Baths and the Paradise Garage. When Williams wanted to find a DJ for his new venture, he asked Levan first. Knuckles says that the reason he got the job was simply because he didn’t have a job at the time.

Knuckles was a disco DJ, first and foremost. And – lest we forget – Chicago was the home to the infamous Disco Demolition Night in 1979. But while it was the last days of disco elsewhere, it had little effect on Knuckles and the Warehouse. Disco was dying in the mainstream, and the Warehouse was resolutely underground. In fact, the genre’s downfall pushed Knuckles to greater heights: Frustrated with the lack of new tracks to play in his sets, Knuckles paired up with Erasmo Rivera to re-edit the ones he loved – rearranging First Choice’s “Let No Man Put Asunder” and Howard Johnson’s “So Fine” for maximum impact. Remembering the latter rework in Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, Chez Damier explained that “Frankie would change it to ‘Throw your head backbackbackback…’ Little tricks like that were such sensations. We were like followers.”

Damier was just one of the few Chicago DJs and producers to be hugely influenced by Knuckles. It was a wonderful case of location and timing. Many have said that what Knuckles was doing in Chicago might not have had the same impact had he done it in New York, where there were already a number of DJs playing disco and re-editing tracks, or trying out new music that had been produced with their dancefloor in mind. For a time, the Warehouse was the only game in town, and Knuckles had music that no one else there had ever heard, either via his own re-edits or the tunes that he brought back from New York in his consistent visits to the city.

But to those who were there – and had never experienced anything like it – the Warehouse was a revelation. The layout was simple, leaving the dancers to focus solely on the music. Knuckles, for his part, was a consummate showman. In addition to his re-edits, he would often play sound effect records, making it feel as though a steam engine was hurtling through the middle of the dancefloor. “Sometimes he would accidentally take the arm off the record that was playing,” remembered Robert Williams in Love Saves the Day. “And they would go mad because they thought it was a sound effect.”

The Warehouse’s role in the city as a gay hangout also can’t be ignored. Catering to a predominantly black and gay crowd, this black and gay DJ provided a space where people who were being discriminated against for both their skin color and sexual orientation could feel safe and let loose. And so they did. Even the straight people – when they came to make up a good deal of the Warehouse’s audience – seemed to be overcome by the freedom the club gave them. As Andre Halmon explains it in Love Saves the Day, “the music made everybody bisexual.” In the same book Screamin’ Rachel puts it another way, “The Warehouse was like being in bed standing up.”

Knuckles might have “just” gone down in history as the originator of house music, if it hadn’t been for the incredible amount of music that he put his hands to throughout his career. Things got started in earnest with a local Prince fanatic calling himself Jamie Principle. Knuckles was hardly experienced in the studio, but he knew exactly what he wanted. Knuckles idolized the Philly disco sound – and the quality that arrived with it. Principle was an ideal muse. In Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, Marshall Jefferson remembers hearing Principle’s first tracks, “His shit was too good. It was like seeing John Holmes in a porno movie. You know you can’t do better.”

By this time Knuckles had left the Warehouse and founded a new club, the Power Plant. The larger focus at this time, though, was on starting his production career. It was an era that yielded house classics like “Baby Wants to Ride,” “It’s a Cold World” and “Waiting on My Angel.” It’s unclear whether the 1987 law forcing Chicago juice bar clubs to maintain the same hours as regular bars led Knuckles to shut down the Power Plant. Both the Warehouse and the Power Plant relied on the idea that the party would basically go on until the last dancer was left standing.

Either way, after a short time in the UK, Knuckles found himself back in New York at the World, where he forged a partnership with David Morales and manager Judy Weinstein. Over the next few years, Knuckles and Morales would go on to redefine the idea of the remix. Like his solo productions, the studio philosophy was modelled after his Philly heroes Ashford & Simpson. Clean. Expansive. Musical. “Before us, when you did a remix you worked with what was available to you,” he explained in his 2011 lecture at the Red Bull Music Academy. “By the time we got started we were bringing in musicians and completely overdubbing everyone’s songs, reworking the music and the tracks, everything. There were no two-note basslines.” You can hear the beginning of the sound in a few records: the duo’s epic rework of Alison Limerick’s “Where Love Lives,” Knuckles’ production job on Satoshi Tomiie’s “Tears” and the heavenly deep house classic Knuckles put out under his own name, “The Whistle Song.”

Knuckles, Morales and a rotating cast of friends pumped out hit after hit in the late ’80s and early ’90s, solidifying their place as one of the premier New York house outfits alongside Masters at Work and the combined output of Strictly Rhythm, Nervous and Nu Groove. Knuckles went on to hold a residency at Sound Factory Bar throughout the middle of the decade. A much smaller version of Junior Vasquez’s Sound Factory, it was a space where Knuckles could thrive, playing a diverse range of music that echoed his eclectic sets at the Warehouse.

Knuckles was also ill at ease with the narrowing of house music’s remit over the years, always keen to point out the unique staples from the Warehouse days, rather than focusing too heavily on the early house tunes that many think solely soundtracked the city’s clubs. Alongside the old disco that was already unfashionable elsewhere, Knuckles cherished the likes of Moroder, Klein & M.B.O. and Yello.

The ’90s were kind to Knuckles. In 1998 he received the first Grammy Award ever given to a remixer. But by the mid-’00s, Knuckles had begun to hit a rut. The era of big checks being handed to remixers was nearly over. And he knew that there was little demand for a sound that was – by that point – more than a decade old, no matter how classic its leanings. In this 2011 lecture, he remembers that moment, “I was constantly travelling ‘round the world and people would keep asking me: ‘How come you’re not producing any music?’ I know I’m not making it because nobody’s really interested in hearing it.”

It was at that same point that health troubles began to rear their head, and forced him to take time off from DJing. That time, a forced sabbatical that gave him the time to think about his next move, led to the beginning of his final chapter. Hercules & Love Affair, huge fans of Knuckles’ New York era, asked him for a remix in that style. And kept asking. Finally giving in, his remix of “Blind” began a resurgence of interest in his career. Now we know, sadly, that it was the beginning of the end.

More than four decades of service in the world of dance music should be enough, of course. But it somehow feels, especially given “Blind,” that Knuckles had plenty more to say. Or, in his words, give us more to see. “You really see the music in the dark,” he told Resident Advisor in 2011. “Because what you're hearing is creating the visual. You're actually seeing in the dark. And when you're caught up in that kind of thing all night long – from midnight till noon the next day? How can you come out of that place without a song in your heart as well as in your head that you sing all week long until you go back there the following week?”