The Moment House Music Was Born

Unfortunately — or fortunately, now that I have the privilege of hindsight — it was among a number of vinyl records stolen from the booth at The Playground. While I was devastated at the time, that record thief gave me all the inspiration I needed to create my own version.

I quickly found myself in my bedroom at 7234 South King Drive, piecing the elements of my prized record back together on a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder. I also began to see this as opportunity to take the original “On & On” and expand upon the things that made it great, fleshing it out into a more fully-formatted song. I banged out new drum programming on my TR-808; my songwriter buddy, Vince Lawrence, wrote the lyrics and the melody.

We wanted to properly evoke the feelings of unadulterated euphoria, the release associated with dancing and jacking your body in the club. House music, as we would come to know it, was a lot like my DJ sets had always been: defined by the drive to make people dance.

I even began to think about the new “On and On” as a pinnacle dance record, taking the four-on-the-floor beat of disco, the electronic thump of Kraftwerk, the popsynth impulses of Giorgio Moroder and Donna Summer’s “I Need Love,” and arranging them into one expertly calibrated rush for the dancefloor.

I had an instinct that we might be onto something. I started playing this new version in all of my sets, and it became a massive hit.

I sought out Vince to help hook me up with a pressing plant. A week later, I was holding the first 500 copies of my version of “On & On” which I promptly delivered to Importes Etc. Considering the high demand for the record before anyone had even known exactly what it was, the original sold out in a matter of days and and another 1000 copies were quickly manufactured. We distributed them to local stores and radio stations and the record began to gain traction.

And the rest, as they say, is history. A local radio station in Chicago played it, and the song took on a life of its own, spreading to other U.S. cities and to nightclubs across the world.house-music-3

The influence of “On and On” has been far-reaching, both in terms of distance and time. It inspired a whole new sound, ultimately branded as Chicago House, and this new genre immediately informed recordings like “Move Your Body.” What we know as EDM today also owes much to “On and On” — both are essentially engineered for the dance floor.

Indeed, the story of “On and On” is the story of house music as we know it. It’s a story that continues to go on. And On. And On.

Illustrations by Thoka Maer
Photography by Jessica Chou | Grooming by Su Han/Dew Beauty Agency
Follow Jesse Saunders on Twitter @
JesseSndrs

Article Appeared @https://medium.com/cuepoint/the-moment-house-music-was-born-1cd9a8d45a09#.ixxz8hxsw

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *