Celebrating Black History: Pioneers of house music

Although the house music scene was spawned from the LGBTQ community, mostly with African American men, Kym Mazelle led the way for female artists in the house movement. Her sensual and soulful vocals were first on display with the original ‘Useless (I Don't Need You Now)’ produced by Marshall Jefferson in 1988. It possessed all the makings of a quintessential house track, steady jacking rhythms with an overall raw motif making it a dance floor bomb.

She continued to be a prominent figure in the scene with collaborations with Soul II Soul and Robert Howard, plus numerous originals found on labels like Parlophone, Capitol Records, EMI and more helped keep her in the spotlight throughout her career.

Phuture, which consisted of DJ Pierre, Herb J and Spanky, was a prominent Chicago trio during the early years of house, regarded as the originators of the acid house genre in particular. The seminal acid tune, titled ‘Acid Tracks’, gained early popularity partly due to the fact that it featured sound textures that had not been widely utilized before and also because Ron Hardy rinsed it during his DJ sets at The Muzic Box.

The trio would go on to expand on their distinct sound with tracks like ‘Slam, ‘The Creator’, ‘We Are Phuture’ and more. Plus classic house tunes like ‘Spirit’ and ‘Mental Breakdown’ helped broaden their output. As this was club music of the highest degree, Phuture’s music can be found on imprints like Strictly Rhythm, Trax Records and Dance Mania.

For more on Phuture's music, check out Mixmag's Best Of Phuture playlist.

Although he came to prominence a few years later than his peers, Roy Davis Jr. is known as a key figure that brought deep house music into prominence during the 90s. He worked as A&R for Strictly Rhythm during this time, also joining Phuture from 1990-1997, a time period that included releases like ‘Spirit’, ‘Rise From Your Grave’, ‘Mental Breakdown’ and ‘Inside Out’.

In 1997, Roy collaborated with Peven Everett on a track that is widely regarded as arguably the greatest garage house track of all time, ‘Gabriel’. As the story goes, it only took him 14 hours to produce the track and the rest is history. Not to mention his work with Jay Juniel on the Men From The Nile project, delivering the tribal track ‘Watch Them Come!!!’, also featuring Peven Everett.

Roy also spent an extensive amount of time working with Thomas Bangalter of Daft Punk during the formative years of his Roulé label and has worked with artists like Mary J. Blige, Seal, Faith Evans and more.

With a multitude of producers in Chicago expanding on the house sound, some reached early success before others. Marshall Jefferson was one that hustled to be heard and his music still stands the test of time. His earliest productions landed on the influential Trax Records imprint and are among the most iconic releases of early house music, including ‘Move Your Body (The House-Music Anthem)’, ‘Ride The Rhythm’ and ‘Lost In The Groove’.

When sharing the story of The House Anthem, Jefferson shared a story with Test Pressing from when he initially finished the track and handed it off to a soon to be legend, Ron Hardy: “I went into the Music Box and gave DJ Ron Hardy a copy while he was playing. I didn’t expect him to play it right away; usually i just gave him a copy and he’d listen to it later and maybe play it the next weekend. This time he put it in the cassette machine right away. I saw his head quickly go into a violent bobbing motion and I knew he liked the song. He immediately put it on and played it 6 times in a row, putting on a sound effects record while he rewound the tape.”

Today Jefferson is still present on the scene, collaborating with Josh Butler for the first release on his Heroes of House release series. Mixmag premiered the track titled 'In Time', listen here.

Harrison is Mixmag's East Coast Editor. Follow him on Twitter here