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 Ron
Hardy is the only man who can test Frankie Knuckles' status as the
godfather of Chicago house music.
Though he never recorded under his own name and left little evidence of
his life, Hardy was the major name for Chicago dance music from the late
'70s to the mid-'80s. By 1974, he had already effected a continuous music
mix with reel-to-reel machines plus a dual-turntable setup at the club Den
One. Several years later, Hardy played with Knuckles at a club called
the
Warehouse and though he spent several years in Los Angeles, he later
returned to Chicago to open his own club, the Music Box.
While Knuckles was translating disco and the emerging house music to a
straight, southside audience at the Power Plant, Hardy's 72-hour mix
sessions and flamboyant party lifestyle fit in well with the uptown,
mostly gay audience at the Music Box. A roll-call of major Chicago
producers including Marshall Jefferson, Larry Heard, Adonis, Phuture's DJ
Pierre and Chip E all debuted their compositions by pressing up acetates
or reel-to-reel copies for Hardy to play during the mid-'80s.
Lingering problems with heroin addiction forced him to leave the Music Box around 1986 and though he continued to DJ around the area, Hardy wasn't
around when Chicago became house music's mecca later in the decade. He
died in 1991.
 Deejay
Ron Hardy died in 1991, and that's the only reason why he's not a star
today. With the clubs he's been spinning for (especially the Music Box
from 1983 to 1988), he was drawing the way of the new sounds of the night.
Something was definitely changing, and he was part of the change. You know
that one day 'Jack Has a Groove'... but did you really know when late
Disco turned into early House music? Ron Hardy was it. Icon of the gay
House nights of Chicago, that man was a deejay like some others are
monk... it was everything for him, a sort of religion. Mixing speedy
electro-pop with accelerated disco, edited disco-classics with acid
tracks, when other deejays used to mix it warm... he used to mix it cold.
One of his very close friends told me that he was almost never sleeping...
mixing records all the time, doing weird things with his turntables. There
was about nothing in his apartment, nothing but black shiny records, and a
bed... and that for years since the 70's when he left for westcoast, the
80's when he came back to Chicago, until 91 when everything stopped. Too
much drugs and awaken nights... he killed his own batteries for the music.
At least we still have the tapes of his talent and the memories of his
friends.
Just some words about Ron
Hardy, sampled from here or there:
In DJ Magazine, Marshall
Jefferson remembers his first visit to the Muzic Box:
"I went down right about the time it first
opened and aw man, the volume! I'd never heard dance music played like
that. It was so loud that the kick drum would feel like it was going
through your chest. It was like boom, boom - like someone physically had
their fist beating on my chest. It was like that. And it was amazing.
Ron was more adventurous that Frankie Knuckles. Frankie would play
straight disco but Ron would play all kinds of stuff. He'd play Eurythmics,
he play Man Parrish, he'd play Shannon, right along with the disco. And
man, he just stole all of Frankie Knuckle's crowd."
other
sources:
"I remember Ron Hardy dropping
Nitzer Ebb (hard industrial band) in between records by Marshall Jefferson
and Adonis." says Scott K. (More club, Los Angeles "in URB magazine
there's an article on Felix Da Housecat where he mentions Frankie Knuckles
dropping cuts from bands like New Order. He then credits (rightfully so)
Ron Hardy for starting that."
"Year 1983: Tony Humphries
enters the NYC club and radio circuit with his influential mix show on
KISS-FM.
Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles reign supreme on the turntables at the Powerplant
and Warehouse respectively, with Farley Keith makin' noise at
the Playhouse." in X-project.co.uk
"it was to be another DJ from the gay scene that was really to create the
environment for the house explosion - Ron Hardy. Where Knuckles' sound was
still very much based in disco, Hardy was the DJ that went for the rawest,
wildest rhythm tracks he could find and he made The Music Box the
inspirational temple for pretty much every DJ and producer that was to
come out of the Chicago scene."
"The Music Box was underground "
remembers Adonis. "You could go there in the middle of the winter and it'd
be as hot as hell, people would be walking around with their shirts off.
Ron Hardy had so much power people would be praising his name while he was
playing, and I've got the tapes to prove it!"
"Ron Hardy took over the decks
at The Music Box on the south side. The Music Box became known as a
rougher, wilder and more hedonistic alternative to Knuckles' sophisticated
mixes and it was here that the straight black crowds from the south side
caught the bug."
More
information at
Discogs.com
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