March 2, 2023 • 33 mins
Fab 5 Freddy leads us on a journey back to where it all started for the founding fathers of hip hop music. Beginning with the popular rhythmical stylings of the 1960’s and 70’s soul, funk and disco, we’ll learn how the impact of that music and those times in New York City inspired hip hop's early DJ architects, like Grand Master Flash, Grand Master Caz, Grand Wizard Theodore, Grand Mixer DXT and Kool Herc spark a musical revolution still raging globally today.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
From Our Heart podcasts I am Fab five, Freddy and
Vice if the fifty Years of hip Hop podcast series.
You know, it's interesting how a lot of people over
the years have always assumed that I'm from the Bronx,
and I was like, what do you mean? And I
realized that's because, well, I'm a co star in hip
hop's first film, Wild Style, which tells the story of
(00:23):
early hip hop, which all pretty much went down in
the Bronx. So I get that. But I'm from bes Stop,
Brooklyn And as a shorty coming up back in the seventies,
I got caught up in this thing with these mobile
DJs that would come out into the parks and play
at park jams. And what I would find out is
these guys were doing something that was then known as disco.
(00:47):
And a couple of times being at a couple of
these park jams with these mobile disco DJs. I'm talking
people like Frankie D, Grandmaster Flowers, Master D, a bunch
of these guys, I would here is something a little different,
occasionally a different sound like and I was remember going, well,
what is that that's really different. I remember going up
(01:08):
to one of these DJs ones and asking them. Yo,
what is that that was different record you played? He says, Oh,
that's the Uptown sound. Yeah. Cats in Manhattan and the
Bronx are doing something different and that got me curious.
And there were mobile DJs that went out with their
sound systems in the streets in the parks, and there
(01:30):
was a bunch of these guys that were stars throughout
the city. And this is that disco era before disco
becomes an overly commercialized mega thing that Hollywood jumps on
with Saturday Night Evan, John Travolta and disco techs open
up in big cities all over the country, including Studio
(01:52):
fifty four. What sparked all that off with these black
and Latin mobile DJs in New York City, People like
Pete DJ Jones, the original Grandmaster, Flowers, Plumber, My boya
A long listed these cats in different parts of the city.
This was what inspired Coolherk and other guys in the
(02:12):
Bronx because this DJ thing was hot, but Coolherk set
off something really unique, really different. He kind of was
like a Albert Einstein that came up with the formula
E equals MC squared and that inspired a bunch of
other people to go back to their labs, take that
formula and then build and research and development and laid
(02:37):
the foundation of this musical thing called hip hop. Those
rappers came on board initially to talk about those DJs,
how big their sound systems were, how nice their skills were.
You know, throw your hands in the air, wave them
like you just don't care. But then they started to
(02:57):
tell stories and the narrative develop. So this is a
real interesting story how these pieces all came together. At
a time in New York City, particularly the Bronx went literally, baby,
they were burning the Bronx down. They literally were torching
buildings to get the insurance money. This was going on
all over the Bronx, particularly in the South Bronx. You
(03:20):
know what I'm saying, just abandon this whole hood. And
these young kids were like really brilliant and wanted to
figure out a way to entertain themselves. And that's a
key part that a lot of people don't really get
a sense of how this whole thing comes together. So
these are early disco DJs. The big innovation that they
(03:41):
did was just mimicking what went on on the radio.
They had two turntables and a mixer and they just
would keep the music going and flowing from one song
to the next. That was the big thing among these
mobile disco DJs. I remember the one thing about these
disco go parties was they wanted you to dress up,
(04:03):
so you would have to have a pair of shoes
and some nice slacks, a little nice sweater, maybe a
little leather swayed if you did. But most young teenagers,
like most of us were, we didn't have the kind
of money to really do that. And they would also
put on these flyers for he just go parties, no sneakers.
That manut if you was a street cat, you really
(04:24):
couldn't go to these parties because if you only had
sneakers and you know, you really couldn't show up. I
remember once having a conversation with Cool Hirk and he
was like, you know, that was my crowd and people
wearing sneakers, that's who he wanted to come to his parties.
And so Cool Hirk definitely when he gave that first
party at fifteen twenty, Cedric, you know, was a young
(04:47):
crowd wearing sneakers, and he laid the foundation for something
that once again inspired a whole army of cats to
just build on that, on that innovation and take to
where we are now. So as we get into this
and explore the founding fathers of hip hop music, which
would grow to become the world's most dominant music genre
(05:09):
to this day. Before we look at the impact and
contributions made Bob DJ's like Grandmaster Flash, Graham Mixer, DXT,
grand Master Cas and greatest mcs of all time, Grand Wizard,
Theater Cool Herk, and of course others. We're going to
learn about the early years and the inspiration that led
to an enlightening path and the creation of this new
(05:31):
genre which is stronger than ever in its fiftieth year.
Grandmaster Caz rapper extraordinaire, songwriter and DJ, member of the
legendary hip hop group The Cold Crush Brothers. I'm a
little young big head kid. We grew up in the Bronze.
Had a time when the Bronx was devastated because of
(05:51):
the economic position of New York City at the time.
New York was bankrupt, damn them, and so services were
at a minimum. Programs were at a minimum, and we're
talking basic programs, after school programs, band practice like you know.
There were no instruments, no more. We were just kids, man.
(06:11):
We gravitated towards the things that we did have, and
we played with those things. We made those things, you know, important,
and we didn't know how impoverished we were. We didn't
know that we were. You know, we were well we
were we were kids, you know. And so me growing
up was pretty normal. You know. I grew up around friends, family,
(06:33):
went to school, play sports, you know what I mean,
was into cartoons and like every other kid. Man, it
wasn't until like my lesson years, that I really got
involved in music. I grew up in the sixties. Okay,
so this is when our parents had card parties over
the house and aunts, uncles came over, and there was
always music, always music. So that music stuck with me,
(06:56):
and I gravitated towards it. When I started being a
practitioner of music, I reverted back to that music that
I used to listen to growing up. Grandmaster Flash a
pioneer of hip hop, Djane Cutting and mix it. My
father was an aviflector of many jo lines of music,
but it was mostly jazz. But coming up as a tadler,
(07:17):
that's probably where I got my first look at these objects.
At my dad had. He would come home from a
hard day's work. Mom would feed him after the eight
I was drink of choice, and he would go into
this closet putocky square things, square things, had arn't on them.
Sometimes it might be a train or personal guy with glasses,
(07:41):
guy with a hat on clouds car. I thought out
to be very strange. What was Dad going to do
with that? Because I wasn't allowed in the living room
and I wasn't allowed to touch the brown box. Dad
would take through square objects out of this closet and
with pulleys, black circular of things out and I scare
(08:03):
from a distance, what is he going to do with that?
You would welk over to the brown box that was,
you know, on the lipping room, put the record on
this stick thing and you press this button something to
come up. Record would go down. Sound came out of
this box, and I thought, Dad, it was like the
greatest petitian in the world. After watching Dad through this
(08:26):
book period of time, I just made the decision, Let's
go get a chair out of the kitchen, let's grow
up with the stuartsed go in there, take a square
thing out of it, Let's replicate. But he did, but
the brown thing out of the square paper or went
over to the brown box. Because I watched him. I
did it sound with him out of his box. Normally
(08:49):
nobody would go mess with scared up, not even the adults.
So the music was playing somebody whoever was in the
household sort of run over. It was like lude Shell,
big Joe, catch you who's going to You're gonna take
care out of Okay? Well I kept doing it anyway.
The thing was like license, all right, this time, I'm
gonna take it. I put it the round thing back
(09:11):
into the jaculate, put in one closet. But the battle
flaw to that was Dad was re particulous how you
put things back. So when you got bold, you knew
somebody was in this collection. You know, I can totally
relate to what Grand Master Flash is breaking down right there.
My parents had a big jazz collection. The big brown
(09:33):
box is like a big high five, which would have
the record play at the radio, maybe a TV in
the front of it. That's how that went down back
in the days. And the square thing is the album cover,
the round thing is the record. The only thing is
with me and my family. I destroyed played try to
play houses make Frisbees out of my parents record collection,
(09:54):
so I put him through it. But I totally can relate.
Grand Mix DXT, one of the earliest to use turntables
as a musical instrument and the first turntable lists. I
was born in the Bronx, New York. My mom was
an inspiring singer. I was raised in an environment where
(10:16):
that was always something there. I had uncles and arts
who also were in the music. And so I'm talking
about as a child, like three, four or five, six
seventy eight, all through all those years ages, this was
the experience at house parties watching musicians play. I got
(10:37):
my first drum set five four or five, and it
was it was a toy set with the beatles on
the kick, the drum, the bass drumhead, the picture of
you and all that. And I got my second real
drum setup. So I came up, you know, in a
musicians in environment. You know, my art Audrey had a
(10:58):
hit single Local, you know, but it was a hit song.
If I start naming Manco Santamaris, Santana, Harry Bella, Franti,
James Brown, Mariam mckeba, Joe Quarterman, uh ROBERTA. Flack, This Endless.
My mother played every Willie Bobo Know what I'm Saying
and Miles David's. My mother was seriously into music and
(11:20):
had a fast variety of music genres. Grand Wizard did
Or pioneering hip hop DJ credited as the inventor of
the scratching technique. My mom she raised five boys and
two girls. Man, we didn't have a father figure in
the house. I didn't have anyone to teach me how
(11:42):
to be a man. You know, we spent a lot
of time. We were very family oriented. Every Saturday, my
mom's a watch. We're in front of the TV and
were watching Soul Train. We spent a lot of times
at my grandmom's house and eating dinner at you know,
my grandmother's house, and my uncles and my arts. So
we was very very family oriented, and we played music
(12:05):
all the time, all the time. Music is a soundtrack.
It was a soundtrack of our lives and seventies I
listened to the music that my parents listened to. James
Brown very prevalent in every black household during that time period.
Early sixties, Motown Temptations, Diana Ross, Atlantis Night and the
(12:26):
Pips on the Four Tops, the Spinners, all that kind
of thing, Marvin Gaye, CB, Wonder all right, old school soul,
R and B very prevalent around that time. But on
the other side of the coin, there was one radio
station that played all the music radio station called wabc W,
(12:47):
and they played not only Diana Ross and Jackson five
and but they played Barry Manilow, and they played Neil Diamond,
and they played Simon and Golf Uncle and three Dog
Night and Queen and Elton John and all that stuff.
So I got an equal proportion of both kinds of music.
There was no black radio station back then. They just
(13:07):
played all top party music, and so there was a
mix of it, and that was my early musical influences.
We had vinyl records. Albums came with you know, artwork,
and then on the flip side of the album you
had all the liner notes, so it told you every
song that was on the album, who produced the song,
who wrote the song, what record label it was on,
(13:30):
what year, and if you looked inside, it had the
lyrics to every song you know on the album. So
we had that advantage where we had the whole nuanced
artists or of a song of an album. Okay, we
had the artists, we had the artwork, we had the words,
we had the production. We know who did what, who
did this, and all this information just from one song,
(13:53):
just from one record. So music was educational for me
and for everyone else as well, I mean unknown only.
That's how influential music was to me back then. And
your Grandmastery Cats a legend, that's my man for sure,
But he might have forgot that. On the AM dial
back in the days in New York sixteen hundred w
(14:13):
w R RAL with Gary Bird and all of them Cats,
they was playing all the black music non stop. The
turntables played a major part in the soundtrack to Our Lives. Man.
My mom's had the coffin. She had the big coffin,
and when you in the front of the coffin was
a television. And when you opened up the coffin and
(14:34):
look inside, she had the eight track. She had the
turntables there, and she had all her forty fives on
the side. We would play her forty fives. Man, You
know my mom's she played music when she was cooking,
She played music when she was happy, she played music
when she was sad. She played music where she was
cleaning up. I can always tell what kind of moved
(14:54):
my mother was in. When I come home and she's
playing music, I'm like, Okay, she's playing TD Prendergrass, he's
in a certain mood, or she's playing James Brown, or
she's playing Marvin Gaye, or she's playing Rita Franklin. And
the turntable played a major part in all of our
households because it actually played the music that depict the
(15:18):
soundtrack to our lives. And I feel that if we
didn't have turntables in our house, man, I don't know
what we would have done. You know, because every Saturday
we watched Soul Train, we watched American Bandstand, we watched
Don Kursinger's Rock Concert. You know, we watched Flip Wilson,
and all these shows had music on it. I would
(15:41):
call it up a normal, wonderful time for kid. From
a perspective of music, I was blessed to c froll. Well,
the sad La household there was you know, I had
like five sistance, you know, so for me, depending on
who was in the stereo or heard anything from jazz, rock, blues,
(16:02):
just go R and B, alternative Caribbean, you know, a
youngster music had no charts at no divisions sections. Create
music was create music. So Dad was an avoue collector. Final,
the mom was a seeing stress for those two of
(16:23):
my heroes. And then the reason why I became so
interested in this. I remember, you know, being eight, nine,
ten years old and listening to music, and I always
listened to the beat of the music, like if I
hear James Brown record or Rufus Thomas record or Rich
the Franklin records, I listened to the beat. And as
(16:45):
I started to mature as a young man, I started
listening to the words. Started listening to James Brown words
I'm Black and I'm Proud and Escapism and The Big
Payback and all that stuff, and I'm like, what is
all this? You know, what does all these words meaning?
I started to learn stuff listening to Earthwin and Fire
(17:06):
and all started to come to me that there's a
message in all this music and started opening up an
whole new world for me. I started learning more from
listening to music than when I was at school. You know,
these groups played a major part, man, because they started
teaching me a lot of things that I didn't know.
(17:27):
So in case you don't know hip hop musical culture
begins in the Boogee Down Bronx The Bronx, New York City,
around the same time as the emergence and quick popularity
of disco. You see back in the nineteen seventies, disco
it was simply known as party music once again, born
in New York City, popularized by Large d Black and
(17:50):
My teen on mobile DJs. They played at local block parties,
park jams, city colleges, and they also spun at restaurants
in Midtown Manhattan, places like Nell Gwen's, Jimmy's Superstar Cafeteria.
These would be restaurants in the day and they would
move the tables and chairs to the side so people
(18:11):
could boogie on the dance floor on these weekend parties.
New York's influential radio station WBLS the DJ that set
it all off for them back in the seventies. He
was a DJ and the program director Frankie Hollywood Crocer.
I listened to Frankie religiously. He would come on at
four pm and go off at eight. You could walk
(18:34):
through New York City on a summertime and Frankie Crocker
was coming out of radio's left, right and center and
then the thing that made Frankie really hot was he
was tuned in to these disco DJs and the records
they were playing, and the records that got their biggest response,
he played them on the radio. He wasn't following the
(18:55):
Billboard chart and doing the type of thing the way
other popular radio stations did at the time, and he
programmed the hottest tunes that the local DJs were playing,
Hence breaking artists in New York like Barry White, Donna, Summer,
Hamilton Bohanna, Silver Convention, and a whole lot more. Disco
(19:16):
check is a French word. It means like a musical
life barry or place to where it is music or
catalogs of music. It became synonymous with a particular style
of music and then and then it's stuff, but discoes
is a place. Our misunderstanding of these using these terms
have kind of created some of these problems and confusion.
(19:40):
The European style music, the boom boom boom, boom boom
boom that became known as disco because that was being
played most of the time in these big clubs, But
it's dis music. But before that happened in those big clubs,
you would hear James Brown. You know what I'm saying,
you'd hear whoever whatever songs was out. That's where you
(20:01):
were here in the big clubs. And those places are
called disco text a place where you go where they
have a vast amount of music and they played them.
And so now this new phenomena of the boom boom
boom came out four on the floor. That became the
big style of music to play and a disco tex.
(20:23):
Hence people started calling it disco music. Russell Simmons, record
executive and entrepreneur, disco. You gotta turn the radio here,
why I'm seeing any by Patrick Duvette or I mean
by the village people off, Well, turn on the radio.
And here I keep thinking about this. All I love
on that red that was Patrick Dubett. I think so
(20:45):
you didn't have anything, you had no funk cut off
black radio, Judie Wilstein said, I mean black music made
easy for white people to dance too. That's what they
called disco. And she was the boss that she had
disco DJ's all over the country. And that chart, the
disco chart, with more than what in the black radio
in a met in New York, there's no funk on
(21:07):
that chart. So that chart with WBLS and w K
two and the radio phasians that played um what we
called black music, but it was never black music. It
was slack music made simple for white people to Danfield
and during the same time that funk with everywhere else,
we were locked out of the fucking creator all. So
to say in Queens they were playing disco, to identify
(21:32):
with them what they should have said, they just played
a whole record stay and we just played a break.
We listened to all those records too, but when the
breaks came, that's when we did our think. So this
whole trying to draw this hard line to say that
was disco and that that's it's all soul music. We're
(21:53):
gonna talk about the breaks right now, and I don't
want this to be confused with Curtis Blows nineteen eighty
Class Sick the breaks. But the break in a hip
hop song basically is isolating one part of a record,
usually the rhythmic climax of a song, and that's known
(22:14):
as the break, and that back in the days was
the break dances favorite part and they would be waiting
for the record to hit that break or the break
down and the dances would drop to the floor and
go crazy. That was like the climax, the pinnacle of
the record. But by isolating that break and extending the
(22:35):
duration with the skillful techniques that these DJs came up
and repeating it, you could basically extend that climax. You
could keep that energy going and flowing. And that was
one of the major things that cool Herk kind of
laid the foundation for, and basically a bunch of other
(22:58):
DJs jumped on and built on that. So these DJs
would change between two record players, that two record players
set up and with the mixer and going back and
forth extending that energy and driving the crowd wild using
two term tables. When one record reached the end of
the break, a second record would be eased and seamlessly
(23:20):
on beat and back to the beginning of the break.
This technique was first introduced by her and later Home
and perfected by Grandmaster Flash and then other DJs like
Graham Wizard Thead or d xt oh Man Tony Tone Chart.
I mean, it's a long line of the foundation. DJ's
(23:43):
jumped on this and took it to the next level. Man,
that's just such an incredible energy. And then later Graham
Wizard thead or you know, once again he's doing his
whole experimentation situation and perfecting the skills. He came up
with something called scratch. And I know that I heard
the story that he was playing in his in his
(24:04):
crib and his mom came in and told him, boll,
I told you to turn that music on. He put
his hand on the record and had it stopped, but
he moved it back and forth. It was like, wait
a minute, and he moved it on beat. It was crazy.
I remember the first time I heard it. I was
at a party in Brooklyn and the crowd was just
moving as one, you know, everybody was rocking, and in
the middle, you know, the DJ just went h oo
(24:28):
oo oo oom oom boom, and then he dropped the
record back in. The crowd went bananas because nobody had
heard was like, yo, what is that. Everybody kind of
looked around and had like a shocking, exciting, aggressive, audacious
field to doing that. Because when you hear that scratch,
(24:48):
you know that's typically a mistake. But to bring that
thing back in rhythmically and drop that beat back in, man,
it's undescribable. The feeling that that broad especially like when
you first heard and then you looked up and seeing
it going down. So that was a big part of
what became the foundation of blueprint once again, the development
(25:09):
of hip hop music. We played disco breaks and we
were chopping them up, and we were chopping up regular breaks,
Brakes from Flying to Family Stones, James Brown, Jimmy Cast,
a bunch a lot of DJ's from sixty nine seventy
(25:29):
seventy one. I feel they were cutting up disco breaks
when we were cutting up brakes period. We were cutting
up all the stuff that no one really hears on
the radio. You were hearing none of that stuff from
the radio. You might have heard it on a soul
train maybe once or twice. But we were cutting up
cooling the game. We were cutting up Incredible Bumble Band,
(25:51):
the group Black Heats. Those are now disco records. We
were cutting up all of these records when people were
playing disco music. So it was like two different worlds
when we came into the picture. When I say we,
I say Flash Bam and Herk. Not to take anything
away from those DJs that were playing disco breaks and
(26:12):
Queens and Brooklyn. They had DJs out there that were
actually doing parties at the same time we were doing parties,
but it was two different worlds. But everybody has a
story to tell and everybody contribute to hip hop. You
can't point to one person to say, Okay, if you
look at that one person, that person is responsible for
(26:32):
hip hop. Can't do that. Hip Hop was recreated by
different individuals, not one person, and which makes up the
culture that we know of today we call hip hop.
Breaks are the best part of the record. Break can
be at the beginning, break can be in the middle,
(26:54):
or the break can be at the end of the record,
and that's the part of the record that the B
boy waits for at the club. That's why sometimes you
see um the B boys standing on the side and
the B boys stands and when the break comes on,
that's where they go and they break on the floor,
(27:16):
do whatever they got to do, and then once the
break is gone, they go back to the B boys
stands waiting for the next break to come. The break
is what the MC waits for so he can start
rhyming and don't have to rhyme over the words because
usually when you hear a break, you don't hear the words,
or you hear is the drummer getting some. You know,
(27:38):
we all had our way up display our talents to
play the breaks. I use the analogia grade school and
then grade school. When we're going on a clash trip
or getting ready across the street, it's a teacher or
front black sometimes each in the middle, and teachers says
(28:02):
wherever you're next to, it doesn't matter. Everybody has to
hold hands. Then we crossed the street together. I used
just analogy when they came to playing a German break
behind the African break, behind a break from California. So
when I did this way where it was all our time,
(28:22):
this became the new way to play. When you listen
to a James Brown record, there's a break part, pig
Me Marham record, there's a break part, slying the family,
Stones records a break part, Jimmy cast a Bunch or
Incredible Bungle Band. All these are break parts. And basically
what we did was instead of us waiting for the
(28:46):
break to come, we started extending the breaks. So we
got the James Brown break Funky Drummer one, two, three
four in it. So instead of us listening to the
break one time, we would take the break and keep
extending the break and keep playing it over and over
and over again, so that the b boys can extend
(29:09):
their break time, and then the mcs can finally start
m seeing to the break, and the people on the
dance floor could finally start dancing to the break. So
the break was always there. We just used the break
and to the jam until disco. Before we called the
hip hop hip hop. But all of a sudden, the
(29:32):
mobile disc jockey started appeering, you know, guys playing that
because we used to have bands play outside, you know,
bands would come out and play like seventy three, seventy four.
On the south side of the project. It was a
guy named Fat Term and another guy on the north
side named Tony Tonio Gallery, and they got together and
(29:54):
they started a a DJ group called TNT Disco. Now
on the radio, I would year tonight that Mel mel
Gwin's or you know, all these different clubs, Pete DJ Jones,
and I didn't know what that meant, you know, I
thought DJ was his middle initials. So now I go
(30:15):
out into the park, you know, with fellas and stuff,
and because we normally go out and listening to bands playing,
and then or I'd be playing on the north side.
Outside we'd just be jamming, and there was always guys
with tim Boley's and Conger's outside all summer out there jamming.
You know, they had turnjables in and a mixer and
two column speakers. And so now we're listening. The house
(30:37):
party is outside outside outside, so Grandmaster Flowers and pe
TJ Jones pre day hip hop, you know, PDA Jones
had an echo chamber, Pete then J Jones, Joe Joel
I remember, you know the five percenters and and Queens
and Brooklyn. We would go into the Brooklyn Houstal at
Nells on forty secondary. I was like fourteen, we were young.
(30:57):
We would go to the Nells and PDJ Jones play
before they were rap record before they were rapp audits,
before it would anything stingings rapped or hip hop. PDJ
Jones like a hip hop DJ. He could easily have been.
And I know that uh cool DJ hrk Uh. I
think that cool DJ hrk story that he carried records
for them, that all of them say they carried record
(31:20):
records for DJ. P TJ Joe DJ Jones would tell
you that Hollywood was the first rapper than seventy three.
So he had there had to claim that Hollywood make
and there's you know, the documentation for the DJ Jones
had the pinion. But he did the same thing though.
He would play Rob Samenda and we would hear it,
(31:41):
you know, black the back. That's kind of hip hop,
ain't it? And that what we could contribute to the
founding fathers. So P. G. Jones could be perceived as
one of the founding fathers of hip hop as well,
and stay would without only Pete La Boy. All of
those guys contributed, flowers, all of them, you know, they
contribute a lot to the evolution to the point where
(32:04):
that party, that famous party, that cool VJ Hurt game game.
As y'all know, I'm about this life, about this hip
hop thing, you know what I'm saying. But really a
big inspiration for this whole podcast series is my man
Rest in peace. Reggie ose Ak a combat jack. He
pioneered this podcast game for one and on. So Reggie
(32:28):
Ose this whole series, baby, this whole hip Hop fifty
this one's for you. On the next episode of the
fifty Years of Hip Hop podcast, I'm about to take
you from nineteen seventy three to Infinity. We're gonna go inside,
back to the birthplace of hip hop, the Bronx, New York,
and explore the beginnings of the musical stylings A pioneer,
(32:50):
DJ cool Hurt he set it off. This episode has
been executive produced by Dolly s. Bishop host it and
produced by your Boy Fab five Freddie. Produced by Aaron A.
King Howard, edit Nick sound by Dwayne Crawford, music scoring
by Trey Jones, Talent booking by Nicole Spence.
From Our Heart podcasts I am Fab five, Freddy and
Vice if the fifty Years of hip Hop podcast series.
You know, it's interesting how a lot of people over
the years have always assumed that I'm from the Bronx,
and I was like, what do you mean? And I
realized that's because, well, I'm a co star in hip
hop's first film, Wild Style, which tells the story of
(00:23):
early hip hop, which all pretty much went down in
the Bronx. So I get that. But I'm from bes Stop,
Brooklyn And as a shorty coming up back in the seventies,
I got caught up in this thing with these mobile
DJs that would come out into the parks and play
at park jams. And what I would find out is
these guys were doing something that was then known as disco.
(00:47):
And a couple of times being at a couple of
these park jams with these mobile disco DJs. I'm talking
people like Frankie D, Grandmaster Flowers, Master D, a bunch
of these guys, I would here is something a little different,
occasionally a different sound like and I was remember going, well,
what is that that's really different. I remember going up
(01:08):
to one of these DJs ones and asking them. Yo,
what is that that was different record you played? He says, Oh,
that's the Uptown sound. Yeah. Cats in Manhattan and the
Bronx are doing something different and that got me curious.
And there were mobile DJs that went out with their
sound systems in the streets in the parks, and there
(01:30):
was a bunch of these guys that were stars throughout
the city. And this is that disco era before disco
becomes an overly commercialized mega thing that Hollywood jumps on
with Saturday Night Evan, John Travolta and disco techs open
up in big cities all over the country, including Studio
(01:52):
fifty four. What sparked all that off with these black
and Latin mobile DJs in New York City, People like
Pete DJ Jones, the original Grandmaster, Flowers, Plumber, My boya
A long listed these cats in different parts of the city.
This was what inspired Coolherk and other guys in the
(02:12):
Bronx because this DJ thing was hot, but Coolherk set
off something really unique, really different. He kind of was
like a Albert Einstein that came up with the formula
E equals MC squared and that inspired a bunch of
other people to go back to their labs, take that
formula and then build and research and development and laid
(02:37):
the foundation of this musical thing called hip hop. Those
rappers came on board initially to talk about those DJs,
how big their sound systems were, how nice their skills were.
You know, throw your hands in the air, wave them
like you just don't care. But then they started to
(02:57):
tell stories and the narrative develop. So this is a
real interesting story how these pieces all came together. At
a time in New York City, particularly the Bronx went literally, baby,
they were burning the Bronx down. They literally were torching
buildings to get the insurance money. This was going on
all over the Bronx, particularly in the South Bronx. You
(03:20):
know what I'm saying, just abandon this whole hood. And
these young kids were like really brilliant and wanted to
figure out a way to entertain themselves. And that's a
key part that a lot of people don't really get
a sense of how this whole thing comes together. So
these are early disco DJs. The big innovation that they
(03:41):
did was just mimicking what went on on the radio.
They had two turntables and a mixer and they just
would keep the music going and flowing from one song
to the next. That was the big thing among these
mobile disco DJs. I remember the one thing about these
disco go parties was they wanted you to dress up,
(04:03):
so you would have to have a pair of shoes
and some nice slacks, a little nice sweater, maybe a
little leather swayed if you did. But most young teenagers,
like most of us were, we didn't have the kind
of money to really do that. And they would also
put on these flyers for he just go parties, no sneakers.
That manut if you was a street cat, you really
(04:24):
couldn't go to these parties because if you only had
sneakers and you know, you really couldn't show up. I
remember once having a conversation with Cool Hirk and he
was like, you know, that was my crowd and people
wearing sneakers, that's who he wanted to come to his parties.
And so Cool Hirk definitely when he gave that first
party at fifteen twenty, Cedric, you know, was a young
(04:47):
crowd wearing sneakers, and he laid the foundation for something
that once again inspired a whole army of cats to
just build on that, on that innovation and take to
where we are now. So as we get into this
and explore the founding fathers of hip hop music, which
would grow to become the world's most dominant music genre
(05:09):
to this day. Before we look at the impact and
contributions made Bob DJ's like Grandmaster Flash, Graham Mixer, DXT,
grand Master Cas and greatest mcs of all time, Grand Wizard,
Theater Cool Herk, and of course others. We're going to
learn about the early years and the inspiration that led
to an enlightening path and the creation of this new
(05:31):
genre which is stronger than ever in its fiftieth year.
Grandmaster Caz rapper extraordinaire, songwriter and DJ, member of the
legendary hip hop group The Cold Crush Brothers. I'm a
little young big head kid. We grew up in the Bronze.
Had a time when the Bronx was devastated because of
(05:51):
the economic position of New York City at the time.
New York was bankrupt, damn them, and so services were
at a minimum. Programs were at a minimum, and we're
talking basic programs, after school programs, band practice like you know.
There were no instruments, no more. We were just kids, man.
(06:11):
We gravitated towards the things that we did have, and
we played with those things. We made those things, you know, important,
and we didn't know how impoverished we were. We didn't
know that we were. You know, we were well we
were we were kids, you know. And so me growing
up was pretty normal. You know. I grew up around friends, family,
(06:33):
went to school, play sports, you know what I mean,
was into cartoons and like every other kid. Man, it
wasn't until like my lesson years, that I really got
involved in music. I grew up in the sixties. Okay,
so this is when our parents had card parties over
the house and aunts, uncles came over, and there was
always music, always music. So that music stuck with me,
(06:56):
and I gravitated towards it. When I started being a
practitioner of music, I reverted back to that music that
I used to listen to growing up. Grandmaster Flash a
pioneer of hip hop, Djane Cutting and mix it. My
father was an aviflector of many jo lines of music,
but it was mostly jazz. But coming up as a tadler,
(07:17):
that's probably where I got my first look at these objects.
At my dad had. He would come home from a
hard day's work. Mom would feed him after the eight
I was drink of choice, and he would go into
this closet putocky square things, square things, had arn't on them.
Sometimes it might be a train or personal guy with glasses,
(07:41):
guy with a hat on clouds car. I thought out
to be very strange. What was Dad going to do
with that? Because I wasn't allowed in the living room
and I wasn't allowed to touch the brown box. Dad
would take through square objects out of this closet and
with pulleys, black circular of things out and I scare
(08:03):
from a distance, what is he going to do with that?
You would welk over to the brown box that was,
you know, on the lipping room, put the record on
this stick thing and you press this button something to
come up. Record would go down. Sound came out of
this box, and I thought, Dad, it was like the
greatest petitian in the world. After watching Dad through this
(08:26):
book period of time, I just made the decision, Let's
go get a chair out of the kitchen, let's grow
up with the stuartsed go in there, take a square
thing out of it, Let's replicate. But he did, but
the brown thing out of the square paper or went
over to the brown box. Because I watched him. I
did it sound with him out of his box. Normally
(08:49):
nobody would go mess with scared up, not even the adults.
So the music was playing somebody whoever was in the
household sort of run over. It was like lude Shell,
big Joe, catch you who's going to You're gonna take
care out of Okay? Well I kept doing it anyway.
The thing was like license, all right, this time, I'm
gonna take it. I put it the round thing back
(09:11):
into the jaculate, put in one closet. But the battle
flaw to that was Dad was re particulous how you
put things back. So when you got bold, you knew
somebody was in this collection. You know, I can totally
relate to what Grand Master Flash is breaking down right there.
My parents had a big jazz collection. The big brown
(09:33):
box is like a big high five, which would have
the record play at the radio, maybe a TV in
the front of it. That's how that went down back
in the days. And the square thing is the album cover,
the round thing is the record. The only thing is
with me and my family. I destroyed played try to
play houses make Frisbees out of my parents record collection,
(09:54):
so I put him through it. But I totally can relate.
Grand Mix DXT, one of the earliest to use turntables
as a musical instrument and the first turntable lists. I
was born in the Bronx, New York. My mom was
an inspiring singer. I was raised in an environment where
(10:16):
that was always something there. I had uncles and arts
who also were in the music. And so I'm talking
about as a child, like three, four or five, six
seventy eight, all through all those years ages, this was
the experience at house parties watching musicians play. I got
(10:37):
my first drum set five four or five, and it
was it was a toy set with the beatles on
the kick, the drum, the bass drumhead, the picture of
you and all that. And I got my second real
drum setup. So I came up, you know, in a
musicians in environment. You know, my art Audrey had a
(10:58):
hit single Local, you know, but it was a hit song.
If I start naming Manco Santamaris, Santana, Harry Bella, Franti,
James Brown, Mariam mckeba, Joe Quarterman, uh ROBERTA. Flack, This Endless.
My mother played every Willie Bobo Know what I'm Saying
and Miles David's. My mother was seriously into music and
(11:20):
had a fast variety of music genres. Grand Wizard did
Or pioneering hip hop DJ credited as the inventor of
the scratching technique. My mom she raised five boys and
two girls. Man, we didn't have a father figure in
the house. I didn't have anyone to teach me how
(11:42):
to be a man. You know, we spent a lot
of time. We were very family oriented. Every Saturday, my
mom's a watch. We're in front of the TV and
were watching Soul Train. We spent a lot of times
at my grandmom's house and eating dinner at you know,
my grandmother's house, and my uncles and my arts. So
we was very very family oriented, and we played music
(12:05):
all the time, all the time. Music is a soundtrack.
It was a soundtrack of our lives and seventies I
listened to the music that my parents listened to. James
Brown very prevalent in every black household during that time period.
Early sixties, Motown Temptations, Diana Ross, Atlantis Night and the
(12:26):
Pips on the Four Tops, the Spinners, all that kind
of thing, Marvin Gaye, CB, Wonder all right, old school soul,
R and B very prevalent around that time. But on
the other side of the coin, there was one radio
station that played all the music radio station called wabc W,
(12:47):
and they played not only Diana Ross and Jackson five
and but they played Barry Manilow, and they played Neil Diamond,
and they played Simon and Golf Uncle and three Dog
Night and Queen and Elton John and all that stuff.
So I got an equal proportion of both kinds of music.
There was no black radio station back then. They just
(13:07):
played all top party music, and so there was a
mix of it, and that was my early musical influences.
We had vinyl records. Albums came with you know, artwork,
and then on the flip side of the album you
had all the liner notes, so it told you every
song that was on the album, who produced the song,
who wrote the song, what record label it was on,
(13:30):
what year, and if you looked inside, it had the
lyrics to every song you know on the album. So
we had that advantage where we had the whole nuanced
artists or of a song of an album. Okay, we
had the artists, we had the artwork, we had the words,
we had the production. We know who did what, who
did this, and all this information just from one song,
(13:53):
just from one record. So music was educational for me
and for everyone else as well, I mean unknown only.
That's how influential music was to me back then. And
your Grandmastery Cats a legend, that's my man for sure,
But he might have forgot that. On the AM dial
back in the days in New York sixteen hundred w
(14:13):
w R RAL with Gary Bird and all of them Cats,
they was playing all the black music non stop. The
turntables played a major part in the soundtrack to Our Lives. Man.
My mom's had the coffin. She had the big coffin,
and when you in the front of the coffin was
a television. And when you opened up the coffin and
(14:34):
look inside, she had the eight track. She had the
turntables there, and she had all her forty fives on
the side. We would play her forty fives. Man, You
know my mom's she played music when she was cooking,
She played music when she was happy, she played music
when she was sad. She played music where she was
cleaning up. I can always tell what kind of moved
(14:54):
my mother was in. When I come home and she's
playing music, I'm like, Okay, she's playing TD Prendergrass, he's
in a certain mood, or she's playing James Brown, or
she's playing Marvin Gaye, or she's playing Rita Franklin. And
the turntable played a major part in all of our
households because it actually played the music that depict the
(15:18):
soundtrack to our lives. And I feel that if we
didn't have turntables in our house, man, I don't know
what we would have done. You know, because every Saturday
we watched Soul Train, we watched American Bandstand, we watched
Don Kursinger's Rock Concert. You know, we watched Flip Wilson,
and all these shows had music on it. I would
(15:41):
call it up a normal, wonderful time for kid. From
a perspective of music, I was blessed to c froll. Well,
the sad La household there was you know, I had
like five sistance, you know, so for me, depending on
who was in the stereo or heard anything from jazz, rock, blues,
(16:02):
just go R and B, alternative Caribbean, you know, a
youngster music had no charts at no divisions sections. Create
music was create music. So Dad was an avoue collector. Final,
the mom was a seeing stress for those two of
(16:23):
my heroes. And then the reason why I became so
interested in this. I remember, you know, being eight, nine,
ten years old and listening to music, and I always
listened to the beat of the music, like if I
hear James Brown record or Rufus Thomas record or Rich
the Franklin records, I listened to the beat. And as
(16:45):
I started to mature as a young man, I started
listening to the words. Started listening to James Brown words
I'm Black and I'm Proud and Escapism and The Big
Payback and all that stuff, and I'm like, what is
all this? You know, what does all these words meaning?
I started to learn stuff listening to Earthwin and Fire
(17:06):
and all started to come to me that there's a
message in all this music and started opening up an
whole new world for me. I started learning more from
listening to music than when I was at school. You know,
these groups played a major part, man, because they started
teaching me a lot of things that I didn't know.
(17:27):
So in case you don't know hip hop musical culture
begins in the Boogee Down Bronx The Bronx, New York City,
around the same time as the emergence and quick popularity
of disco. You see back in the nineteen seventies, disco
it was simply known as party music once again, born
in New York City, popularized by Large d Black and
(17:50):
My teen on mobile DJs. They played at local block parties,
park jams, city colleges, and they also spun at restaurants
in Midtown Manhattan, places like Nell Gwen's, Jimmy's Superstar Cafeteria.
These would be restaurants in the day and they would
move the tables and chairs to the side so people
(18:11):
could boogie on the dance floor on these weekend parties.
New York's influential radio station WBLS the DJ that set
it all off for them back in the seventies. He
was a DJ and the program director Frankie Hollywood Crocer.
I listened to Frankie religiously. He would come on at
four pm and go off at eight. You could walk
(18:34):
through New York City on a summertime and Frankie Crocker
was coming out of radio's left, right and center and
then the thing that made Frankie really hot was he
was tuned in to these disco DJs and the records
they were playing, and the records that got their biggest response,
he played them on the radio. He wasn't following the
(18:55):
Billboard chart and doing the type of thing the way
other popular radio stations did at the time, and he
programmed the hottest tunes that the local DJs were playing,
Hence breaking artists in New York like Barry White, Donna, Summer,
Hamilton Bohanna, Silver Convention, and a whole lot more. Disco
(19:16):
check is a French word. It means like a musical
life barry or place to where it is music or
catalogs of music. It became synonymous with a particular style
of music and then and then it's stuff, but discoes
is a place. Our misunderstanding of these using these terms
have kind of created some of these problems and confusion.
(19:40):
The European style music, the boom boom boom, boom boom
boom that became known as disco because that was being
played most of the time in these big clubs, But
it's dis music. But before that happened in those big clubs,
you would hear James Brown. You know what I'm saying,
you'd hear whoever whatever songs was out. That's where you
(20:01):
were here in the big clubs. And those places are
called disco text a place where you go where they
have a vast amount of music and they played them.
And so now this new phenomena of the boom boom
boom came out four on the floor. That became the
big style of music to play and a disco tex.
(20:23):
Hence people started calling it disco music. Russell Simmons, record
executive and entrepreneur, disco. You gotta turn the radio here,
why I'm seeing any by Patrick Duvette or I mean
by the village people off, Well, turn on the radio.
And here I keep thinking about this. All I love
on that red that was Patrick Dubett. I think so
(20:45):
you didn't have anything, you had no funk cut off
black radio, Judie Wilstein said, I mean black music made
easy for white people to dance too. That's what they
called disco. And she was the boss that she had
disco DJ's all over the country. And that chart, the
disco chart, with more than what in the black radio
in a met in New York, there's no funk on
(21:07):
that chart. So that chart with WBLS and w K
two and the radio phasians that played um what we
called black music, but it was never black music. It
was slack music made simple for white people to Danfield
and during the same time that funk with everywhere else,
we were locked out of the fucking creator all. So
to say in Queens they were playing disco, to identify
(21:32):
with them what they should have said, they just played
a whole record stay and we just played a break.
We listened to all those records too, but when the
breaks came, that's when we did our think. So this
whole trying to draw this hard line to say that
was disco and that that's it's all soul music. We're
(21:53):
gonna talk about the breaks right now, and I don't
want this to be confused with Curtis Blows nineteen eighty
Class Sick the breaks. But the break in a hip
hop song basically is isolating one part of a record,
usually the rhythmic climax of a song, and that's known
(22:14):
as the break, and that back in the days was
the break dances favorite part and they would be waiting
for the record to hit that break or the break
down and the dances would drop to the floor and
go crazy. That was like the climax, the pinnacle of
the record. But by isolating that break and extending the
(22:35):
duration with the skillful techniques that these DJs came up
and repeating it, you could basically extend that climax. You
could keep that energy going and flowing. And that was
one of the major things that cool Herk kind of
laid the foundation for, and basically a bunch of other
(22:58):
DJs jumped on and built on that. So these DJs
would change between two record players, that two record players
set up and with the mixer and going back and
forth extending that energy and driving the crowd wild using
two term tables. When one record reached the end of
the break, a second record would be eased and seamlessly
(23:20):
on beat and back to the beginning of the break.
This technique was first introduced by her and later Home
and perfected by Grandmaster Flash and then other DJs like
Graham Wizard Thead or d xt oh Man Tony Tone Chart.
I mean, it's a long line of the foundation. DJ's
(23:43):
jumped on this and took it to the next level. Man,
that's just such an incredible energy. And then later Graham
Wizard thead or you know, once again he's doing his
whole experimentation situation and perfecting the skills. He came up
with something called scratch. And I know that I heard
the story that he was playing in his in his
(24:04):
crib and his mom came in and told him, boll,
I told you to turn that music on. He put
his hand on the record and had it stopped, but
he moved it back and forth. It was like, wait
a minute, and he moved it on beat. It was crazy.
I remember the first time I heard it. I was
at a party in Brooklyn and the crowd was just
moving as one, you know, everybody was rocking, and in
the middle, you know, the DJ just went h oo
(24:28):
oo oo oom oom boom, and then he dropped the
record back in. The crowd went bananas because nobody had
heard was like, yo, what is that. Everybody kind of
looked around and had like a shocking, exciting, aggressive, audacious
field to doing that. Because when you hear that scratch,
(24:48):
you know that's typically a mistake. But to bring that
thing back in rhythmically and drop that beat back in, man,
it's undescribable. The feeling that that broad especially like when
you first heard and then you looked up and seeing
it going down. So that was a big part of
what became the foundation of blueprint once again, the development
(25:09):
of hip hop music. We played disco breaks and we
were chopping them up, and we were chopping up regular breaks,
Brakes from Flying to Family Stones, James Brown, Jimmy Cast,
a bunch a lot of DJ's from sixty nine seventy
(25:29):
seventy one. I feel they were cutting up disco breaks
when we were cutting up brakes period. We were cutting
up all the stuff that no one really hears on
the radio. You were hearing none of that stuff from
the radio. You might have heard it on a soul
train maybe once or twice. But we were cutting up
cooling the game. We were cutting up Incredible Bumble Band,
(25:51):
the group Black Heats. Those are now disco records. We
were cutting up all of these records when people were
playing disco music. So it was like two different worlds
when we came into the picture. When I say we,
I say Flash Bam and Herk. Not to take anything
away from those DJs that were playing disco breaks and
(26:12):
Queens and Brooklyn. They had DJs out there that were
actually doing parties at the same time we were doing parties,
but it was two different worlds. But everybody has a
story to tell and everybody contribute to hip hop. You
can't point to one person to say, Okay, if you
look at that one person, that person is responsible for
(26:32):
hip hop. Can't do that. Hip Hop was recreated by
different individuals, not one person, and which makes up the
culture that we know of today we call hip hop.
Breaks are the best part of the record. Break can
be at the beginning, break can be in the middle,
(26:54):
or the break can be at the end of the record,
and that's the part of the record that the B
boy waits for at the club. That's why sometimes you
see um the B boys standing on the side and
the B boys stands and when the break comes on,
that's where they go and they break on the floor,
(27:16):
do whatever they got to do, and then once the
break is gone, they go back to the B boys
stands waiting for the next break to come. The break
is what the MC waits for so he can start
rhyming and don't have to rhyme over the words because
usually when you hear a break, you don't hear the words,
or you hear is the drummer getting some. You know,
(27:38):
we all had our way up display our talents to
play the breaks. I use the analogia grade school and
then grade school. When we're going on a clash trip
or getting ready across the street, it's a teacher or
front black sometimes each in the middle, and teachers says
(28:02):
wherever you're next to, it doesn't matter. Everybody has to
hold hands. Then we crossed the street together. I used
just analogy when they came to playing a German break
behind the African break, behind a break from California. So
when I did this way where it was all our time,
(28:22):
this became the new way to play. When you listen
to a James Brown record, there's a break part, pig
Me Marham record, there's a break part, slying the family,
Stones records a break part, Jimmy cast a Bunch or
Incredible Bungle Band. All these are break parts. And basically
what we did was instead of us waiting for the
(28:46):
break to come, we started extending the breaks. So we
got the James Brown break Funky Drummer one, two, three
four in it. So instead of us listening to the
break one time, we would take the break and keep
extending the break and keep playing it over and over
and over again, so that the b boys can extend
(29:09):
their break time, and then the mcs can finally start
m seeing to the break, and the people on the
dance floor could finally start dancing to the break. So
the break was always there. We just used the break
and to the jam until disco. Before we called the
hip hop hip hop. But all of a sudden, the
(29:32):
mobile disc jockey started appeering, you know, guys playing that
because we used to have bands play outside, you know,
bands would come out and play like seventy three, seventy four.
On the south side of the project. It was a
guy named Fat Term and another guy on the north
side named Tony Tonio Gallery, and they got together and
(29:54):
they started a a DJ group called TNT Disco. Now
on the radio, I would year tonight that Mel mel
Gwin's or you know, all these different clubs, Pete DJ Jones,
and I didn't know what that meant, you know, I
thought DJ was his middle initials. So now I go
(30:15):
out into the park, you know, with fellas and stuff,
and because we normally go out and listening to bands playing,
and then or I'd be playing on the north side.
Outside we'd just be jamming, and there was always guys
with tim Boley's and Conger's outside all summer out there jamming.
You know, they had turnjables in and a mixer and
two column speakers. And so now we're listening. The house
(30:37):
party is outside outside outside, so Grandmaster Flowers and pe
TJ Jones pre day hip hop, you know, PDA Jones
had an echo chamber, Pete then J Jones, Joe Joel
I remember, you know the five percenters and and Queens
and Brooklyn. We would go into the Brooklyn Houstal at
Nells on forty secondary. I was like fourteen, we were young.
(30:57):
We would go to the Nells and PDJ Jones play
before they were rap record before they were rapp audits,
before it would anything stingings rapped or hip hop. PDJ
Jones like a hip hop DJ. He could easily have been.
And I know that uh cool DJ hrk Uh. I
think that cool DJ hrk story that he carried records
for them, that all of them say they carried record
(31:20):
records for DJ. P TJ Joe DJ Jones would tell
you that Hollywood was the first rapper than seventy three.
So he had there had to claim that Hollywood make
and there's you know, the documentation for the DJ Jones
had the pinion. But he did the same thing though.
He would play Rob Samenda and we would hear it,
(31:41):
you know, black the back. That's kind of hip hop,
ain't it? And that what we could contribute to the
founding fathers. So P. G. Jones could be perceived as
one of the founding fathers of hip hop as well,
and stay would without only Pete La Boy. All of
those guys contributed, flowers, all of them, you know, they
contribute a lot to the evolution to the point where
(32:04):
that party, that famous party, that cool VJ Hurt game game.
As y'all know, I'm about this life, about this hip
hop thing, you know what I'm saying. But really a
big inspiration for this whole podcast series is my man
Rest in peace. Reggie ose Ak a combat jack. He
pioneered this podcast game for one and on. So Reggie
(32:28):
Ose this whole series, baby, this whole hip Hop fifty
this one's for you. On the next episode of the
fifty Years of Hip Hop podcast, I'm about to take
you from nineteen seventy three to Infinity. We're gonna go inside,
back to the birthplace of hip hop, the Bronx, New York,
and explore the beginnings of the musical stylings A pioneer,
(32:50):
DJ cool Hurt he set it off. This episode has
been executive produced by Dolly s. Bishop host it and
produced by your Boy Fab five Freddie. Produced by Aaron A.
King Howard, edit Nick sound by Dwayne Crawford, music scoring
by Trey Jones, Talent booking by Nicole Spence.
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