Chip E. and The UnUsual Suspects

by Terry Matthew | Published September 2006 | Features Archives

CHIP E. IS IN his element. We're sitting in his office, desks occupied by a glowing row of computer monitors, talking about the early days of House Music - when Farley, Frankie, Steve, Chip and Ronnie were just guys checking each others beats on reel-to-reel tapes and Chicago was the nerve center of some new, untapped, unexploited consciousness.

To some people, this is just history: a series of dates and events to memorize, like battles of the Civil War. But if you were a part of it then or a part of it now, it's more than that - more than music, even. It's a culture.

A few times during our conversation, curiosity got the better of me and I stopped Chip to ask for background on an obscure figure or place. His memory is an encyclopedia of streets and names and faces. I'm positive he's been asked about them a million times, but he truly seemed to enjoy going through it again for my benefit. He flips through memories like the record sleeves at Importes, the store on Plymouth where he once pushed rare vinyl to the DJs and fans turned on to the sounds rattling in the city's underground heart.

It's that knack for telling a good story, that attention to detail and that passion for the culture of the music he helped create in the early 1980s that makes Chip E. the ideal chronicler of how it all went down.

The UnUsual Suspects: Once Upon a Time in House Music made its theatrical debut a year ago to glowing reviews. Unlike the previous documentaries I've seen that focused exclusively on the "heavy hitters" of House Music, Chip turns the camera to the dancefloor memories of the ordinary Househead without whom, as he pointed out, the Warehouse, PowerPlant and the Music Box - and this music - wouldn't have existed.

Following the release in July of The UnUsual Suspects on DVD and a limited edition reissue of his classic record "Jack Trax" on vinyl (both now available from 5 Magazine here), I sat down with Chip to talk about his career as one of the original House Music producers, about being a 12 year old (!) Househead, about writing at least a dozen tracks on anyone's shortlist of the seminal dance music classics, about the film and his new career in video - about the past and the future of House Music and the incredible documentary that illustrates the power that this culture still has over us.

CHIP E.: That was it exactly. That's part of the name, The UnUsual Suspects, because to me, the usual suspects are Frankie Knuckles, Chip E., Farley, Steve Hurley, and so on. Typically, when people go looking for House Music stories, they don't do real journalism or investigation. They see someone else's story on the internet and say, "Okay, they interviewed Chip and Frankie and Farley and that's what I'll do." And to me, that's what they do with House Music: they round up the usual suspects.

I've seen a lot of attempts at documenting the House scene, mostly from abroad, and it's just that kind of journalism. I have to give them credit, though: at least they try, and I know they're limited in their resources and time. But we had a different perspective, my co-producer Kimmie D. and I, because we really are from the culture, and it's a look from the inside-out instead of from the outside-in. We really wanted to have more than just the heavy hitters. We wanted to embrace the culture more organically.

5 MAGAZINE: How long was the documentary in production?

CHIP E.: Five years. We started off around Thanksgiving 2001, and I remember thinking, "Yeah, we'll have this out by March of next year." [laughs]

5 MAGAZINE: I also notice you recently released a limited edition vinyl of your "Jack Trax". Are there any plans to put out more of your material from the old DJ International catalog or are the rights in limbo?

CHIP E.: I'm thinking about it. All of the rights reverted back to me - they only had a ten year license on it. I've kind of divested myself from the music business and have been concentrating on the video world, but with "Jack Trax", there was such a great demand for it. I felt bad that people had to go on eBay and spend $300 - one guy told me he spent $1500 on eBay for it. I just didn't think that was right. So I said, let's reissue it and let people have it again. But we didn't want to completely devalue it, so we only did 500 copies.

5 MAGAZINE: I came across an article from a magazine called The Face from September 1986, when the Chicago producers began getting a lot of attention. At the end, the reporter asks you how long you can keep doing this "before people get bored", and you reply, "I'd say about the next 20 years." It's now exactly 20 years later. How do you feel about that?

CHIP E.: Surprisingly, they're not bored yet! But it still hasn't taken off to where I think it can, where it could and should.

5 MAGAZINE: Why do you think that is?

CHIP E.: That's a good question. I don't know, I'd say that early on, part of the reason was so many of the people involved in House Music were too smart for their own good. They were more worried about protecting their own interests - myself included. We were more interested in making sure no one was taking advantage of us instead of realizing the value in being exploited. I think that's where the hip-hop genre really leapfrogged us. In the early days, in the '80s, hip-hop and House were side-by-side. It could have gone either way. The hip-hop artists were smart enough to sign on the dotted line without asking a lot of questions. It was "Fine, exploit me. Let's go. Let's make a record. Exploit me worldwide, make it commercial."

The House artists - again, myself included - we had reservations. We were like, "Why are you going to get 20%? I did all the work." Hindsight is 20/20, and we should have been more open and let it be exploited.

Now it's a little late. Now it's been exploited without us. Chicago created the dance music that's going on. Just as Chicago killed Disco music, Chicago re-invented it as House Music. And now you've got Justin Timberlake coming out now with "Sexy Back" - clearly, clearly a House song - and they're promoting it as "a combination of club music with funk and rock'n'roll"!

I think for us to go forward, we got to break this through video. We've got to break this to the youth, because we're gettin' old. We go out to clubs occasionally but we're not the clubgoers of today and we need to make it attractive to youth. Video is a big part of that. We've got two really good special features on the DVD: one is a music video we did for Cassioware with almost a hip-hop-type theme. We didn't just do him singing. We gave him a little bling, had a few women around. We also have Rawkshow in a special feature. They're actually from San Francisco and they do more of the electronica, more with computers to enliven it into more of an audio/video show. It's going to take those sorts of things to make it go forward and bring kids into it, because right now there's nothing really attractive for the kids in House Music, except for the feeling if they get into it. There's just so much that's more attractive for them in hip-hop. It's the bling! [laughs] We're still a culture that's very much attracted to the bling.

5 MAGAZINE: On the subject of where House Music is today, I have to ask you your thoughts as a performer at this year's SummerDance.

CHIP E.: Oh God . . . Bryan, don't kill me for this! [laughs] I was rather disappointed by the changes in venue. I think it caused a lot of confusion because people didn't know where it was going to be and when it was going to be. It used to be every Wednesday on Michigan Avenue by Harrison. The 'Heads knew where to go and that they'd hear some good House Music. By changing it around, I think they lost a lot of 'Heads because they couldn't plan for it or they couldn't find it.

With my particular event, I was a little disappointed. I thought it would be a benefit with it being at the Taste of Chicago, but it was really more of a detriment. Typically, I'm used to playing to crowds that are Househeads or at least music lovers in general, people who want to come out and have a good time. Taste of Chicago unfortunately isn't about that. It's about going out and wanting to get cheap or free stuff. It was really draining for me. I'm the kind of DJ - honestly, I feed off the crowd. When they're sending me energy, I can send it back. But when all they're doing is pulling and saying "Whatcha got? Ya got some free CDs? t-shirts? posters? Whatcha got?" And they didn't care what it was! If it was a "Time 2 Jack" record or a Pirates of the Caribbean t-shirt, they didn't care.

And it's not Bryan's fault. It's just what happens with growth. They outgrew the old location and the reality is that it's Michigan Avenue, there's a lot of people there who pay residential and business taxes and don't want people hangin' out there. Metro is a great location but it's not easy for people to get to, and it's indoors, and it doesn't cater to all ages and all people. In the past at SummerDance, I've seen homeless people come out and get their jack on. It's a beautiful thing. I've said it before and I'll say it again: House Music doesn't care about economics or race or gender or religion. House Music is dance music - it's pure, spiritual music.

5 MAGAZINE: Let's go back now. In 1986, you were 20 years old and the VP of AR for a record label - not even able to drink legally and you were already established. How did this all begin for you?

CHIP E.: I'll take you back a little bit further. I don't think this is something that I ever talked about. It started when I was 10 or 11 years old, I was watching PBS, WTTW in Chicago. I saw this documentary about a high school newspaper called New Expressions. It was a city-wide newspaper during the '70s and '80s. I was into photography and I think I was the only 9 year old who had an enlarger in his basement. Everyone else wanted a GI Joe, I wanted an enlarger - and I think it's still in my mom's basement!

So, I took the El to their office on Adams and Wabash with a few pictures I'd taken. I told them that I saw the story and I want to be on the staff. And they said, "Oh, that's so cute! Well, when you get into high school, come back and call us." I said no, you don't get it, want to be on your staff now. I've got a camera, I know how to develop pictures, I can do this. It took a little beating down the door - they didn't say okay at first - but they finally gave me an assignment. They were doing a story when St. Ignatius College Prep first went co-ed. I made the cover, I got on the masthead, they made me staff and I started hangin' out with all of these high school kids.

There was this one guy there who was the art director named Eric Bradshaw. He was a promoter with a group called Vertigo that threw parties at The Loft and at Sauers. So I went to one of these parties and it was at The Loft, on 14th and Michigan, the second floor, and I walked in there and heard this music that I had never heard before. The first song that I heard when I walked in there was Martin Circus' "Disco Circus", and I think Alan King was DJing. And I saw these people sweatin' and movin' and saw the floor movin' up and down. By that time I was 12 or 13 and I knew it then: this is something that I want to be a part of.

So from that point on, I was always hanging around people who were a little bit older than me. I started my clublife early, but it seemed natural for me, because I knew the music. By the time I made it into high school, all my friends were DJing and I learned how to blend records together. Because I was at Importes so much, they said they needed some help and I seemed to know all of the songs. "You're always here anyway, so why don't you work for us?" I was working at Importes, DJing, and I did a year at Columbia studying music theory, radio production and some marketing classes. And I thought, now I understand how to market something, I know what people like to dance to, and how people come to the record store and ask for music.

I put all that that together and thought that what I need to do is put together a record that has a simple hook. Because it was really challenging at Importes when people would come in, and there were a lot of tracks with lyrics in French and Italian and ones that didn't didn't have any lyrics at all, and people would try to hum or say these words. It was frustrating for the seller and for the customer. So I wanted to put together something that was really, really simple. I wrote a song that had a banging beat and the entire lyrics on it were two words: "It's House". Pretty hard not to know what to ask for! So people would come into the store and ask, "Do you have that song, 'It's House'?" And it worked.

5 MAGAZINE: When I listen to the old school DJs talk about the record shop, you're always identified as a part of it: "Chip E. and Importes". How long did you work there?

CHIP E.: I worked there from about '82 to '86 - basically from my junior year in high school until my first year in college. After I started making music, I started travelling a lot, and in addition to that, I was getting the equivalent of my weekly salary in like a day from record sales at the same store.

There's still a lot of confusion about where the term "House" came from. But definitely, one of the places it came from was when we were at Importes. People would come in and ask us, "Do you have any of that old disco music - you know, that stuff at the Warehouse?" They were talking about disco played at the Warehouse, because the Warehouse never played House Music. It didn't exist then. So we would put stickers on the record: "As Played at the Warehouse". And if we put that record on any old disco record, it flew off the shelves. Eventually, we were putting on so many that we just got lazy, and we'd write "As Heard at the House", and then just "House Music". The term "House Music" does in a way describe the music played at the Warehouse as well as the new genre of music created from those inspirations. So that's one of the places that "House Music" comes from.

5 MAGAZINE: Does the rationale you used for "It's House" describe the "Chip E. sound"? Because it's always been about a simple hook - "It's house", or "Time to jack, jack your body".

CHIP E.: Exactly. The rhythms were all spiritually motivated. Because I played music as DJ, I knew what kind of breaks and rhythms they wanted to hear, and I embraced percussion and drum machines. For the hook, I wanted to keep it minimalist because I wanted it to be easy for people to find. I didn't want people to spend their time on the dancefloor listening to lyrics. I wanted them to feel the music but still have enough there so they knew what they were listening to.

5 MAGAZINE: With the problems you had with your contract with DJ International, when you stopped making music - is that when video took over?

CHIP E.: Video actually came a little bit later. I've always had an interest in video, but what happened was I went into the IT field when I left DJ International. I did a lot of things, but the one thing that became a kind of career was the IT field. First I did LAN, then I did telecom, then I did applications. I was pretty successful and I had some money and . . . it was time to go racing! So I bought a race car, did some amateur racing and had a camera in the car. I had video of going around the tracks. I invited some friends over and said "Look! Watch this Porsche, watch me come around . . . wait . . . It's coming after five more laps." They said, "Dude, can't you edit this? It's cool but skip to the good parts!"

I said, you're right, and I've got the technology. So I taught myself how to edit video. I fell in love with it, because it was so similar to editing music, but you're able to edit audio and video. I stepped away from IT and started doing video instead.

At the same time I made that transition, around 2000, the Pump Up the Volume documentary came out. I was one of the contributors to it and I spent a lot of time with them. When I saw the finished product, I was like "My God, they missed it. They missed the whole story. They missed everything I said." They had it on tape, but they made their own edit. So I thought, I've got to step up. I've got to stop waiting for other people to document this piece of history. I talked to Kimmie D. and said, "What do you think? Let's do the story of House Music." I think Jesse Saunders had already started shooting his, and I heard about this one going on in New York, Maestro, and I actually met Josell Ramos. I said, we've got to do this for Chicago and so we did.

Eric Williams from The Silver Room had started his venue, and he let us use it for a night to kick it off. So we had the DJs there and some people there to do interviews, and like I said we thought we'd have it wrapped up in three months. That was the birth of it, and it just kept going and going. It was a big learning experience all over. It definitely changed changed my life, both the movie and transitioning into video. Instead of having to figure out zeros and ones in the IT world, now I can go back into the grays of creativity. Everything doesn't have to be black and white. I'm in a much better place spiritually now, because I can work with artistic people.

We actually shot about sixty hours of footage and the feature we released is 99 minutes. We're holding back because we're trying to figure out exactly how to utilize it. We'll be doing a theatrical release and then a DVD release of the documentary in Japan in 2007. So there's going to be a special edition that's going to have more footage and more interviews.

This is another similarity between music and video. When we started doing House Music, myself and other people, it wasn't just a way to make money. We wanted people to embrace it, and realize that they could make music too. Everyone has it inside of them if they want to. I'm starting to see that in the video industry. You're seeing a lot more people come out to parties with cameras. We're hoping that they're not just going to be documenting the House scene, because it can only be documented so many times, but there's so much out there that needs to be documented organically. We need to stop waiting for the BBC or for Channel 7 to come in with their crews. The technology is here. Even if it's just a pen and a paper, you can come in and write the story. Because at the end of the day, we all are editors. We all go home and talk to somebody and tell them about our day. We don't tell them about our whole day verbatim: we edit it down and tell them the little important pieces. That's what editing's all about. Everybody does it and everybody's capable of it.

5 MAGAZINE: You mentioned that you're in a better place spiritually now. Was there a period where you weren't?

CHIP E.: There was. After House Music had some recognition, you had everybody and their mother saying "I created House Music!" You know, Frankie created House Music, Farley created House Music, Jesse created House Music, Chip created House Music, Steve . . . There was a lot of infighting, which isn't the way it had been. Nobody cared about the money so much as "Do you dig my beat? Is it jackin'?" It all became about the recognition of who was the first, who was the best, and all of that.

I think by coming from the inside and talking to these people, I was able to get the real story. You'll notice in the movie that nobody is boasting about being the first. I think people can now look back and see that everybody contributed, we're all good people, we're all friends and we're all important.

That was another reason I wanted to do it, though: to show that really it wasn't about the DJs and the producers. If you take away the DJs and the producers, you've still got these thousands of people on the dancefloor. Those are the important people. Those are the "unusual suspects". I think it was more the people on the dancefloor that created House Music than it was the DJs and producers, myself included. We fed off of those people. When we played a beat, we played it for them. We watched how they reacted to it. If they didn't react to it, we went out and changed it. That was our sounding board. No one could have gone into their bedroom studio and said, "I'm going to create House Music. I'm going to create a slammin' tune." It's really all about the culture, the people who embraced this music. That's why I'm a better place spiritually. I can give back some of that story and that history. And I think I've broken down some myths and created more harmony between these people . . .

5 MAGAZINE: You co-produced Frankie Knuckles' first recording in 1987, "You Can't Hide". How did this come about?

CHIP E.: Frankie and Ronnie were both very inspirational to me, and they were both very supportive. They knew me from Importes and they knew I didn't give them any bunk records. I tried to give them the best music. And when I started making music, even before "Jack Trax" came out, I did some remixes. I did a remix of "Love Thang" by First Choice, put it on reel-to-reel and gave it to Frankie and Ronnie and they played it. I had little things I put together on my Casio keyboard with my Dr. Rhythm drum machine and they'd play those tracks. It was a sounding board. I didn't have access to the types of crowds that they had, of people who were very open to music.

So I wanted to give back to them. When I started making music, I pretty much dragged them into the studio. With Frankie it took about two years! I started doing music in '85 and it took me until '87 to finally drag him in. I was like "Frankie, you know music. You know what turns a crowd on. You need to get into a studio and produce some music." And he finally came in and we did a song together.

With Ronnie, it was kind of the same thing. I was working with this guy named Harri Dennis, Larry Heard and Robert Owens. We were doing this song "Donnie". We played an early version at the Music Box and Ronnie dug it and was like "Man, everybody loves this song." I said we were going into the studio to record it for real, so why not come in and mix it? He said, "I don't know how to do that." But it's just a bunch of knobs and buttons - we'll show you what to push. It's nothing you won't feel. So he came in and had a good time and definitely added to the record.

5 MAGAZINE: Who from that era do you think never got the attention that they deserve? I've heard you mention Andre Hatchett's name before and he's a big part of the DVD.

CHIP E.: We did a whole section on Andre with clips from SummerDance. Andre is definitely one of the unspoken heroes of House Music. Leonard Remix Rroy - he's another big name. He's one of the guys that was starting to do early House Music, but then he joined the army. He signed up to serve his country when the music was taking off, so he never got the fame and recognition he deserved. Leonard was definitely House. Farley said Leonard was the first person he ever heard use the term "House Music". Leonard would sometimes take cartoon music like Inspector Gadget and throw beats behind it and remix it and play it at The Playground or The Candy Store (the same venue, but a different name). He also played at a club called the Rink Zone on 87th Street. It was a skating rink and on certain nights they'd turn it into a dance club. Leonard gave me a lot of my first opportunities to DJ at that club. He was incredibly creative, especially with creating music and doing tricks on the turntables. A lot of DJs were doing what's called "triples" where you can make something go by three times. Leonard was making "eights" - he could make something go by eight times. Before the Farley Jackmaster Funks of the world, there was Leonard Remix Rroy doing his remixes and his scratching. Just an incredible guy.

Another is Sherman "Shockin'" Oliver. He was another guy playing the Mendell circuit and doing the club parties. Another guy who for one reason or another stepped to the side and didn't get the recognition he deserved.

5 MAGAZINE: What we call "House" seems like a cyclical thing, like every generation finds it and makes it their own. You start with disco, then a few years later it's House, and then in the 1990s with Cajmere and his labels, the rave scene took off . . .

CHIP E.: I think you hit it there. Once the young people start getting into it - you know, Cajmere was a little bit younger than us. He was appropriate for the 1990s and he was right there. House Music is not something you can do in a vacuum. You've got to be right there. You've got to have your pulse beating in time with the pulse in the street.

It's time for the "Third Coming", if you will. It's time for somebody who's out in the clubs right now, who's there almost every night, who's feelin' it and knows what their peers are feelin' to step up and start making their own music, or maybe making their own videos or writing their own zine - who knows? But it's time for somebody to really bring it back to life again and resurrect it again.

5 MAGAZINE: One last thing: I noticed is that you don't appear on camera in The UnUsual Suspects, unless you're in the background somewhere that I missed. Was this on purpose?

CHIP E.: It was. I really made a conscious decision early on to divest myself from the film. I didn't want anyone early on to say, "This is Chip E.'s story." There are other people who try to tell the story of House Music and it's all first person. I didn't want it to be like that. I really wanted to step back and tell the story through other people's voices. Just like it says at the beginning of the movie: "There's three sides to every story. There's his side, her side, and the truth."

5 MAGAZINE: Do you think got the truth?

CHIP E.: I think we did. I think we absolutely got the truth. I'm just waiting for other people to bring out more truth and bring out more beats. Because I still like the music, I still like goin' out every now and then and gettin' my jack on, and I want to hear some new music!

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