The story about the seminal Chicago label: DANCE MANIA

Dance Mania has roots in Chicago’s soul scene. At the age of 25, Willie J. Barney opened a record store called Barney’s Swing Shop. In the early ’60s, he founded the distribution business Barney’s One Stop Records and opened a separate retail location on Chicago’s West Side. A “one-stop” distributor carried all of the major labels, which meant Barney’s employees would pick up product from the companies’ branches and deliver them to mom and pop stores throughout the area.

In 1980, after receiving a degree in business and accounting at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, Ray Barney took over management of the distribution side. Ray was 22 at the time. “We distributed music mostly in the Midwest,” he recalls. “But all over the United States. We distributed to independent retailers. We dealt mostly with major label music.”
minal Chicago label.

Artists were attracted to Dance Mania because Barney was fair with them. “I wanted people I dealt with to be successful,” he says. “I wasn’t trying to make all of the money. I wasn’t trying to take credit for everything.”
Since Dance Mania was not his primary business, Baney could take risks without worrying about an unsuccessful single taking down the label.

After a brief flirtation with hip-house between ’88 and ’90, Dance Mania’s sound began to shift. Releases by Robert Armani, DJ Rush and Traxmen all embraced a harder, faster techno aesthetic. Was this a conscious decision? “I wish I could take credit for it,” Barney says, “but I think it had more to do with me having trust in what people were bringing me was actually what was happening in the clubs and on the dance scene.”

A beginner’s guide to Dance Mania

The Dance Mania catalogue is enormous, but newcomers need not be intimidated. Here is a brief guide to key time periods and artists.

The classics (1986-1988)
The label’s early roster is a who’s who of house music innovators, from Marshall Jefferson as Hercules, to Farley Keith as The House Master Boyz & The Rude Boy Of House and Yellow House. Lil’ Louis’ “Video Clash” was a big hit, but “Frequency” and “How I Feel” are just as essential.

Acid and hip-house (1989-1990)
Few house/hip-hop crossovers have aged well, but some of the acid tracks from this period still sound current, with contributions from Gary “Jackmaster” Wallace, Vincent Floyd and Da Posse (incl. Hula & K. Fingers).

Trax (1991-1993)
After most other Chicago labels stopped releasing stripped-down rhythm tracks, Dance Mania made them its trademark, laying the groundwork for ghetto house with early releases by Robert Armani, DJ Rush, Glenn Underground and DJ Funk. Hidden gems include 3.2.6., Tim Harper, Victor Romeo as The Dance Kings and Rhythm II Rhythm.

Ghetto house (1994-1999)
This was the period when the label was most prolific and consistent. DJ Funk, DJ Deeon, DJ Slugo, DJ Milton, Jammin Gerald, Wax Master Maurice, Traxmen (incl. Eric Martin, Gant-Man and Paul Johnson), Drew Sky and Parris Mitchell were all regulars. Reissues may make it easier to collect them all.

Source: Dance Mania: Ghetto House’s Motown
Jacob Arnold

Detroit techno before Detroit techno, by Derrick May, Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson & Eddie Fowlkes

Between 1981 and 1988, electronic music worked its way little by little into the clubs and student nights of Detroit and the surrounding area. The shaping of the new techno sound was no smooth ride though, far from it. Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Eddie Fowlkes take Trax back to the formative years which saw the birth of techno.

Global Techno, the book serving as a reference for the genre in France, is a beautiful one.This article overlooks certain crucial moments in the creation of the music, and relates the messages of one of the founding trio, who excluded the fourth.Let’s return with Eddie Fowlkes, Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson to the origins of a genre which set the world dancing even now.

In early 80s Detroit, three friends – Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Eddie Fowlkes, the famous ‘Belleville Three’ – tune in to the radio show of a certain mister Mojo, who plays everything from Kraftwerk to Funkadelic to the B-52’s… And suddenly it clicks. Juan Atkins puts all these influences together to form Cybotron, then his own label Metroplex where he releases the song ‘Techno City’. It’s 1984 and the word techno makes its first appearance.

This is followed by the compilation Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit, released 1988 on Virgin, where England and soon Europe discover the work of the three chums. Techno was the music with a repetitive kick which the English, Belgians and Germans would go on to adopt and develop, each in their own style. The new generation lead off on a dance which has never stopped since.

In Detroit, Eddie Fowlkes and Derrick May become flatmates. Eddie works in the daytime and Derrick the night, and the Deep Space nights carry on. One evening, while Juan Atkins is DJing, Eddie passes out. Waking up, he has only one idea on his mind: he should make a record too.

‘One day, I said to Juan that I was ready. We finished with the song and he said to me: “Okay man, I’m going to make you a tape, mix and master it.” I asked him what mastering was, and he replied “it doesn’t matter!” After three weeks, Eddie starts to worry about his tape and Juan replies that he talked about it to Derrick, and that he too wants to make records. A while later Kevin Saunderson wanted to start as well. ‘We were all releasing records at the same time, on Metroplex’ Eddie concludes. ‘That was the start of it all. I was the trigger, after this epiphany that made me want to release a record. And guess what happened? Guess who my flatmate was?’

‘Eddie Fowlkes deserves just as much praise as Derrick and Kevin. He was there, he was there the whole time.’ -Juan Atkins

‘Goodbye Kiss’ was released in all its raw techno glory by Eddie Fowlkes in 1986. This was followed some months later by Kreem (the three others) and their release ‘Triangle of Love’. It was rather more soulful techno/house with a deliberate nod to New Order. Funny that the names of these records would foreshadow the future relationships between Eddie and the trio… But first Juan and Eddie leave again for Los Angeles to try to launch a label.

‘We went a year and a half before the first compilation even came out,’ Eddie recalls. ‘Egyptian Lover was waiting for us at the airport, we met NWA and Coolio… Juan was a favourite in every town in the United States with Cybotron because so many Latinos thought he was Mexican or Puerto Rican. But when they saw that he was black, all the black people got interested. People don’t realise quite how big Juan was in the US and the L.A. label made him a contract for all of his releases. We tried to meet up with Egyptian Lover again to force the record companies to give us a deal and a video.

Read More Source: TRAXMAG MAY. 2019
1981-1988: The true story of Techno in Detroit, by the pioneers