RON HARDY!!!

D.j. Ron Hardy died in 1991. This is the sole reason he is not a star today. At the helm, as the resident d.j. at the legendary "Muzic Box" from 1983 to 1988, he laid the blueprint for the modern dance d.j.

He was at the crux of a sonic revolution. Something was changing, and he was the catalyst. Ron Hardy was a bold adventuer. Icon of the straight House nights of Chicago, Ron was a d.j. like some others are monk... it was everything for him, a sort of religion.

Mixing speedy electro with pitched up disco. He mixed edited disco-classics with acid tracks. Ron perfered to play his music faster. Due to his heroin habit, everything sounded slower to him. He would pitch it up to compensate.* Ever a friend to the bedroom producer, Ron would play anything if he liked it. Constantly searching for new ways to push the boundries of the music he played, one of his very close friends was heard to say that, "he almost never slept...He was mixing records all the time, and doing weird things with his turntables. There was about nothing in his appartment, but records, decks, and a bed..."and so it was.... for years since the 70's when he left for westcoast, the 80's when he came back to Chicago, until 91 when everything stopped.

Living a full on, hedonistic life took it's toll on our friend.Too much partying and sleepless nights slowly dimmed his light.
We are left with his musical legacy which survives in the form of the tapes of his sets, and the memories of his friends.

[Nicolas - 2002] {edited by Amir-2006!}

*(similar to the way another musical virtuoso of african decent, Charlie "bird" Parker would play fast to catch up with the sounds in his mind) In doing so, they both, in different generations, revoloutionized music..

Ron Hardy is the only man who can test Frankie Knuckles' status as the godfather of Chicago house music.
Though he left only one recording,("sensation",trax records) under his own name and left little evidence of his life, Hardy was the major name for Chicago dance music from the late '70s to the late-'80s. By 1974, he had already effected a continuous music mix with reel-to-reel machines plus a dual-turntable setup at the club Den One. Several years later, Hardy played with Knuckles at a club called the Warehouse and though he spent several years in Los Angeles, he later returned to Chicago to open his own club, the Music Box with owner Robert Williams. Williams was also the owner of the legendary "warehouse", said to be where the term "house" came to be.

While Knuckles was translating disco and the emerging house music to a gay, uptown audience at the Power Plant, Hardy's 72-hour mix sessions and flamboyant party lifestyle fit in well with the hedonistic southside, mostly staight audience at the Music Box. A roll-call of major Chicago producers including Marshall Jefferson, Larry Heard, Adonis, Phuture's DJ Pierre and Chip E all debuted their compositions by pressing up acetates or reel-to-reel copies for Hardy to play during the mid-'80s.
Lingering problems with heroin addiction forced him to leave the Music Box around 1988 and though he continued to DJ around the area, Hardy wasn't around when Chicago became house music's mecca later in the decade. He died in 1991.