The Origins Of Deep House

Like many things in dance music, the origins of Deep House are not entirely clear. Although the concept of "Deep House" was used to market DJ International's roster of artists in 1988, it looks like Deep House didn't begin as a genre, or a marketing label either.

Deep House Origins In House Culture

House music was a culture before it was a genre. The culture grew from the interaction of multiple scenes in Chicago from the mid 1970s onwards. By the time the house music producers started releasing records in 1984, there was more than one house music scene. The youth scene had evolved from Herb Kent's new wave Punk Outs to embrace futuristic Italo disco. The gay culture had evolved from residential parties to The Warehouse, The Music Box and The Power Plant. These scenes were influencing each other and were being broadcast across South Side Chicago by WBMX radio. The word "deep" was originally an adjective within the culture, but not as a sub-genre.

If "deep" is an adjective then it can be applied to completely different genres of music without any contradiction, as long as the meaning of the adjective remains true. The change from slang in the culture into a genre occurred mainly in the 1990s, and was retrospectively applied to producers from the 1980s. The deepest house music from producers in the 1980s became the foundation of a genre in its own right. This changed the meaning of Deep House, but not completely.

In the same way that there's a house culture and a house genre, there's also a Deep House culture and a Deep House genre. These days, almost everyone referring to Deep House is referring to the genre but it's not incorrect to use the original meaning.

Early Years Of The House Genre

House music became a genre in 1984 when Chicago producers started releasing records made for the Chicago local scenes and clubs. When house became a genre instead of a DJ culture, this created a schism between the existing culture and the new genre. There were no subgenres of the house music genre when house first became a genre, but there were competing dancefloors, neighbourhoods, DJs, producers and aesthetics. This competition had aesthetics to differentiate between competing people and scenes. It's not surprising that people were recognising proto-genres with descriptions in the early days of house, because there were different scenes with different aesthetics. However, the genre and cultures are separate. There weren't even many house records released in 1984 and 1985, so it was pointless talking about sub-genres.

In the early days, the categories that may have existed in the culture didn't exist yet in the genre. Jesse Saunders was responsible for the majority of house music records released in 1984, and other producers joined mainly in 1985. The other producers in the early years were also mostly from the same scene that Jesse Saunders was from, and had similar aesthetics.

Larry Heard wasn't connected to any house music scene. He was making live music with bands, but was finding it frustrating dealing with the conflicts within a band. He decided to start making synth music on his own, and invested in a small set-up for doing this. He started making synth music without planning to join the first wave of house producers, because that was brand new at the time. He had friends who were interested in house music, who told him that some of his music sounded like house.

Larry Heard brought something new to house music simply because he wasn't from the same scene as other producers of the time, and he had his own unique sound. He pressed some acetates of the first tracks he had made, which included: The Mysteries Of Love, Can You Feel It and Washing Machine. This led to his first release, which was The Mysteries Of Love. This has retrospectively been crowned as a seminal Deep House record. The original version of this track was the instrumental version, which was later re-released on DJ International Records.

The Mysteries Of Love By Mr Fingers (1985)

Earliest Accounts Of "Deep House"

Ron Trent

Ron Trent shares some of his earliest memories of hearing the term "deep house" in this interview.

Ron Trent is from a second generation of kids experiencing house in the mid 1980s, when the scenes were quite well established. These teenagers in South Side Chicago had names for the different house music aesthetics. From details mentioned in this interview, it sounds like the era being described is around 1986. Deep house in those days referred to the house music from the gay scene that the teenagers weren't part of, due to being too young and also straight. The music he's talking about is the music from The Warehouse in the late 1970s, but from a perspective of the mid 1980s. Ron Trent says this is what was meant by deep house in the mid 1980s.

There were two main strands of the culture era of house, the gay scene that arguably predates The Warehouse in the form of loft parties, and the teen scene from Mendel (etc.) that also arguably predates The Warehouse in the form of Punk Outs and mobile DJ crews. In addition to the scenes, WBMX was broadcasting both scenes to everyone by the 1980s. Ron Trent calls the "deep" records from The Warehouse obscure, but that's not correct. There were also highly obscure Italo records on the teen scene, and the records from the gay scene are just from a previous era. However, they were obscure and mysterious for the South Side teen scene at the time, and therefore deep in the slang of that era.

An interesting tangent from the interview is that Ron Trent was introduced to Chez Damier by Carl Bias of Master C&J, who made some of the well known proto-deep house tracks from the mid 1980s. It's interesting that there's a personal generational connection between the first wave of proto-deep and the first wave of the codified Deep House genre.

Derrick Carter

Derrick Carter shares his memories of the origins of the term deep house in this interview.

Derrick Carter talks about the use of the term deep house in 1985. He says all house records in 1984-1985 were being called beat by people he knew at that time, and the older house culture from the gay scene was being called deep house. He doesn't mention the teen or preppie scene from the early culture era in the 1970s, which is another separate aesthetic from before the time he's describing. This acount is slightly earlier than Ron Trent's account but it tells a similar story of deep house meaning the disco-based sound of The Warehouse. Derrick Carter's perspective is similar to Ron Trent's, i.e. being too young to be part of the 1970s era of house culture and experiencing it as a myth from other people's accounts.

Derrick Carter's use of the term "beat" is different from how Frankie Knuckles and Jesse Saunders have used the term. They used the term to mean the done dry 808 drum tracks that started out in mixes by Jesse Saunders, Farley "Jackmaster" Funk and Ron Hardy. These "beat tracks" were also released as the B side tracks of "On And On Tracs" by Jesse Saunders, and became a foundational sub-genre of house via early Trax releases. These early minimalist releases led to minimalist genres such as acid house, ghetto house, minimal techno and dub techno. Although Derrick Carter is using the term "beat track" in a different way, both interpretations are probably correct because words can have multiple meanings.

D.J. International Records

DJ International was responsible for creating the idea of Deep House as a genre when they used it as a marketing label, and they brought the concept of Deep House to the world stage. Before DJ International's deep house releases, the term was an adjective referring to obscure older records from house culture.

It's probably no coincidence that DJ International chose to market Deep House in the same year that a "Deep Garage" compilation was released. DJ International Records marketed Deep House as a vehicle for what it thought house music should be. It wanted a more commercial form of house music than Acid House, and promoted Deep House as a highly polished vocal style of house music based on Frankie Knuckles. It was a vision that was similar to Garage.

This marketing strategy distanced DJ International from the raw sound of Trax Records and the first wave of Chicago producers. DJ International had a goal of branding house music as a form of R&B for mainstream radio. Commercial radio needs vocals, because otherwise the ads sound jarring to the listener. Vocal music has the effect of normalising ads in the context of radio entertainment. There was a belief by DJ International (and many people in the music industry) that house music had to be radio friendly to achieve commercial success. They were wrong. The first wave of commercial success in the UK was achieved via club DJs, and clubbing would dominate the commercial landscape of the 1990s.

Deep House Vol. One (1988)

In 1988 DJ International Records released "The Original House Sound Of Chicago: Deep House Vol. One" compilation with the following tracks on it:

A1. Joe Smooth - I Try
A2. Jerry McAllister – What I Do
A3. Sterling Void – Runaway Girl
A4. Peter Black – How Far I Go
A5. Tyree – Let's Get Together

B1. Paris – Learn To Love
B2. Frankie Knuckles – Only The Strong Survive
B3. Chip E – Get On Up
B4. Farley "Jackmaster" Funk with Full House – My House

Only The Strong Survive By Frankie Knuckles (1988)

This selection of tracks is consistent with how Ron Trent and Derrick Carter describe the use of the term "deep house" within house music culture around 1985. This might appear to make sense as a compilation but there's a logical problem. House music culture and the house genre are not the same.

On & On by Jesse Saunders is widely considered to be the first house record of the house music genre. This claim would not be on good grounds if you only consider the track On & On. It sounds like Italo Disco, so how is it house and not Italo. Fantasy by Z-Factor (a track that Jesse Saunders made at the same time) sounds even more like Italo.

The claim that "On And On Tracs" is the first house music record doesn't just rely on the track "On & On". What's indisputable is that the other "beat" tracks on the "On And On Tracs" EP are an innovation of house music. This characteristic of house being a DJ tool dominated the early Trax releases. Without this innovation, house music itself doesn't have a good claim to be different from New York Garage. The claim made by "Deep House Vol. One", to be the original sound of Chicago, weakens the claim that house is a genre at all.

Jackmaster 4 Compilation (1989)

Morgan Khan's Westside Records label was one of the first UK labels to license Chicago house music for the UK market. In 1989 Westside Records packaged a double album's worth of DJ International releases into Jackmaster 4, which was the first deep house edition of the Jackmaster series.

The Jackmaster 4 compilation had the following tracks on it:

A1. Keith Nunnally – Greed
A2. Full House – Magic Love
A3. Paris – Learn To Love
A4. Christian Alexander – Body & Spirit

B1. Peter Black – How Far I Go
B2. Blake Baxter – In This House We Jack
B3. Sterling Void – Serve It Up
B4. Rickey Dillard – Love Injection

C1. Chip E – Get On Up
C2. Julian 'Jumpin' Perez – Stand By Me
C3. Holly Jump – You Can't Hide
C4. Darryl Pandy & Hollywood – Can't You See

D1. Joe Smooth – I Try
D2. Jerry McAllister – Breathless
D3. Out Of Control – Get Down
D4. Frankie Knuckles – Over You

The track selection doesn't suggest what deep house would become, and it's still in line with the slang described by Ron Trent and Derrick Carter. Most of the strongest tracks on the album are very close to New York Garage. Some of the great garage-like tracks on this album are: Greed by Keith Nunnally, Learn To Love by Paris, How Far I Go by Peter Black and Over You by Frankie Knuckles.

Greed By Keith Nunnally (1989)

Although it might seem that DJ International had a vision of Deep House as a genre, they were using a concept from house culture. This is why I believe there wasn't really a clear idea of what Deep House means as a genre until the 1990s. It wasn't until the 1990s that Deep House started to mean something like the aesthetics that Larry Heard had defined in his earliest tracks from 1985. In the 1990s, the second and third generation of Chicago house producers began to make music based on the deep and moody aesthetics of 1985, and not deep knowledge of the deep roots of the 1970s.

There were a couple of tracks that are closer to what we would consider Deep House today, for exampe: Get On Up by Chip E and Serve It Up by Sterling Void.

Serve It Up (Instrumental) By Sterling Void (1988)

There were also some tracks on Jackmaster 4 that were pretty good jacking house.

Prototype Deep House In 1985

Although it wasn't called Deep House at the time, Larry Heard's early releases were highly influential on other producers. There were several releases in 1985 that had characteristics that we would now see as Deep House.

Music Is The Key (Basement Key) By J.M. Silk (1985)

Farley Knows House By Farley Jackmaster Funk (1985)

Deep House As A Grounded Genre

In the early 1990s, a second generation of Chicago producers redefined what Deep House means. Producers like Chez Damier, Ron Trent, Glenn Underground, Spencer Kincy and Boo Williams built on the foundations of moody 1980s house from Larry Heard, Marshall Jefferson, Harry Dennis and others. This 1990s interpretation became the accepted version of Deep House as a genre.

A New Beginning By Boo Williams (1994)

Although this era settled the confusion of the eclectic and commercialised DJ International compilations, there was yet more confusion created in the 1990s due to the crossover between house, techno and garage. The influence of house on techno in the 1980s has never been properly acknowledged, but by the 1990s the influence was going both ways. Similar music was also being made in Europe, e.g. dub techno from Basic Channel and Progressive House in the UK, e.g. Bandulu.

In the 1990s, you had Chicago producers using Detroit-like 4 operator FM synths to sound like a DX100. In the other direction, you had Kenny Larkin and Carl Craig being very influenced by Chicago, and especially Larry Heard. Nu Groove had been influenced by Chicago, and Masters At Work were making deep sounding roots Garage. There were now musical movements in Chicago, Detroit and New York all wanting to claim very similar music as their own, and Europe had a parallel evolution from its own traditions, e.g. Dub or Cosmic Disco. This meant there were a lot of similar sounding genres that emerged in the 1990s.

Serena X (Inner Zone Mix) By Yennek (1992)

The View From Britain

In the 1980s, Deep House was accepted as a genuine Chicago movement in the UK, but it didn't make a lot of sense to us. We'd had New York Garage in clubs since the early 1980s, and Street Sounds had been including Garage tracks for years before house became a genre. The early DJ International compilations had a very similar vision to the Paradise Garage, and this erased differences for people outside of Chicago.

In the UK, we did have a scene based on Larry Heard in the 1980s. It was called Ambient House. It was nothing to do with Deep House. The biggest band to come from the ambient house scene were The Orb, who soon moved well beyond it. Sun Rising by Beloved was a huge ambient house hit in 1989 and the first Baby Ford album has early examples of ambient house. Some of the British ambient house did anticipate innovations by 1990s deep house producers, but we didn't see any connection to deep house.

The Sun Rising (Deeply Satisfying) By Beloved (1989)

In the 1990s, the UK settled on the term Progressive House to cover a range of styles, including Deep House adjacent music. Although the UK settled on the term Progressive House, "Dub House Disco" was also used in the early days of prog, and that's a very similar concept to Deep House.

Deep Italo

At the same time as the British were inspired by Larry Heard to make ambient house, there was also a deep Italian sound, which was one of the biggest sounds of 1989. Italy did already have a deep sound going back to at least Cosmic Disco, if not earlier.

Sueño Latino (Dub Version By Cutmaster-G) By Sueño Latino Featuring Carolina Damas (1989)

Deep House Today

It's still OK to ask if "Deep House" means Larry Heard's atmospheric synth pads, or if it means a jazzy Garage dub, or if it means the legacy of the Warehouse. It really means all of these things and that's OK. Everyone is free to interpret the history any way they prefer, as long as the history is truthful. House music was able to synthesize something new from existing musical ideas, and that's much more healthy than endlessly splitting a genre into subgenres. Forcing deep house into a single definition breaks the logic of how deep house has been used over the years. As with many genres, deep house is best understood by understanding its history, and that includes all of its contradictions.