Chip E and house music go hand in hand – not only was the Chicago producer the first to put the words ‘jack’ and ‘house’ down on wax (on 1985’s Jack Trax EP), he also followed that up with tracks that helped define the nascent genre, including Like This and If You Only Knew, as well as helping to produce Frankie Knuckles‘ first record.
In recent years, Chip E has been balancing DJing and production (including a 2018 collaboration with Carl Cox) with post-production duties in the film industry, and while his releases are more sporadic these days, when they emerge, they’re powerful – his recent release on Jack Said What, Work That Body, alongside Missy, blends the classic house sound he helped forge with a modern edge.
909originals caught up with Chip E to chat about the origins of house music, and why the genre continues to inspire, four decades on.
I guess to start, let’s talk about the new release, Work That Body, which was recently released on Jack Said What. Obviously you’re in Chicago, and Steve [Mac, of Jack Said What] is in Brighton, so how did this all come together?
Basically, it was a combination of things. I was very fortunate to have been offered the chance to remix the label’s namesake song, Jack Said What. That was the beginning of our business relationship.
I’d known Carl Loben [Jack Said What co-conspirator] for quite some time, from DJ Mag, and after we did that remix, they asked, ‘Hey, you got anything you want to shoot us?’ and I had just finished up a tune with Missy. I’ve known Missy for about a decade, but this was our first release together.
She works a lot with Gettoblaster. They had a big release, H-O-U-S-E, and that charted number one on both Beatport and Traxsource. We had been talking about doing a collaboration, and it just came together. We were like, ‘Yeah, let’s make this work.’
Yeah, the Jack Said What lads are a great bunch of guys. Have you met Irvine Welsh?
I’ve not.
Oh, you’d remember if you met him, ha ha. Back to the release, it sounds like it could have been made, 30 or 40 years ago. I mean, to you, is there kind of a trademark sound or a feeling that you try to bring into your productions? Because, obviously, Work That Body has the acid riff going on, and it’s simple in its structure and stuff like that— simple but effective. Is there a Chip E trademark, would you say?
Oh yeah, the Chip E trademark definitely is minimalism. I try not to overproduce. I’ve always wanted to get to the rawness of what’s needed for the dancefloor. So I’ll use a little 808, maybe feather in a little 909, get a driving bassline, and then a hooky vocal. And that’s what it is. Minimal is not trying to overproduce anything.
I’m not going for an EDM, big room sound. I try to stay away from that intentionally. I prefer to just stay underground.
You know, I think a lot of the big room songs are they’re a flash in the pan. They’re here for now and then they’re gone. But with tracks like Time to Jack, It’s House, Like This, and now this tune, I think they’re gonna stay. They’re gonna have a presence, and they’re gonna maintain that presence.
Maybe it’s a generational thing, but obviously with your re-releases and the thing you did with Carl Cox, there is an appreciation for that simplicity again among certain people. I mean, obviously, there are these huge EDM festivals and stuff like that, but certainly among a lot of kids, or maybe those in their early 20s, they appreciate the simplicity of it.
Absolutely. You know, the simple never gets old. It’s just like an apparel classic. You can go with the new trendy stuff, and it’s going to be in and out. But get a good set of loafers, and you can wear them forever.
I like to think that that’s what my music is—it’s a good set of loafers… or a good set of trainers, so you can get down and jack.
You’re like the Adidas Gazelle of music, ha ha. This year, you’ve been doing a few gigs as part of these House Music Over the years I have talked to lots of different producers, including some of your contemporaries like Steve Silk Hurley and Marshall Jefferson. There’s kind of a question mark around it—is 1984 the year, or is it just one of many years? Does that timeline fit for you?
I’m going to be completely honest—a lot of it is revisionist history.
People try to jump in and say, ‘Oh, well, I was in Chicago, and I made a record, and it’s a house record,’ but the reality is the first true house record really was the Jack Trax EP with It’s House and Time to Jack. There were records from Chicago that came out before then, but they weren’t trying to establish a new genre.
Let me give you a little background on this. I come from an advertising and marketing household, as well as a tinkering household. My father was an electrician, an electrical engineer.
My mother was a copywriter, and she’s worked in advertising for as long as I can remember. At the onset of her career, she worked for Leo Burnett, one of the largest advertising agencies in the world. So I’ve always been around advertising, marketing, and gadgets.
In high school, I started DJing. DJing in high school meant having the newest music or a combination of classics that nobody could find. It came to a point where, back then, there were only maybe two or three records coming out a week, sometimes, you know, maybe five or ten a month. So we got to a point where we started experimenting with drum machines and simple Casio keyboards.
In my junior year, I actually started working at Imports, Etc. [legendary record store on Chicago’s], which was one of the biggest dance music record stores. It was called Imports, Etc. because it specialised in imports. There were a lot of Italian imports coming in, a few German, and some Dutch imports as well.
Mix Your Own Stars was one of those – a Dutch export. It was a rhythm track, and that was definitely energising to the dance music community in Chicago.
It kind of made itself a staple. A particular track on there was called One Nineteen, which was named that because it was just a beat track that was 119 beats per minute.
Who made that? Was it like a mystery Dutch producer or something?
It’s just this kind of famous piece of vinyl. We have no idea who made it. I should probably talk to Paul Funk and see if he’s ever tracked them down. That’s my guy in the Netherlands.
By the time I graduated high school, I was working full-time at Imports, Etc. So, I’m working full-time while going to school at Columbia College, studying music theory as well as marketing and advertising.
In my marketing class, I started learning how you actually market products to people, and I was telling them about my DJing. It was in my marketing class that I said, ‘I’m gonna make this new music, and I’m gonna call it house music.’
I did that in 1984, and I started recording some tracks, but we didn’t get on vinyl until 1985. So in 1985, with Jack Trax, that was the first time you saw a label that said ‘House Records.’ That was the first time that you heard a song that said ‘house’ in it. That was the first time it had ‘jack’ in a record.
The other contender—the reason that, again, this is revisionist history—the reason they’re trying to call 1984 the beginning of house is because Jesse Saunders and Vince Lawrence put this record called On and On out at that time.
But here’s the reason why that can’t be a contender: one, they weren’t intentionally trying to do anything other than copy an existing record. They were trying to copy a record called On and On by a Florida group called Mach.
If you look that up on YouTube and play them next to each other, you’ll see that Mach’s version is actually superior. You can’t create a new genre of music by copying an existing record in an existing genre!
Also, it wasn’t until around 1987 that they began their revisionist history after their other attempts at music had failed, such as On and On. Nobody played it. You’d be hard-pressed to find it on any mixtapes from the era or even today.
After that, they copied Steve Hurley’s I Can’t Turn Around and made that Love Can’t Turn Around, and they had international success with that. That’s when they decided, ‘Oh yeah, the first record we copied, that was house too.’
I don’t know if you know Justin Robertson; he’s a Manchester-based DJ and producer, who used to play at the Hacienda venue in Manchester. He was saying that in the years leading up to the real breakthrough of house music, there were all these different sounds—there was kind of disco, boogie, and this kind of electronic stuff. It’s a bit like that with the origins of Chicago house. I wanted to touch on something you said, though, you know, about ‘I want to call this stuff house music.’ Because obviously, there’s this whole legend around its name being derived from the Warehouse, but it wasn’t really played in the Warehouse. I mean, if you’re the guy who said, ‘Okay, I’m gonna make a house record,’ were you going to the Warehouse? Were you kind of influenced by the Warehouse?
I was very young. I made it to the Warehouse once before they closed, and I was really too young to be in there at the time. But the Warehouse created what we call the ‘house culture’.
The Warehouse was owned by Frankie Knuckles and Robert Williams. Robert Williams was the original owner, and Frankie was the second or third DJ, because I think Robert started off. The actual name of the venue was U.S. Studios, however, because it was in a warehouse space, it was nicknamed the Warehouse.
So the way this whole etymology goes is it was called the Warehouse, and then for short, they called it the House, okay? Everything gets shortened in Chicago. So out of that came the concept of ‘house culture,’ okay? Back then, though, when they referred to Warehouse music, they were talking about the R&B and disco music that Frankie played during that era. They were not talking about electronic dance music.
So, when I was working at Imports, Etc., I was the youngest there, which means I got the grunt tasks, and part of my job was to create signage for the records – things like ‘as heard at the Warehouse.’
I shortened it to ‘as heard at the House,’ and then eventually we just kind of had a ‘house music’ section. But in ’83 and ’84, that house music section was primarily Philly classics—Philly disco, and things like that—some New York-based disco as well.
I knew that that term, because of the house culture, resonated with people. I mean, kids would come in and they’d see the ‘house’ section, and they’d look over there first and see what was in there. There’d be things like, you know, Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder—you know, a lot of your classic disco.
So again, when I went into my marketing class, I said, ‘I’ve got a term that I know people are gonna gravitate towards,’ and that term is ‘house.’ And so that’s why—I don’t know how I can make it any more intentional—that’s why my first record was called It’s House.
And all the lyrics reflect that—‘It’s house. It’s house. It’s house.’ It was not an accident.
You were DJing, as you mentioned, and then you got into production. Obviously, you were a young guy at the time; you were busy working in the record store. I mean, was that a difficult segue? When you went into production, was it a difficult transition? You mentioned you were doing music theory, so maybe it was easier for you?
Back in 1983, I was working at Imports. The guys there looked out for me; when they bought estate collections, they’d say, ‘Oh Chip, you gotta have this record. You gotta buy this one before we put it out on the floor,’. One of those records was Donna McGhee’s Make It Last Forever.
One day this woman came in—she had just finished a tour of Japan—and she was looking for that record. She said, ‘I need that record!’ They’re like, ‘Sorry, the last copy we got went to this guy Chip.’
Then she comes to me and goes, ‘I gotta have that record. Look, I got this Pioneer 909 reel-to-reel machine I just picked up in Japan. I’ll trade you this reel-to-reel for that record.’
I’m like, ‘Okay. I’ll tell you what: let me record the record to the reel-to-reel first. I’ll have a nice high-fidelity copy I can play, and then it’s yours.’
Once I had that reel-to-reel, it opened up a new world because I had a splicing block and a wax pen, so I could actually do my own remixes and edits, which was really novel because if you didn’t have access to reel-to-reel, you were trying to do what we call ‘pause button edits’ on a cassette tape.
You had two cassette tapes that were daisy-chained. You play the parts you want, you’re recording, and you try to do a loop, but it was never spot on.
So with the reel-to-reel, I could make absolutely perfect edits and remixes. One of the first ones I did was a remix of Love Thang by First Choice.
I extended the intro and extended the breaks, and because of my relationships through the store, I was able to hand it off to Frankie Knuckles. I was able to hand it off to Ron Hardy, and then they were playing my remix, which kind of established me as a remixer/producer, sort of.
From there, I started getting more kit. Eventually, I got a little drum machine, then more drum machines and more keyboards, and with me studying music theory, it just all came into play.
I’m just imagining, when you’re talking about the reel-to-reel and something like the track Like This – were you literally slicing up these tiny little bits of tape?
Initially, I did the vocal for Like This, but in the end, I actually sampled Frankie one day when he was in the studio. He was cool with it.
Like This was my second major production, I’d say. By that time, I’d gone from the 808 to the 909. It was definitely one of the earlier 909 productions, and many people didn’t know how to utilise the 909 to its full potential.
There was a rim shot trigger on the 909, so I was able to connect that trigger to a Boss sampling pedal, which only had about one second of sample time.
If you listen back now to Like This, you’ll notice that the rim shot is the same exact pattern as the vocal.
And you can do a lot with one second! I remember when I was talking to Steve Hurley, he said that everyone back then was kind of producing everyone else’s stuff to a certain degree. Someone would come over with a different piece of equipment, and they’d just record together, and it would turn out to be this track that then gets released. Were any of your tracks a mix of different combinations of friends and their equipment?
Yeah. Initially, my co-producer on Jack Trax was Kurt Landrum. He was mysteriously murdered sometime in the early ’90s; it’s still an open case.
Kurt and I were students at Columbia, and we went to rival high schools, but by the time we got to college, we were great friends. We believed in each other, and we sold our turntables so that we could get studio time.
These were the coveted SL 1200s, you know, mark twos. Nobody started with them; we started with belt-drive turntables, the cheapest available. But anyway, we had to sell the SL 1200s, and that afforded us some studio time in an 8-track/16-track studio in the suburbs.
At the time, we only had the Boss sampler, but there was this new sampler out, which was, I think, still in prototype, the Mirage by Ensoniq, My friend – and a customer at the store – Joe Smooth – had this prototype. I don’t know how he got it; I still need to ask him about that.
I knew it, and I said, ‘Joe, I got this studio session going; would you mind coming in?’ Then there was a colleague of Steve Hurley’s – Eric E.T. Taylor. Eric was a great DJ. I thought, ‘he really knows the dance floor’, so I wanted to have him in the session as well. Kurt and I laid out all the drums, and we pretty much had all the bass lines and everything ready.
When we were in the studio, This House just came together. Then we went on to do something longer than a one-second sample, Time to Jack. That’s where the Ensoniq Mirage came into play.
I tried to say the lyrics for the track – “time to jack” – but I was barely out of puberty. I was 18 at the time, and my voice just didn’t have the gusto to it.
Joe was a few years older, so we said, ‘Joe, can you say the line?’ He was like, ‘Okay, time to jack,’ but we still had to pitch him down an octave. That’s where we got the Time to Jack.
Did you return the favour then, Chip? Did you end up doing the drums on Promised Land or anything like that?
I ended up doing a lot of drum programming for DJ International, which Joe eventually became integral to. However, we only created one other tune together.
It was by a group called Auto Bahn, consisting of me, Rocky Jones, and Joe Smooth. It was kind of just one of those experimental things.
By that time, we were in a 24-track, state-of-the-art studio called Chicago Tracks. It even had a big garage door through which you could bring in instruments or whatnot. I brought in my motorcycle. We sampled some sounds off my motorcycle, and we ran a microphone out to the back to sample different car sounds, like the engine revving and the seatbelt clicking for, you know, claps and snares and such. We just went to town.
We had a reporter from, I think, ID Magazine; I can’t remember her name. We asked her, “Can you say, ‘Do you like this beat?’ with an English accent?” That became the basis for the track, and then we kind of rapped over it. You can find it on YouTube; it’s a pretty interesting song.
Would that have been Sheryl Garrett, by any chance? I know she did an article for The Face around that time?
Yeah, I think it was. I still think the track is ahead of its time. Seek it out on YouTube.
When did you learn that what you were doing with house music wasn’t just localised in Chicago? House music at the time was branching out all around the world. When did that kind of hit home for you guys?
I think it was mid-’85 when I started getting offers for gigs in New York, New Jersey, Miami, and LA. Then, later towards the end of ’85, that was my first trip to London—my first trip abroad.
I’m trying to remember the venue where we played… the Hippodrome, that was it. It was a mad time. That was when I was like, “Wow, this is not just a Chicago thing. It’s not just a U.S. thing.” People love this feeling, and they love this beat.
It must have been very invigorating to hear that because there was an element, at the start anyway, a few years previously, where you were kind of making it up as you went along. And now it’s a phenomenon. It’s very raw, and it suddenly takes over the world.
If you look at the interview I did at the time, the journalist asks, “Well, how long do you think this lasts?” I’d say, “I think it’s going to go for at least 20 years.”
That was more optimistic than most of them, to be honest…
If you can track down that interview, you’ll see it’s in there. Also to the question ‘How do you explain house music?’, I said ‘house music is music that’s made for dancing and doing what you’d rather do lying down, but you’re doing it standing up’.
Do you still have the old 808 and 909 that you were making these early tracks on?
Unfortunately not. The 808 was actually borrowed. It was borrowed from Vince Lawrence; he was very kind to loan that out. The 909 was mine. Unfortunately, I sold that to Adonis.
I had an Alesis sampler. It was a multi-track sampler, and I thought, “Well, I’ll just sample all the instruments, and I’ll be sorted. You know, I can just sell this and convert it into money.”
This is like the story with the record and the reel-to-reel, right? It’s the same thing.
Yeah, exactly. But I regret selling the 909 a lot more. I don’t regret selling the record because I ended up getting another copy and actually meeting Donna McGhee, having her autograph it. So, I have my Make It Last Forever, but I miss my 909.
When I got my 909, it was in 1984, I think. Somebody had purchased it and didn’t really know how to use it, and I think I may have gotten that for 300 dollars.
That’s the story that most people tell: “I picked it up at a yard sale or in an electronics store, and nobody knew what it was.” You know, they were just like, “Oh, you can have it for whatever— a couple of hundred dollars or something,” you know?
And now it’s worth something like six thousand dollars, if you can find one.
I wanted to touch upon the movie industry briefly because I know that’s a big passion of yours. Did the writer’s strike affect you much? How is everything going on that front, the movie side?
It’s just like my buddy, Man Parrish; we gravitated towards film. I do some film editing, some VFX supervision, but mostly I do post-production supervision. I’m kind of like a project manager in the film industry, making sure that the project is high quality, on time, and on budget.
The writers’ strike did set us back a little bit. What’s happening now is that a lot of people are concerned about AI.
The way I tell people to look at AI is: ‘When the winds of change come, ordinary people will shutter their doors and windows, but extraordinary people will make windmills.’
And that’s what I’m doing. I’m looking at AI as a tool for how it can help me. So, we’re really investing a lot into AI. I even have a song I wrote, which I had Google translate into Spanish, and then I found a Spanish AI voice to sing it.
Okay. Are you sure it’s accurate? It’s not asking for directions to a hotel or something?
Oh, yeah, I’m sure. I’ve had it checked out by a lot of my Latin friends. It’s called Mi Caja, which is Spanish for “my box.” It’s a very sexual song.
I guess for someone who’s been in the house music game for so long, what is the state of house music in 2024? Is it in a good place? Would you like to see more of something or less of anything?
For myself personally, I’m very happy with the way things are going because I have stuck to my demographic, which is about 17 to 40. I’m a little bit older than 40, but my demographic—the people that I play for—are people aged 17 to 40… or people who still feel like they’re 40. People who still party like they’re 40.
I’d like to see people playing more new music. I see too many of my contemporaries continuing to play disco. Disco music was new when we started, but now it’s 40 years in the past.
Could you imagine in 1984 if we were playing 40-year-old music? We would have been playing big band music from the 40s. That’s just not forward-thinking. So, I’d like to see Chicago get away from disco and start gravitating toward the great new music out there, like what Carl and Steve are doing on Jack Said What—it’s so good.
There’s so much good music out there, and I just hate it when I go to a Chicago party and hear all this old stuff. As I always say, good DJs play music you like; great DJs introduce you to music that you will love.
Thanks Chip E for the conversation. Keep up to date with his latest releases and tour dates here.
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