Some 40 years on from its original release, Marshall Jefferson‘s pioneering Move Your Body has been remixed by Dutch DJ and producer Jengi, and is now available exclusively on Amazon Music.
To coincide with the release, Jefferson has revealed how the fabled ‘house music anthem’ came together – a track borne out of ‘graveyard shift’ contemplation, Elton John’s Bennie and the Jets, and the nuances of the Yamaha QX1 sequencer.
Over to you, Marshall.
“Forty years ago, we made a record that changed a lot more than the dance floor. Move Your Body was born out of a simple idea, to bring people together through rhythm, energy and a love of music.
“I first thought of Move Your Body while I was working at the post office typing on ZMT machines. You would type in the numbers all night long. I was working the graveyard shift, which was midnight to 8:30am every morning. So, on one of these nights, when my mind was wandering, I conceived Move Your Body. The next priority was getting home before I forgot it!
“It was the first house song to have piano as a lead instrument. I was big on rock and roll. I wanted to have a lead instrument like fuzz guitar did for rock. That piano that Elton John played on Bennie and the Jets inspired me. I said, ‘Oh, I had to do some piano for house. But it’s got to be banging, right?’ So that was the inspiration for the piano.
“My creative process was recording at a slower speed, which back then was about 40 to 60 beats per minute. And when I played it back, I would play it back at 120 and higher. It made me sound like an awesome musician, even though I didn’t have any training or anything like that. I wasn’t an awesome musician. But technology enabled me to make music.
“If you speed up anything from 40 to 120, you won’t hear any notes. The Yamaha QX1 sequencer that I was using had a note-lengthening feature, where you could blanket-lengthen every note on a track. So, after a few times, I knew exactly how much to lengthen each note to make it sound human and natural.
“Curtis McClain wrote the words in about 40 seconds: ‘Gotta have house music… with that house music.’ One verse, boom, knocked out. Did the background vocals. Done. Done.
“That was it. It was recorded. I couldn’t wait to let everybody hear it because it was a jam.
“So the first place I went was Sheba Baby. That was a club where Mike Dunn, Hugo Hutchinson and Tyree Cooper were DJs. I brought them Move Your Body. They said, ‘Oh, that’s nice.’ I said, ‘I thought it was more banging than that?’ So I took the tape, made them a copy, and went down to the Music Box.
“Outside the Music Box was Joe Smooth and K-Alexi and some more of my friends. I played it on my car’s sound system, and I was waiting for the wild reaction, but I didn’t get it. They said, ‘Oh, that’s nice’. I said, ‘Man, what’s up? I thought this was a cut, right?’
“So I brought it to Ron Hardy at the Music Box. He listened to it, played it six times in a row, and the crowd went mental. I said, ‘Yeah, that’s what I was expecting!’ And the rest is history.”
Check out Move Your Body (Jengi Remix) here.
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