When the news broke earlier today (April 1) that Frankie Knuckles had died, part of me hoped that it was one of those poor-taste hoaxes or even a very bad April Fool's joke. Sadly it wasn't either of those, as the news was confirmed by Frankie's long-time business partner Frederick Dunson, who said that he had "died unexpectedly this afternoon at home".
While the name Frankie Knuckles may not mean much to some people, it means a whole lot more to a multitude of others around the world. He was a DJ, music producer/remixer, Grammy Award-winner and house music pioneer. But more than that, he was a genuinely nice man and it is not every day that you meet a man like him.
He did not simply play records; he was an evangelist, preaching the virtues of house music to the assembled masses from his DJ console pulpit. He was the DJ that other DJs aspired to be; a man with hits such as Your Love and Tears, who helped to make house music the dominant music of his time.
We first met in the Nineties, in Ibiza I think, at a time when the house music scene was once again in its ascendancy. He was the "Godfather of House", the man who had worked with the pop royalty that is Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson. Yet he was extrememly down to earth; there was no Don Corleone-style presence, no big entourage, just Frankie Knuckles.
And over the years nothing really changed. No matter where we saw each other, whether it was in Ibiza or a fleeting meeting at the Winter Music Conference in Miami, Frankie always greeted you with a big smile. And his infectiously warm demeanour spread to everyone he met or was listening to his music.
This all began in the early Seventies when Frankie was being mentored in the arts of DJing by Larry Levan in New York and continued through to his parties in Chicago and then around the world. If you think this is not the case for you, just think of Michael Jackson's You Are Not Alone and even Pet Shop Boys' Left To My Own Devices and Depeche Mode's Wrong; Frankie remixed or produced them all. Even The Source's remix of Candi Staton's You Got the Love, sung most recently by Florence + the Machine, began life as the backing track for Frankie's song Your Love.
All of this work led to him winning a Grammy Award as well as having August 25 declared Frankie Knuckles Day in Chicago in 2004, thanks to the then-senator Barack Obama.
Not bad for someone who created house music by programming "different break beats and using them as segues between songs" to create, in his words, "my own little piece of heaven".
Despite global success, Frankie remained Frankie and was loved for it. Radio 1 DJ Pete Tong sums it up best, paying tribute on Twitter, with the words: "RIP gentleman, genius, groundbreaker, inspiration. Blessed to have worked with you."
READ: Frankie Knuckles: obituary
