Walter Gibbons

Turntablism from Kingston to Manhattan: technique and innovation behind the decks

New York, 1974; the aerial view reveals the symptoms of economic decline – the city seethes with filth and civic decay, prostitution is everywhere, crime is on the rise, and women clutch their handbags tight if they cross paths with a Black man on the sidewalk. But nightlife is a hive of sounds and situations, populated by everyone who has to invent a way to scrape by – Black people, sure, but also Latinos, gay men, musicians, designers, hippies, junkies and perverts, so many little communities of outcasts chasing each other like stray cats through the seediest bars, on fire escapes and among the trash cans. Everyone knows that at 256 West 23rd Street in Manhattan there's the Galaxy 21, a club that only opens its doors at 4:40 in the morning, an impossible hour that indirectly acts as a door policy in itself. More than just a club, in fact, the Galaxy 21 is a spatial experience, as its name suggests, a receptacle for aesthetes and sleepless souls. But above all, this is the meeting point for all those disc jockeys who, once their shifts at their respective clubs are over, come here to wait for the sun with the most original attraction in town: a shy white kid named Walter Gibbons, "the dj's dj."

In the beginning there was Jamaica, of course; amid shantytowns, palm groves, drums and clouds of marijuana, sound systems are a founding part of local culture, and the architects of that soundtrack – Lee "Scratch" Perry chief among them – use the turntable not just as a machine for playing vinyl, but as an instrument in its own right, capable of slowing down, rewinding, distorting and stripping the sound from the speakers, twisting the warmth of reggae into its more spectral, psychedelic counterpart, dub – a technique later brought into the studio to create further (re)mixes. Born in Kingston itself but raised in the Bronx, Clive Campbell, aka Dj Kool Herc, is among the first in those years to experiment with so-called turntablism on American funk, soul and r&b records, but also on the European electronics of Kraftwerk; together with Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa, the foundations of what is now commonly called hip-hop are being laid.

Walter arrives at the same intuitions, but as a good homosexual man born in Brooklyn with a knack for collecting (he already owns a shelf with over 1,500 jealously guarded singles), he's drawn to the next hip-shaking craze on the horizon: disco music. The difference is that Walter practices turntablism live with unheard-of precision, to the point that many believe he's playing an original track – and those who already know the song in question are left stunned by this unprecedented "doping" of rhythm and structure. Rich Flores, Walter's roommate, whom he met at a gay rights demonstration in the early 1970s and who was already a sound engineer on the New York scene, recalls:

[…] he had two copies of 'Hot Pants' by Bobby Byrd and he'd stretch out the intro using a pair of headphones and the fader, he could keep it going as long as he wanted, it came really easily to him

That's why everyone stays up until dawn at the Galaxy 21, from Nicky Siano and Larry Levan to François Kevorkian, Tommy Smith and John "Jellybean" Benitez. Hidden behind the decks in the half-darkness of the club, Walter moves by ear after memorizing every section of the track, runs one turntable, then stops it and starts the other, mixes and strips the verse at will, cuts and splices depending on his mood. The trick lies in finding the exact rhythmic insert he's after – the so-called break – so he can short-circuit it and build tension in the room before letting the chorus explode over the crowd.

Between a quick hand, a trained ear and an omnivorous taste for all things beat – drum solos, conga rhythm cells, shakers, brushes, triangles and drums – Walter isn't someone who just "plays records"; his creativity leads him to tear apart the most unlikely tracks to surprise the crowd with ever new tricks. According to journalist Peter Shapiro, the most abstract and danceable outcome of turntablism in those years was called jungle music.

Sure, there are other notable spinners in town, like Francis Grasso, John Luongo and above all David Mancuso, probably still among the best known today; Walter himself favors the style of Richie Kazcor, but especially that of David Todd, whom he considers among the best around for his ability to keep a track alive without ever stopping. But Mark Zimmer, another dj of the era, recalls:

Walter was incredible […] he worked with these tracks that were so short, three minutes at most, but he'd honed the technique down to the finest detail. It was magnificent to watch him […]

On the market: the original disco fever that comes from the underground

Walter is also a fussy, ambitious little character, more interested in dreaming up the next mix than in listening to the crowd's requests. To make his work at the decks easier, and at the same time jealously guard his own ideas, since "discovering" a record is a great source of pride, he starts frequenting the Angel Sound Studios to use the reel to reel – an expensive tape machine from which he can isolate and copy the breaks he's interested in. It's thanks to this constant search for innovation and material that, toward the end of 1975, Walter arrives at the doors of Salsoul, an independent label specializing in funk, soul and soon disco. Co-director Ken Cayre is impressed by the young dj's technique, but above all by the way the night crowd responds to his sets: there's something electric in the air that absolutely must be captured.

Here is born a little piece of American dance music history that everyone should know; Walter is tasked with reworking “Ten Percent”, a track by the funk–soul group Double Exposure, and turns it into an epic of nearly ten minutes, abandoning the 7” single format to spread across an entire side of a 12”, which offers more space and better sound quality. Amid wah-wah guitars and swirling violins, with that famous instrumental break that dries out over the hi-hats, revealing the primordial skeleton of the house and techno still to come, the track is pulsating and futuristic, its structure gripping and progressive without needing any new arrangements. In theory it's the same tape, but in practice the track has gained an irresistible nervous energy, as rough and vibrant as the New York of those years.

Success on the dancefloor is immediate, and at Salsoul they realize the track isn't just a curiosity for insiders – there are potential listeners out there who have no interest in the original album. In May 1976, “Ten Percent (12” Mix)” hits the market as a standalone product – it's the first commercially available remix in America. Sales double those of the original single; the track's writer, Allan Felder, says he's puzzled by the whole operation, but the floodgates are open: the history of the remix has taken off at full speed, and Walter Gibbons is one of its pioneers, as important as he is visionary.

Compiled in 2010 by Quinton Scott for Strut Records, “Jungle Music (Mixed With Love: Essential & Unreleased Remixes 1976-1986)” offers a precious overview of Walter's “roaring” years, showing the synergy between tape and dancefloor that is forging a new way of understanding both the recording studio and the record market.

Even more thrilling is “Sun… Sun… Sun… (Original 12” Edit)”, a track originally recorded by the little-known gospel group Jakki. Here Walter takes every liberty, transforming a tight three-minute composition in the style of the Jackson Five into a rollercoaster of leaps and twists – the fading echo of voices against the bare-boned beat, the spacey synth solo, the relentless drums, all torn apart and reassembled with a tribal flair we might call proto-house. And that's not to mention “Get Up On Your Feet (Keep On Dancin’) Mix” by TC James & The Fist O’Funk Orchestra, which this time runs past eleven minutes – more than a remix, it's a lavish space disco digression to be savored on the fluorescent tiles of a pearly moon club. It's also impossible not to mention the renewed fondness for big bands – after all, Salsoul has its own Orchestra; Walter carves out the skeleton of “Magic Bird Of Fire” with basslines and bells, bringing to the floor a more complex instrumental piece whose tones, at times, feel closer to the work of Prokofiev and Mussorgsky.

Could female voices ever be missing? Sandy Mercer's “You Are My Love (12” Version)” is a mini-masterpiece of tension building and release, curious because the original material is a romantic, melodic song skillfully dismantled to work on the floor at six in the morning. With the eleven minutes of “Doin’ The Best That I Can (12” Mix)”, Walter once again proves virtuosic and ambitious, though this time the voice of a phenomenal Bettye Lavette alone is worth the price of admission. But “Jungle Music” also offers an unreleased gem, dug up from the archives for the occasion: “It’s A Better Than Good Time (Acetate Mix)”, skillfully balanced between the rich voice of Gladys Knight and a rhythmic synthesis that isolates the horns and distorts the hi-hats as if they were copper brushes scraping a bronze pan – the result offers melodic breathing room while at the same time building a peculiar nervous energy that, sped up, we might well call techno.

If it's true that Walter will never be the most famous, nor the industry's favorite – Tom Moulton will have far more success, having already in 1975 stitched together the entire A-side of Gloria Gaynor's “Never Can Say Goodbye” into a single suite, not to mention Frankie Knuckles at Chicago's Warehouse – his contribution remains visionary. In 1979, another record to hang on the wall: Salsoul releases “Disco Madness”, an album containing eight of Walter's reworkings – the first remix album in American history. Not bad for a skinny, mustached, gay little guy who barely talks to anyone.

Side B: from the fragments bloom the flowers

One cannot talk about disco without recalling its massive commercial saturation across the West during 1977-78; from an underground expression created by gay, Black and Latino communities, the formula quickly became an all-encompassing, inevitably watered-down cultural phenomenon – there's a world of difference between “Saturday Night Fever”, Chic and Donna Summer, and something like “Disco Duck”. Walter himself, incidentally, already despises Studio 54, “the most famous club in the world”, because the parade of Hollywood stars photographed there every night is merely a symptom of classism and celebrity culture, far removed from the communal spirit from which it all began. This is partly why the Disco Demolition Night of July 12, 1979 is as devastating as it is prophetic; of course, in a broader, international sense, disco will never truly die, reinventing itself through new forms and technologies right up to the present day. But in America that first changing of the guard is dramatic, both on the charts and in the clubs, especially because, behind the backlash against the genre, lie the symptoms of the white conservatism that would lead to Ronald Reagan's election in 1981.

The notion that a mysterious “cancer for gay men only” is simultaneously developing out there will become yet another countdown on the fate of an entire generation. It's hard to put into words the violent emotional and cultural gap between the excitement of the late seventies and the crushing sense of defeat during the AIDS years.

Meanwhile, Walter has other problems. Disillusioned by the frenetic pace and libertine lifestyle of the gay community, he turns to new forms of spirituality, soon embracing in his own way the Christianity that had always felt like it rejected him – he even founds a label to release his own work, named, not by chance, Jus Born (without the “t”), in honor of the famous phrase born again Christian. But the records he now plays on the floor must fit the new creed: out go the raunchier, worldlier tracks (which he often censors himself, using a marker to blot out words he doesn't like directly on the tape), in come gospel, faith and hope – a coherent but drastic choice, reflected in the increasingly scarce DJ bookings he receives, as promoters don't want to risk losing customers. Kenny Carpenter, lighting technician at Galaxy 21, recalls:

[…] the word compromise wasn't part of Walter's vocabulary […]

But while this interference closes club doors on one side, it opens a new outlet for his imagination on the other, because on the ruins of disco a myriad of new styles are emerging at various levels of electricity: hip-hop, boogie, synth-funk, electro, rap, house, techno and Hi-NRG. This is where “Jungle Music” performs the important task of bringing to light a more experimental, avant-garde side, because having faith doesn't mean numbing yourself reciting the rosary – quite the opposite: by making such an abrupt electronic turn right at this moment, Walter shows just how much music can be an open book on the universe, poised between the street, the club, and Jesus Christ.

His remix of “Moon Maiden” by the Luv You Madly Orchestra, again released under Salsoul, is a bipolar listen swinging between funk smoothness and sharp violin jabs, certainly captivating and original but hard to place on the dancefloor – proof of a hand so sure of itself by now that it no longer needs the audience's approval.

Naturally, it's under Jus Born that Walter really lets loose, producing the oblique proto-house track “I’ve Been Searching (12” Mix)” for Arts & Crafts, a pulsating number that sizzles like fries in hot oil. But it's with vocalist Strafe in 1984 that Walter crafts one of the defining moments of his career, complete with a No. 1 spot on the Dance Chart: “Set It Off (12” Mix)”, a celebrated hit straddling rap and electro-funk, still among the most sampled tracks of the era thanks to its bare-boned, minimal, tremendously futuristic production. Walter is so enthusiastic about the track that he makes another version with vocals by Barbara Tucker, released under the name Harlequin Fours – set side by side, the two tracks show the zenith of Walter's thinking in the eighties: the first warm, with a more soulful tone, the second sly and mischievous, in its raw, tech-dub stride.

Walter's affinity for hip-hop also shines through in his rework of "4 Ever My Beat (Beat Bongo Mix)" by the African-American sextet Stetsasonic, among the era's earliest crews alongside the equally visionary Mantronix; gutted like a dub track down to the bare tin, the piece is a game of equalizing its parts, where bongo, synth and drum machine occupy the same space as the chopped-up vocals. The result is metaphysical: the same kid who a few years earlier was setting off disco sparks live over the crowd is now a spinner reaching into the most psychedelic recesses of electronic matter.

From the avant-garde to the future: Arthur & Walter go bang! 

For a character like Walter, meeting another outsider adrift in post-disco New York was already written in the stars: Arthur Russell, the mumbling avant-garde cellist eternally torn between minimalism and the dancefloor. Between the two a deep synergy takes hold, not just creative but philosophical; both are ill-suited to the record business, often broke because they're outside the scene's most "in" gay circuits, yet at the same time both are mad and ambitious, unable to give a damn about trends, caught in a mix of indifference and defiance toward a rejection they know is coming anyway.

Walter is bitter, and it shows; within just a few years, his talent went from being on everyone's lips to a dusty memory of a fad dismissed as untouchable "fag stuff." This too is why Arthur's material offers an escape route; "Calling All Kids (Mix)" is more reassembly than remix, a cut-and-paste of electronic offal, rough randomly scraped strings and vocal odds and ends over a brazen hip-hop backbone, probably the most fascinating and anti-disco thing one could have done.

But it doesn't end there; "Jungle Music" also includes "Go Bang (Unreleased Mix)", the rare gem of the whole collection left unissued for decades. The original material was already a futuristic mutant-disco moment in its own right, released by Arthur under the name Dinosaur L in 1980 alongside the album "24->24 Music". It was hardly a smash hit, but an initial remix courtesy of François Kevorkian still got it to the ears of the night crowd, thanks to tighter dance-floor syncing. Walter's version, by comparison, sounds truer to the original, careful to preserve that delicate balance between rhythm, synth, free-jazz organ, blues piano and melodic delicacy, but across its full 12 minutes and 24 seconds it quietly amplifies its emotional charge instead, offering a fraternal embrace to the entire community represented in the lyrics. The track remains just as meaningful today, a shining example of what it means to make dance music for both mind and heart.

But at some point toward the end of the Eighties, AIDS comes knocking again. Christian faith did little good while the Reagan administration kept ignoring an emergency that was purely medical, certainly not moral. It would take years to develop a treatment; the first drug cocktails had brutal side effects, and were often prohibitively expensive. Arthur Russell passes away in 1992, by then reduced to poverty, his legacy only cementing itself with the passage of time. Walter too grows increasingly thin and gaunt. After a couple of tours in Japan in the early Nineties, a country where disco saw a resurgence offering him one last hurrah, Gibbons passes away on September 23, 1994, aged just thirty-eight. His name little more than a footnote. Which is why "Jungle Music – Mixed With Love (Essential & Unreleased Remixes 1976-1986)" is not just a compilation, but an important document recounting ten crucial years of dance music history through the work of someone who truly helped write that history. Even when he couldn't be bothered to – as Kevorkian recalls:

Walter was an innovator, but he had a real 'I don't give a damn' attitude […] he didn't care whether people danced or not. Walter was conceptually ahead of everyone, a lone genius

Bibliography:

Tim Lawrence: “Disco Madness: Walter Gibbons and the Legacy of Turntableism and Remixology” (articolo, 2008)

George Freeman: "Galaxy 21, A Cosmic Extravaganza" (article, 2018)

"Disco Pioneer Walter Gibbons Remembered by Danny Krivit & Tony Smith" (interview, 2010)

“The Secret Disco Revolution” (documentario, 2012)

www.milliondollardisco.com

Wikipedia.org

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28/12/2025