Frankie Knuckles
Biography
Biography
His birth name was Francis Nicholls, but he became known to a generation of music lovers as the inimitable Frankie Knuckles, "The Godfather of House." Born in the Bronx, Knuckles moved to Chicago in the late 1970s after studying design at New York's Fashion Institute of Technology. It was in Chicago in the 1980s that Knuckles began to popularize and develop a new sort of electronic music that had never been heard before. Knuckles began DJing at The Warehouse Club in 1977, spinning soul, funk, R&B, and the electronic pop and dance music that was becoming popular in Europe. DJ lore has it that the music he created melding these different styles derived its name "house" from a shortened version of the name of the club. In 1982, Knuckles started his own Chicago club, The Power Plant, which remained open for 5 years. Under the tutelage of music producer Chip E., Knuckles released his first single "You Can't Hide from Yourself," in 1987. When The Power Plant closed, Knuckles lived in the U.K. for 4 months, bringing the Chicago House sound to the burgeoning British dance club scene and inspiring a new rapprochement between dance music and indie pop from artists like St. Etienne. His debut album, Beyond the Mix, came out in 1991. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Knuckles continued to work primarily as a remix artist, reworking tracks from R&B artists like Michael Jackson, Toni Braxton, Luther Vandross and Diana Ross into cool house jams. Knuckles developed Type II diabetes in the 2000s and succumbed to complications from the illness on March 31, 2014. Knuckles left an indelible mark on both electronic music and his adopted home of Chicago. The stretch of Jefferson Street in Chicago where The Warehouse once stood was renamed Frankie Knuckles Way.
Filmography
Cast (Feature Film)
Music (Feature Film)
Misc. Crew (Feature Film)
Life Events
