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Delano Smith - Then and Now - 2007
Submitted By: 
lil_al_5
lil_al_5Genre: House
Date of Set: 2007
Filesize: 121.67 MB
Total Downloads: 3
Biography of Delano Smith
Born in Chicago in 1963, and raised on Detroit’s West side, Delano Smith represents one of the last of a rare group of Detroit’s first “house” DJs. Perhaps it was the juvenile absorption of the sights and sounds around him during his first 5 years in the Windy City coupled with his experience during the new DJ craze of his high school years in Detroit that influenced Delano the most… or maybe it is simply that enigmatic link between music people in Chicago and Detroit, known to insiders as the “I94 Connection.” Regardless of the reason for his natural ear for the deep and groovy, Smith can lay claim to a legacy that most Detroit jocks cannot. He was one of the original young guns personally mentored by Motown’s “1st DJ,” Ken Collier. Though Smith may have taken an extended hiatus later in his DJ years, it is this direct link to the beginnings of the DJ in Detroit that has maintained his integrity today.
The focus that the late Collier instilled in his “students” was priceless. It is a noticeable quality among Collier-mentored DJs, yet a subtle one. Possessing this trait, Smith is secretly the “favorite” DJ among many hometown fans, no matter who the latest pretty-boy [or girl] is. In fact, it seems that the level of courage, energy, and drive necessary for the DJs of the 1980s to achieve their skill and status has been drastically reduced over the years – possibly due to advances in technology, or partly because of the growing popularity and demand for the DJ market. Having learned his craft during an era of belt-driven turntables and manual mixers, Smith certainly endured his trial-by-fire, coming out on top even years later.
Delano remembers his first inspiration to DJ, when he heard Ken Collier spin at the Rathskeller on the campus of the University of Detroit in 1978 at 16 years old. “The Rathskeller” was, in Smith’s words, “the first Disco party for the straight set” during high school – and happened to be DJ’d by Ken Collier. Throwing dance hall parties as their own version of the Disco was all the rage during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s among high schoolers, and soon Smith’s friends, Avon McDaniel and Carl Martin, started their own crew, “The Next Phase” with Ken Collier as their resident DJ. Delano tried his hand at a DJ “audition for a group including Felton Howard and Stacy “Hotwax” Hale called “Duncan Sound.” But Smith didn’t make the cut, and instead joined with pals Carl Martin and Lawrence Battle to form “Sound Wave” – the young DJ crew that would do the sound set-ups for most of Collier’s mobile parties from 1979-1981.
During this time, Smith learned to mix – in the basement, of course – from both Collier and Harold Turner, with lots of practice time in with peer Felton Howard. The rest of high school for Smith, he says, was spent as the short, “nobody” kid with a big curly ‘fro – running some track and intensely practicing martial arts before graduating from Detroit Central High School. It is through martial arts, and “the older brother who snuck his little brother into the clubs,” that Delano met his current BeatDownSounds partner, Mike Clark. Though Clark was just that “little brother” that would tag along when the big brothers went to the hot new clubs, this relationship would come full circle for Smith and Clark over a decade later.
The summer of 1981 is when Smith officially “came-of-age” and landed his first real residency at the original Club L’Uomo on 6 Mile Rd. with his partner, Carl Martin, on Wednesday nights. Though L’Uomo was thee club of the era, it lasted only a few short years, and Smith enjoyed a two-year residency at the relocated club on 7 Mile Rd. near John R before joining his mentor, Ken Collier, at The Downstairs Pub in the fall of 1983. These parties would soon become legendary with Detroit’s “1st Promoter,” Zana Smith and her company “Take 3,” at the helm. Underage kids were known to sit up in the bathrooms shared by the club and the restaurant upstairs until the coast was clear to sneak into the club and experience a DJ set by Ken Collier and his crew. One of these youngsters was a guy by the name of Allan Ester – an aspiring DJ who would soon get to grace the same decks as Collier and Smith. The meetings at The Downstairs Pub would become the roots of a life-long friendship between Delano and Al, as they are today two of the last active DJs directly mentored by Collier.
Yet, 1983 for Smith meant more than just the beginning of a great dance party series… to him, it “was The Year of House Music.” He remembers the release of the first “house” track, “On & On” by Chicago’s Jesse Saunders… and by 1984 “that [stuff] was blowing up!” Many DJs and dance music heads from Detroit began making weekend trips to Chicago over the next three years to scout out the MusicBox, The Warehouse, and other funk phenomena of the day and return with mix tapes and stories – many stories. But in Detroit, this meant the hey-day of its own “Studio 54” [the club inside the Ramada Hotel downtown, subsequently known as the City Club and the Labrynth]. Another hot residency for Collier, Studio 54 would see Smith on the wheels just before it died out – a very sought-after gig that very few landed.
This was also the time when many of Detroit’s infamous DJ crews were born, such as Mike Slade’s “Deep Space” [home to Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and co.]. Track production soon followed among these thirsty young DJs. With whatever equipment they could afford, Smith witnessed “Deep Space” members tinkering around, determined to make some records. Somewhere along the line, in all the hanging out and trading of equipment, Smith ended up with the 909 drum machine that May’s famed “Strings of Life” track was made with. Funny how things turn out…
Just as it seems that “house” music was taking off [as it had a name now], Smith quit the game. He landed a good job, moved into a fat bachelor pad, and enjoyed his comfortable life for a while. During his time out of the loop, Detroit saw the rise and fall of the landmark Music Institute from 1987 to 1990 – a dance club and music studio all in one. This is “when the new jacks came in” – Derrick May, Alton Miller, and Chez Damier all held down the fort at the MI. Detroit also saw concert tours of the first live “house” groups in music history during this phase, including Kevin Saunderson’s Inner City.
Then, one day a few years later, Delano Smith went by a friend’s house to visit in the basement where his friend kept his turntables set-up, and he “touched the table once and it started the madness all over again…” Off to mom’s house it was to pick up his record collection from the basement, and it was not a year before he attempted a residency at the still-operating Club Network in Detroit’s Harmonie Park. Though this particular gig flopped, Smith was officially back on the scene again, seeking the magic of the dance floor, and reconnected with old friend Mike Clark at his place for a haircut where Clark told Smith about this new club in Hamtramck called the Motor Lounge where he had just begun a new Saturday night residency. Delano would soon be found bobbing in the shadows of the wildly popular club Motor. Except, it was now 1995, and this was not just the new hot club – this crowd was diverse – somehow, soulful dance music had not only permeated the next generation of black folks, but had attracted a wide audience of white, Arabic, Latino, and Asian kids too.
With inspiration still high, Smith joined with two long-time DJ peers to form the collective – “collective” now the new term for “DJ crew” - known as “BeatDownSounds.” Along with Mike Clark and Norm Talley, Smith started a new residency at Club OneX on Michigan Avenue in the city’s Corktown district in 2000… a night who’s flyer depicted a very strong and well-endowed cartoon woman, wielding a giant paddle, definitely ready to “beat you down.” Apparently these guys planned to beat their dance floor patrons to the ground each week with their irresistible deep and funky sets. This year would also serve as that of the inaugural Detroit Electronic Music Festival – an internationally renowned gathering which has featured all of the BDS members intermittently every year since its inception.
The following year, some of the city’s urban culture sponsors, headed by Detroit DJ veteran Buzz Goree, held an electronic music awards event, entitled the “20/20 Awards,” which honored 20 Detroit DJs who had steadily represented the craft and culture of the DJ with high-caliber skill for at least 20 years. Smith was the proud recipient of the “Best Comeback” award for climbing out if his long hiatus with mad panache. Two months later, he would also be unofficially dubbed the “Unsung Hero' of the DEMF for much the same reason he is the “secret favorite” among local heads. With all the fame so many of Detroit’s subsequent DJs had received by this time, it was a wonder that Smith had received very little recognition.
With all this momentum now behind him, Delano finally decided to delve into the world of production – a realm he had not yet touched. As most DJs are known to begin producing soon after their DJ careers take off, Delano had remained unique in his commitment to “the third song.” But the music industry was much different now, and with encouragement from his friends and peers, he released his first record on Reggie Dokes’ Psychostasia Recordings imprint in 2002, “Tribunal of Souls,” and began attending the Winter Music Conference in Miami each year.
2002 brought much speed for Smith and his BeatDownSounds partners. Aside from beginning what has now become one of Detroit’s most successful House music residencies at the Midtown tequilieria, Agave, on Sunday nights, Smith worked with a dozen other prestigious Detroit electronic producers, all of whom share the same soulful roots vision in music, to compile “Detroit BeatDown” Vol. I – a double-length album of original tracks published on London/Tokyo label, Third Ear Records. The massive world-wide distribution and subsequent success of this phenomenon in the “Detroit Sound” immediately placed Smith and his partners in a place to represent Detroit, its people, and its sound on an international level.
Smith’s new foray into production took off with no holds barred after this, for he was soon inspired to start his own label so that he may express his vision in music with another old partner, Tony Foster. Together they own and operate MixMode Recordings, which published three releases within its first two years, and expects two more by year’s end. An internet mix radio station is also in the works for www.mixmoderecordings.com where visitors can listen to mixes 24 hours per day.
His other career in the computer business left in the dust, Smith is currently enjoying his full-time work as a DJ and producer. With remixes for “Detroit BeatDown” Vol. I scheduled for release by the end of 2005, and Vol. II already in the works for 2006, not to mention the smash success of his tracks for Chicago-based StillMusic’s “In the Dark” compilation as well as his own 12”s [including the well-received “Message for the DJ” featuring Detroit poet Diamondancer], one could say that Delano has been quite busy. When not focusing on MixMode, or holding it down behind the decks at Agave on Sunday nights, Smith prepares for his 2006 BeatDownSounds Tour with label-mates.
Yet, a thousand words could not express the magic on a dance floor conducted by Smith, so you’ll just have to experience for yourself why he’s so many’s “Unsung Hero.”
http://www.beatdownsounds.net/
http://www.myspace.com/delanosmith
The focus that the late Collier instilled in his “students” was priceless. It is a noticeable quality among Collier-mentored DJs, yet a subtle one. Possessing this trait, Smith is secretly the “favorite” DJ among many hometown fans, no matter who the latest pretty-boy [or girl] is. In fact, it seems that the level of courage, energy, and drive necessary for the DJs of the 1980s to achieve their skill and status has been drastically reduced over the years – possibly due to advances in technology, or partly because of the growing popularity and demand for the DJ market. Having learned his craft during an era of belt-driven turntables and manual mixers, Smith certainly endured his trial-by-fire, coming out on top even years later.
Delano remembers his first inspiration to DJ, when he heard Ken Collier spin at the Rathskeller on the campus of the University of Detroit in 1978 at 16 years old. “The Rathskeller” was, in Smith’s words, “the first Disco party for the straight set” during high school – and happened to be DJ’d by Ken Collier. Throwing dance hall parties as their own version of the Disco was all the rage during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s among high schoolers, and soon Smith’s friends, Avon McDaniel and Carl Martin, started their own crew, “The Next Phase” with Ken Collier as their resident DJ. Delano tried his hand at a DJ “audition for a group including Felton Howard and Stacy “Hotwax” Hale called “Duncan Sound.” But Smith didn’t make the cut, and instead joined with pals Carl Martin and Lawrence Battle to form “Sound Wave” – the young DJ crew that would do the sound set-ups for most of Collier’s mobile parties from 1979-1981.
During this time, Smith learned to mix – in the basement, of course – from both Collier and Harold Turner, with lots of practice time in with peer Felton Howard. The rest of high school for Smith, he says, was spent as the short, “nobody” kid with a big curly ‘fro – running some track and intensely practicing martial arts before graduating from Detroit Central High School. It is through martial arts, and “the older brother who snuck his little brother into the clubs,” that Delano met his current BeatDownSounds partner, Mike Clark. Though Clark was just that “little brother” that would tag along when the big brothers went to the hot new clubs, this relationship would come full circle for Smith and Clark over a decade later.
The summer of 1981 is when Smith officially “came-of-age” and landed his first real residency at the original Club L’Uomo on 6 Mile Rd. with his partner, Carl Martin, on Wednesday nights. Though L’Uomo was thee club of the era, it lasted only a few short years, and Smith enjoyed a two-year residency at the relocated club on 7 Mile Rd. near John R before joining his mentor, Ken Collier, at The Downstairs Pub in the fall of 1983. These parties would soon become legendary with Detroit’s “1st Promoter,” Zana Smith and her company “Take 3,” at the helm. Underage kids were known to sit up in the bathrooms shared by the club and the restaurant upstairs until the coast was clear to sneak into the club and experience a DJ set by Ken Collier and his crew. One of these youngsters was a guy by the name of Allan Ester – an aspiring DJ who would soon get to grace the same decks as Collier and Smith. The meetings at The Downstairs Pub would become the roots of a life-long friendship between Delano and Al, as they are today two of the last active DJs directly mentored by Collier.
Yet, 1983 for Smith meant more than just the beginning of a great dance party series… to him, it “was The Year of House Music.” He remembers the release of the first “house” track, “On & On” by Chicago’s Jesse Saunders… and by 1984 “that [stuff] was blowing up!” Many DJs and dance music heads from Detroit began making weekend trips to Chicago over the next three years to scout out the MusicBox, The Warehouse, and other funk phenomena of the day and return with mix tapes and stories – many stories. But in Detroit, this meant the hey-day of its own “Studio 54” [the club inside the Ramada Hotel downtown, subsequently known as the City Club and the Labrynth]. Another hot residency for Collier, Studio 54 would see Smith on the wheels just before it died out – a very sought-after gig that very few landed.
This was also the time when many of Detroit’s infamous DJ crews were born, such as Mike Slade’s “Deep Space” [home to Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and co.]. Track production soon followed among these thirsty young DJs. With whatever equipment they could afford, Smith witnessed “Deep Space” members tinkering around, determined to make some records. Somewhere along the line, in all the hanging out and trading of equipment, Smith ended up with the 909 drum machine that May’s famed “Strings of Life” track was made with. Funny how things turn out…
Just as it seems that “house” music was taking off [as it had a name now], Smith quit the game. He landed a good job, moved into a fat bachelor pad, and enjoyed his comfortable life for a while. During his time out of the loop, Detroit saw the rise and fall of the landmark Music Institute from 1987 to 1990 – a dance club and music studio all in one. This is “when the new jacks came in” – Derrick May, Alton Miller, and Chez Damier all held down the fort at the MI. Detroit also saw concert tours of the first live “house” groups in music history during this phase, including Kevin Saunderson’s Inner City.
Then, one day a few years later, Delano Smith went by a friend’s house to visit in the basement where his friend kept his turntables set-up, and he “touched the table once and it started the madness all over again…” Off to mom’s house it was to pick up his record collection from the basement, and it was not a year before he attempted a residency at the still-operating Club Network in Detroit’s Harmonie Park. Though this particular gig flopped, Smith was officially back on the scene again, seeking the magic of the dance floor, and reconnected with old friend Mike Clark at his place for a haircut where Clark told Smith about this new club in Hamtramck called the Motor Lounge where he had just begun a new Saturday night residency. Delano would soon be found bobbing in the shadows of the wildly popular club Motor. Except, it was now 1995, and this was not just the new hot club – this crowd was diverse – somehow, soulful dance music had not only permeated the next generation of black folks, but had attracted a wide audience of white, Arabic, Latino, and Asian kids too.
With inspiration still high, Smith joined with two long-time DJ peers to form the collective – “collective” now the new term for “DJ crew” - known as “BeatDownSounds.” Along with Mike Clark and Norm Talley, Smith started a new residency at Club OneX on Michigan Avenue in the city’s Corktown district in 2000… a night who’s flyer depicted a very strong and well-endowed cartoon woman, wielding a giant paddle, definitely ready to “beat you down.” Apparently these guys planned to beat their dance floor patrons to the ground each week with their irresistible deep and funky sets. This year would also serve as that of the inaugural Detroit Electronic Music Festival – an internationally renowned gathering which has featured all of the BDS members intermittently every year since its inception.
The following year, some of the city’s urban culture sponsors, headed by Detroit DJ veteran Buzz Goree, held an electronic music awards event, entitled the “20/20 Awards,” which honored 20 Detroit DJs who had steadily represented the craft and culture of the DJ with high-caliber skill for at least 20 years. Smith was the proud recipient of the “Best Comeback” award for climbing out if his long hiatus with mad panache. Two months later, he would also be unofficially dubbed the “Unsung Hero' of the DEMF for much the same reason he is the “secret favorite” among local heads. With all the fame so many of Detroit’s subsequent DJs had received by this time, it was a wonder that Smith had received very little recognition.
With all this momentum now behind him, Delano finally decided to delve into the world of production – a realm he had not yet touched. As most DJs are known to begin producing soon after their DJ careers take off, Delano had remained unique in his commitment to “the third song.” But the music industry was much different now, and with encouragement from his friends and peers, he released his first record on Reggie Dokes’ Psychostasia Recordings imprint in 2002, “Tribunal of Souls,” and began attending the Winter Music Conference in Miami each year.
2002 brought much speed for Smith and his BeatDownSounds partners. Aside from beginning what has now become one of Detroit’s most successful House music residencies at the Midtown tequilieria, Agave, on Sunday nights, Smith worked with a dozen other prestigious Detroit electronic producers, all of whom share the same soulful roots vision in music, to compile “Detroit BeatDown” Vol. I – a double-length album of original tracks published on London/Tokyo label, Third Ear Records. The massive world-wide distribution and subsequent success of this phenomenon in the “Detroit Sound” immediately placed Smith and his partners in a place to represent Detroit, its people, and its sound on an international level.
Smith’s new foray into production took off with no holds barred after this, for he was soon inspired to start his own label so that he may express his vision in music with another old partner, Tony Foster. Together they own and operate MixMode Recordings, which published three releases within its first two years, and expects two more by year’s end. An internet mix radio station is also in the works for www.mixmoderecordings.com where visitors can listen to mixes 24 hours per day.
His other career in the computer business left in the dust, Smith is currently enjoying his full-time work as a DJ and producer. With remixes for “Detroit BeatDown” Vol. I scheduled for release by the end of 2005, and Vol. II already in the works for 2006, not to mention the smash success of his tracks for Chicago-based StillMusic’s “In the Dark” compilation as well as his own 12”s [including the well-received “Message for the DJ” featuring Detroit poet Diamondancer], one could say that Delano has been quite busy. When not focusing on MixMode, or holding it down behind the decks at Agave on Sunday nights, Smith prepares for his 2006 BeatDownSounds Tour with label-mates.
Yet, a thousand words could not express the magic on a dance floor conducted by Smith, so you’ll just have to experience for yourself why he’s so many’s “Unsung Hero.”
http://www.beatdownsounds.net/
http://www.myspace.com/delanosmith
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