Traxman is the essence of Chicago dance music

“When I think about my career and dealing with the rest of the world, I always think, why couldn't I have done this when I was 21, 25 or even 30?” says Corky Strong, the legendary Chicago ghetto house, juke and footwork DJ and producer better known as Traxman. “When I made ‘Da Mind Of Traxman’, I was damn well off into my early 40s.” Speaking with me via video call on a wintery Wednesday night, the TEKK DJZ founder and Teklife member is reflecting on finding success later than he would have liked to after a lifetime spent immersed in his hometown’s globally influential dance music culture. Ostensibly, we’re talking in regards to the recent release of his latest album with Planet Mu. However, as our conversation unfolds, a deeper story presents itself.

The third volume in a trilogy of albums released over the last 13 years, ‘Da Mind Of Traxman Vol.3’, is a sweeping survey of two decades of previously unreleased tracks from Strong’s archives, A&Red and co-compiled by fellow Planet Mu artist Sinjin Hawke. “He has a great ear, and he’s been around the culture,” enthuses Strong. The result is a fast-paced journey through juke and footwork that combines a reverence for cinematic soul, jazz-funk, soft rock, ghetto house and regional rap foundations with a still-restless desire to chase the future through hearing and making something new. From the New Orleans Bounce homage of ‘Where They At’ featuring DJ Twan, to the orchestral New York State bravado of ‘I Write The Hook’ and the battle-ready classic pop flip sensibilities of ‘Bet U Think This Track is About U’, every track is the work of a master craftsman who knows his art form inside out.

“I think Traxman is one of the last of his kind, so A&Ring this was a bit daunting—I really wanted to do this release justice,” explains Hawke by email, unpacking the process of going through what felt like a thousand songs. “Traxman has been at the vanguard of three waves of Chicago dance music,” he continues. “The ’90s Dance Mania/ghetto house/Trax Records era, the 2000s juke/Ghettophiles/Slugo/Deeon/Funk era, and the 2010s footwork-era with his involvement in Teklife/TEKK DJZ etc. He’s been the essence of Chicago dance music for three generations.”

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Growing up on the West Side of Chicago in the ‘70s, Strong’s childhood was soundtracked by Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Pink Floyd, Traffic, Brazilian music, reggae, and the ‘Soul Train’ school of soul. In the early ‘80, he was introduced to DJing through a converging set of influences: His new wave-loving uncle and the local neighbourhood DJs, WBMX 104.3 FM’s pioneering dance music DJ team, the Hot Mix 5, and the open-eared Chicago radio personality Herb “The Cool Gent” Kent. “I was just a little kid, nine or 10, but I was so lucky to have caught the beginning of the mixing era,” he says, remembering studying the Hot Mix 5’s turntable skills and Kent’s record choices while still in elementary school. “Those guys became more than DJs at the time—they were superheroes.”

“Herb Kent didn’t mix the records, but his selections were so advanced,” Strong recalls with the enthusiasm and energy of someone half his age. After hearing cult European and American technopop, post-disco, and electro acts like Kraftwerk, Martin Circus, and Weeks & Co. on Kent’s broadcasts, he would hit the local recor0.d stores to grab copies. “I never had the best of equipment, always had the best of records,” Strong laughs, exuding a mixture of humility, bravado and diligence. “Still, to this day, I'm a hardcore collector.”

Four decades later, Strong’s instinctual impulse to collect a dizzyingly vast array of music and learn it inside out has only deepened. “When you meet Traxman, you realise how much flavour he has—he’s perhaps the most extreme music nerd I’ve ever met,” explains Hawke. “Hanging with him is like taking 10 espressos in a row—he wants to tell you about every instrumentalist from old funk and soul records, progressive rock, et cetera. His knowledge goes deep, and he’s completely seeped in it.”

As the ‘80s unfolded, Strong immersed himself in the first wave of Chicago house. Thinking back, he remembers buying ‘On & On’ by Jesse Saunders, ‘Music Is the Key’ by J.M. Silk (Steve "Silk" Hurley), and Chip E's ‘Jack Trax’ EP. “By ‘86, everyone in Chicago caught what house was about,” he says. During these years, the genre expanded to include a plurality of sub-categories like deep house and acid house. For Strong’s generation, the initial attraction was the stripped-down beat machine sound exemplified by Virgo’s ‘Go Wild Rythm Trax’ LP and Farley Funkin Keith, AKA Farley "Jackmaster" Funk’s ‘Funkin With The Drums’ EP. “Still to this day, those records felt tailor-made for us,” he declares. “They’re the beginning of the elements of ghetto house.”

That said, something that spoke to him just as instinctually was a song he describes as “the birth of sophistication in house music,” ‘Mystery of Love’ by Larry Heard, AKA Mr. Fingers. “I heard that one before it was a record,” he enthuses. “A good friend had a copy on cassette. Back then, everyone knew someone.” When Strong heard Heard playing emotional melodies on the Roland Jupiter-6 synthesiser, something clicked. “Even still, to this day, that is the most beautifully recorded record of my life,” he says. “That was the lead-off to deep house. I’m just glad to have been there as a kid.” Later, these qualities would coalesce in Strong’s sensibilities. “Something I always loved about Traxman is that his songs sound optimistic and beautiful but raw and banging,” enthuses Hawke.

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By the mid-to-late ‘80s, Strong was already a seasoned teenage DJ. “I’d listen to the DJs mixing on the radio, learn what they were doing and practice with the homies,” he says. At that time, his close friend, Slick Rick Da' Master, owned a small Casiotone keyboard and drum machine. ”We learned how to make beats on it,” he remembers. “I sounded like trash at first. Rick was alright, but he kept running into problems as well.” Luckily, Rick lived just down the hall from Charles Chambers, aka DJ Funk, who later became a central figure in the rise of ghetto house. “He was great,” Strong remembers. “He already knew how to program. We learned off Rick, and Rick learned from what Funk was showing him.”

A big turning point for Strong and Rick was when they heard another ghetto house pioneer, Gerald Henderson, AKA Jammin Gerald, play at The Factory, an often forgotten Chicago nightclub that looms large in Strong’s memories. “He was one of the older dudes, and his tracks sounded so grown up,” Strong says. “He was playing them off tape and mixing them in with records. That pushed us over the edge. We realised we needed a tape deck to play our music, which was a Tascam four-track.”

Things escalated after Strong picked up a Roland TB-303 bass synthesiser from a local pawn shop. Once they’d learned to create squelchy acid house lines on it, Strong and Rick traded a Technics 1200 turntable to Chambers for a Casio RZ-1 digital sampling rhythm computer and began recording. “We were just having fun making good music,” Strong enthuses. “I’ve still got some of those tracks on tape, and they sound alright.”

Through handing out tapes, Strong, Rick, and their friends began conversing about music with rising Chicago producers of the era, such as Tyree Cooper, Steve Poindexter, Mike Dunn, and K-Alexi. “We met Tyree Cooper in the early days,” he remembers. “He was one of the biggest superstars in the hip-house era and stayed in the same neighbourhood as us.” Another popular DJ who lived in the same neighbourhood as Strong was ‘French Kiss’ producer Lil Louis. “He used to play parties for my aunt and the guys in the late '70s, early '80s,” he says.

Strong released his first 12” white-label EP in 1989. Three years later, he helped establish the longstanding G.E.T.O. DJz, Inc., an expansive crew of DJs, producers, graphic designers and visual artists. As the ‘90s unfolded, he spent more time partying and DJing at nightclubs on the West Side of Chicago like The Marcy Centre, Hot Wheels, and DaVinci Manor. Over the first half of the decade, Strong released tracks under various aliases, most of which have been lost to the sands of time. “We like to see people dance,” he says. “We like to see people have a good time. We weren’t making these songs because we wanted people around the world to hear them. We weren’t even trying to get on the radio. The music was just aimed at regular partygoers. People who loved the sound and loved to dance.”

In 1994, as Strong puts it, “Things were starting to hit full circle.” That fortuitous year, he convinced his childhood friend, Ray Barney, from the Barney's Records music retail and distribution store and the influential Dance Mania label to give him a job. “I worked there from ‘94 to 2000,” he remembers. “That allowed me to sit and build relationships. I’m finally meeting Glenn Underground, Boo Williams, Armando.” In 1996, he released a ghetto house EP titled ‘Westside Boogie Traxs - Vol I’ through Dance Mania as Traxman Da Geto DJ. “The funny thing was, there was also a crew on Dance Mania called Traxmen,” Strong laughs. “Eric Martin, Robert Armani, and [the late] Paul Johnson were in the crew, but they were my friends.”

By the mid-'90s, Strong was moving with ghetto house pioneers like DJ Milton, Waxmaster Maurice, Steve Poindexter, and the late DJ Deeon. “Me and Deeon became the best of friends,” he says. “The music started to get tremendously successful. We were doing mixtapes, later mix CDs, meeting people, and we started making money. I was doing parties with Derrick Carter and Lester Fitzpatrick and rubbing shoulders with Curtis Jones [AKA] Green Velvet. Everybody sounded so different and fresh back then.”

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As the decade drew to a close, juke and footwork, two choppy, sped-up and interlinked progressions of ghetto house, began to enter the Chicago lexicon. In a 2020 interview on New York DJ and broadcaster Shannon Dawson’s Club Management podcast, Strong described hearing his friends use the term juke for the first time in 1998. “We’re riding in the car, and they’re talking about juke,” he said. “What the hell is a juke? What is that?” Initially, he didn’t take to it, but with decades of hindsight, he now sees the bigger picture. “I was just happy to be there in these situations where, by God’s grace, things were about to blow up. [People say], you’re the king of juke. No, I’m not. I was just there to witness it.”

In historical conversations, the transition from juke to footwork is often associated with Chicago producer DJ figures like RP Boo, the late DJ Rashad, DJ Spinn, DJ Clent and Strong himself. In interviews, he acknowledges these figures and their peers. On the Club Management podcast, Strong noted the historical importance of tracks like RP Boo’s ‘Baby Come on’ and DJ Clent’s ‘3rd Word’ (1998), before identifying a few antecedents that sometimes slip under the radar: D.J. Topcat and D.J. Danté’s ‘Black Market’ EP (1996), his own track ‘Work Me’ (1996), ‘Space Chair’ by Jammin Gerald (1997), and DJ P.J.’s ‘Chase Me Again’ (1997).

From Strong’s point of view, you can dial things back to 1995, when Waxmaster Maurice released his ‘Let Me See Ya Foot Work’ mix CD, and maybe even earlier. “Think of it like the relationship between breakdancing and hip hop,” he says. “There are many dance styles in house music; footworking was already there; it just somehow ended up becoming its own genre. We didn’t call it footwork, though; we just called it trax.”

Strong first crossed paths with Spinn and Rashad in 1997. That said, they didn’t get close until the three DJs recorded a classic mixtape together in 2004, ‘K-Town 2 Da 100’Z’. “What I noticed was our styles started meeting and accommodating each other,” he said while speaking with Dawson. Track by track, the music continued to evolve into increasingly abstract, syncopated shapes that pushed the tempo and bass pressure up while twisting samples and battle-oriented vocal phrases into repetitive, psychedelic shapes.

Despite how deeply engaged he was in DJing and producing music, Strong didn’t really start to think about performing outside of America until near the end of the 2000s. “It sounds strange, but getting a passport just didn’t seem that important at first,” he says. Through his friendship with Robert Armani, who started DJing in Europe in the early ‘90s, Strong knew Chicago dance music had an audience overseas, but when he thought about going overseas to DJ himself, it all felt too abstract. “Now, me going there to play those records, that’s a whole other thing,” he admits.

Something that gave Strong a nudge in this direction was connecting online with French ghetto house and juke DJs and producers such as Kaptain Cadillac and the Moveltraxx label co-founder Big Dope P. Growing up in the suburbs of Paris, P fell in love with French house and felt inspired to produce 145-155 BPM hip-house records with local rappers. After playing his demos to record store owners, he was encouraged to explore the Dance Mania catalogue. P’s friends had previously dismissed house music as not for them, but when he started showing them raw Chicago sounds, that dismissal became a “Hmm, maybe.”

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In 2005, the American photographer and director David LaChapelle released his documentary film, Rize. Framed with an eye-popping lens, Rize takes the viewer inside the vivid, Los Angeles street dance subcultures of clowning and krumping. When the film hit cinemas in France, P found he wasn’t the only one in Paris feeling the direct connection between hip hop, ghetto house, juke and footwork.

“I discovered a whole new world and simply felt musically closer to the people behind those records than the people living in Paris,” Big Dope P explains, writing to me via Instagram. Soon enough, he was in conversations with Deeon, Slugo, Rashad, Strong and their contemporaries. “The more I think about it, the more I think the social background we had in common helped create that link,” he continues. We ended up feeling closer to Chicago artists than we were to a lot of posh cats in France.” In 2010, Strong and DJ Rashad both contributed tracks to a Moveltraxx compilation album called 'Da Movelt Posse: Episode 2'.

At the same time as P was building rapport with Strong, Planet Mu boss Mike Paradinas, AKA μ-Ziq, was fascinated with the new sounds he was hearing in YouTube dance battle videos coming out of Chicago. “I was drawn mainly to the music because of its similarities to breakbeat hardcore and jungle,” he explains by email. “I think the relatively high tempo, sample-filled 160 BPM was refreshing after dubstep's laconic 140 BPM.”

Over the next 18 months, Paradinas began to identify tracks and their producers, a process that culminated in the release of what Strong considers to be two crucial Chicago artist albums, DJ Nate’s ‘Da Trak Genious’, DJ Roc’s ‘The Crack Capone’ and the storied ‘Bangs & Works Vol.1 (A Chicago Footwork Compilation)’. Between these records, Planet Mu presented a snapshot of the high-tech street sounds of 2000s Chicago juke and footwork.

In 2011, Strong founded the worldwide TEKK DJZ crew. Around the same time, he entered into discussions with Paradinas about signing an album to Planet Mu, 2012’s ‘Da Mind Of Traxman’. Although Strong’s generation were already cultivating fans in France, Planet Mu’s listenership had a fluency in UK genres like jungle and dubstep, which quickly translated over to footwork. The UK tapped in and Europe followed.

“‘Da Mind Of Traxman’ was such a special project for me, because I’m obsessed with producers who are able to tell a story about the history of different genres and create these familial ties for listeners,” explains Club Management’s Shannon Dawson by voice note. “Traxman did that so well on this project. He was able to seamlessly merge Chicago's rich house history, and elements of the city's jazz legacy, with this dynamic sound of footwork’s present. It was so brilliant how he was able to use sampling to create this musical story for folks like myself who may want to learn more.”

Two years later, Planet Mu released a second album from Strong, ‘Da Mind Of Traxman Vol.2’. Between the momentum of these albums and the numerous crew activities he was involving himself in, the world began to open up. “Once we saw that all around the world people were catching on, it was quite an exciting thing,” he says. “I thought I might have trouble getting a passport, but I ended up getting it, and I’ve been around the world since.”

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Just over a decade on, Strong and the cohort of Chicago producers who signed with Planet Mu in the early 2010s have found audiences outside of America in Europe, the UK, East Asia, and Australia. “It's not been a surprise how Chicago footwork has captured the world's dancefloors since 2010,” noted Paradinas. “It’s a unique sound built on decades of culture.” Along the way, Strong has continued to release an endless stream of edits, original tracks and collaborations with the likes of Steve Poindexter and Fast Eddie through a vast network of record labels. “I used to make music every single day,” he says. “I still do sometimes, but not like I used to. Through the years, I’ve done so much.”

In recent years, Strong has been enjoying his hard-won international notoriety. He’s excited for new listeners and the generation who discovered him through the first two volumes of ‘Da Mind Of Traxman’ to hear Vol.3. Beyond his own work, however, he’s also focused on what the future looks like for Chicago dance music. This means thinking about the next generation. From his vantage point, it looks like a family affair. “Ten years ago, it was people like DJ Manny, EQ Why, DJ Earl and all those guys,” he says. “Now you’ve got DJ Clent’s son Corey and Rashad’s son Chad. This is something we created, and our kids are doing it. My son is doing tracks as well. I’ve told him to wait another year, but he’s ready to drop some music.”

‘Da Mind Of Traxman Vol.3’ is out now on Planet Mu

Martyn Pepperell is a freelance journalist, follow him on Twitter