About Frankie Knuckles
Frankie Knuckles was an American DJ, producer and remixer credited with developing and popularizing house music, which took shape in Chicago in the early 1980s before spreading worldwide. Born Francis Warren Nicholls Jr. in the Bronx, he learned to DJ alongside Larry Levan in New York before taking the resident DJ position at Chicago's Warehouse club in 1977, a job Levan had turned down, and it was at the Warehouse that record shops began racking the eclectic disco, soul and electronic cuts he played under the label house music.
He continued to DJ, produce and remix around the world for the rest of his career, and in 1997 he won the Grammy Award for Remixer of the Year, Non-Classical, recognition of his influence beyond the club booth. The Independent's obituary described the hypnotic beats, yearning vocals and infectious melodies he pioneered in the mid-1980s as a sound he preferred to call disco's revenge rather than a new genre altogether. Red Bull Music Academy noted that during his lifetime no one did more to spread house music's reach, an influence built through decades of DJ sets, remix work and production credits that shaped the genre's development from its Chicago origins.
Knuckles died on March 31, 2014, at age 59, closing out a career regarded as foundational to house music's history.