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In July of 1977, he packed his bags and moved into the Warehouse – literally. Only once he gained a bit of a following did he decide to make the permanent move. Knuckles attended the grand opening in March 1977, but resisted moving out permanently. Williams would handle the business, and Knuckles the music. “It’ll be your club,” he told Knuckles upon his first visit. “I had to offer him a roundtrip ticket and pay him to fly out,” Williams recalled to Red Bull Radio in 2018. Frankie Knuckles becomes musical director Knuckles, however, was interested – but only kind of. Levan, on the heels of starting a new club (the eventual Paradise Garage), turned him down. He decided to call up his old friends from Spofford Juvenile Center – Frankie and Larry.
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Disco was still popular among gay and black clubs, but anti-disco movements, rooted heavily in racism and homophobia, arose all across Chicago. Williams went in search of a musical director. In June of that year, Williams signed the lease at 206 Jefferson Street and started hosting parties at the newly christened Warehouse.
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In 1976, however, he and his partners came across a nondescript, white brick building with blacked out windows in the industrial part of downtown. A number of police shutdowns and inspections soon caused US Studio to fold. Inspired by The Loft’s invitation-only, alcohol-free (but drug-heavy) parties, alongside several former fraternity brothers Williams founded US Studio, a space on South Clinton Street. Finding the club scene underwhelming, Williams left New York for Chicago in 1972. Prior to starting the Warehouse, Robert Williams was a regular attendee of several NYC queer staple clubs including The Gallery, Better Days, and David Mancuso’s The Loft, where he met Knuckles and Levan. The funky tracks, meshed with relentlessly hard-hitting 808 kicks, embodied a new sound: “house.” 206 South Jefferson Street, downtown Chicago At the helm of the DJ booth was now musical director Frankie Knuckles. But come nighttime, the former factory came to life as a place where young predominantly black and predominantly gay men came to dance in an otherwise heavily segregated club scene.
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If you were in downtown Chicago, you probably could have walked right by the Warehouse and never noticed. In a few years, Knuckles (who passed away in 2014) and Williams would change music forever at a club called the Warehouse. But then by chance, a juvenile counselor approached the duo – a man they recognized from the parties they played, named Robert Williams. Arrested and sent to Spofford Juvenile Center in the Bronx (with their parents refusing to bail them out), Knuckles was panicked and distraught.
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That night, hungry and seizing the opportunity for some free food, the best friends lifted a few bags of donuts and ran – right into a police car. Frankie Knuckles and David Morales in 1989, courtesy of David Morales It was a late night in 1971 after a show at Stage 45, and DJs Frankie Knuckles and Larry Levan happened upon a parked pastry truck.Īt that point in their careers, both had graduated from regular gigs at the Continental Baths – Levan had made a name for himself at The Loft and Knuckles was DJing regularly as well.