Funny how many of the best things to occure happen by surprise. Speaking about Marshall Jefferson, curiosity would kill the cat as he bought his first sequencer before soon to become one of the most charismatic producer house music would have providing people like Kym Mazelle, CeCe Rogers and Ten City with never equaled quality material to date. Enuff reasons to have him on this best remembered summer series…

Quite prolific as a producer in the early days of house, Marshall Jefferson has never been that talkative presswise. Probably coz' he'd have felt better in his shoes while in the shadow, producing faceless concepts like the mythic "Open Your Eyes" behind some Marshall Jefferson presents The Truth  guise or leaving the centerstage to the people he would work with. From his hat would come out such masterpieces as CeCe Rogers's "Someday", Kym Mazelle's "Useless", not to mention Ten City's first and second albums including the anthemic "Devotion", "That's The Way Love Is", "Right Back To You" and "Whatever Makes You Happy" to name but a few…

Therafter, what Ten City's falsetto leader Byron Stingily declared in 1993 while releasing 'No House Big Enough', their first LP without Marshall's input. We only had instruments at the beginning and we've started collaborating with Marshall because he had a sequencer. He would help us to develop our ideas to some stage we thought he was trying to make a sort of Marshall Jefferson presents Ten City ! We eventually ended up having a full band on 'State Of Mind' (their second album). We were into it although we thought that the production was too rich. We then decided it was time to go back to some more oriented club music… To what was our idea of house music.

Marshall's view of the things is, no surprizingly, slightly diferent. As you know, Ten City has splitted and Byron would soon after sign a record deal with Nervous. Gotta say that this situation was already predictable at the time. I would say economically speaking, further to the release of our first album which had been gold certified. But also in terms of egos. I guess the group had the wish to show that they could do as good without me… Jefferson then would leave the Windy City two years after, finding a new home in UK. I ended up being unable to focus on anything.. Maybe because I had everything I wanted. A nice house, big money… Got the feeling that I was slowly falling asleep.  Had to take some distance, watching then the arrival of new Chicago faces from his new London homeplace… I have no regreat as I felt like I needed to bring house music to another level. I've decided to put my hands on big projects. I want live instruments, chords, strings, guitars…

Jefferson's background is quite atypic. Not really into Black music until 1981, meeting vet DJ Ron Hardy would be the revelation. Had never heard anything like this so far. It had been to me like THE big bang, seing him following the footsteps of the aforementionned for 5 years before getting into production with no knowledge at all.

I'd followed some friend of mine at a music store where I got caught by a salesman. Once again, I didn't know anything about making music. He then showed me a Yamaha Sequencer (the QXI), saying we would be able to make music like musicians. My pal didn't believe him but I would leave the store with the machine. It had costed me a fortune and all my people would have a laugh at me as they didn't understand seeing getting my jacket on this stuff that I was unable to play with at the time…

He would have written his first composition ever the day after then be considered as a reference a year later on by numerous keyboardists around. I could play diferent ways. Never tryed to know was I was exactly able to play. I would end up playing what I wanted. I was searching to have my own sound and I achieved this stage. He eventually would sign Lil' Louis's first cut ("Video Clash") but what he wanted was far more ambitious : getting house music to the same level as hip hop and R&B.

Everyone expects something new to happen and I do think that I know how to do it. It's not necessarily a matter of formula but more of careful preparation and organization. Whatever you do you have to have a certain term vision of the things. This is excatly how artists like Prince, Michael Jackson and Madonna have reacted so far. Producing tracks on tracks is nothing of an achievement. You gotta get an imprint that'll allow you to be different from the mass, include elements to reach a superior level. I'm fade up with all these wank… like M-People doing the do at the TV while not related to what's happening in the clubs ! We gotta find the same kind of resources promowise without forgetting about what makes the essence of club music.

It takes approximatively 150,000 $ to promote a single Stateside and I'm not even talking about a music that is considered as new ! Its promoters simply don't have the resources which would lead them to target Europe (and more and more Japan nowadays !). Hip hop had been more lucky at the time, as Def Jam's Russell Simmons has got a substancial fiancial support. We've never got to this stage. No films as compared to hip hop and R&B where you could have a house oriented soundtrack, no video clips… This is what has been cruelly missed to reach the Black neighbourhoods. The only stuff that has been promoed over there was the so called Eurodance with acts like Snap and M-People ! And this is what has decided the biggest singers to establish themselves abroad.

Balanced between ambition and desillusion, Marshall couldn't hide his pessimism regarding the current state of the house scene. You got on one hand all these new boys day after day who don't give a sh.. about anything as long as they're putting out a cut per day and on the other ones these guys in NYC like Knuckles and Morales who, although they're big have never been able to write subsequent lyrics. They couldn't go any further apart from getting 30,000 Bucks to do a remix for some pop star ! This unsignificant for reaching a wider crowd. Course, we've had Masters At Work with their Nuyorican Soul project but their success's gonna depend on what their label will do in terms of promo…

Excerpts from an interview released on June 1996     

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