If you are a fan of club culture, soul, Brit funk, acid house, all-dayers, the radio edit of Kraftwerk’s Autobahn, weekenders or Sinéad O’Connor then – whether you know it or not – you are part of the world shaped by Chris Hill, who died on 11 September after a short illness.
Hill was an Essex-born, working-class DJ who loved Black music so much he made it his mission to bring it to the pubs, clubs, airwaves, pop charts and record shops of England by any means necessary. He started out in the 1960s trading blues records and landed a residency in 1967 playing jazz at The Orsett Cock in Essex; later came a soul residency at the Goldmine nightclub on Canvey Island, Essex, and from there to the Lacy Lady in Ilford, east London, and headlining the Caister Soul Weekender in Norfolk.
Along the way, he formed the Funk Mafia, a group of DJs including Greg Edwards, DJ Froggy, Jeff Young and a young Pete Tong, appeared on the pirate Radio Invicta 92.4 FM, and co-founded the Ensign label with Nigel Grainge, where he signed O’Connor, the Boomtown Rats, Eddy Grant and many more.
When I was a 15-year-old funkateer, Hill meant the world to me. His impeccable taste and understanding of music, fashion and audiences – all delivered in his broad Essex accent, with a missionary zeal and a flamboyant style – helped forge the template of the “cultural influencer” way before the architecture of influence-as-product was even a thing. He saw the club as a place of communion and community – diverse, multiracial, without prejudice or exclusion. He democratised the dancefloor, breaking the wall between dancers and onlookers opening hearts and minds by fearlessly blending genres.
He was untouchable – he was to clubbing what jazz, funk and soul DJ Robbie Vincent was to radio. I was so committed to his gospel that one day I broke off from playing seven-a-side because rumour had it that Hilly lived near the pitches, so I went in search of what might be his home.
I found my tribe, one formed in Hill’s image, at the club Tiffany’s in Purley: attired in leather pegged trousers and Pod shoes walking the gauntlet of taunting punks and skins. The perpetual soundtrack included Jingo by Cándido Camero, Night Cruiser by Eumir Deodato and Time by Light of the World, a group that Hill had signed and developed into the UK’s Earth, Wind & Fire. We once united at Bluebird Records in Paddington, west London, for a coach ride to join thousands of other kids from all around the country at the Caister Soul Weekender, where people of all backgrounds descended on an out-of-season Norfolk holiday camp for the day: the embodiment of one nation under a groove.
The kind of genre fluidity that Hill proselytised is now considered the norm, but he was the first. His residency at the Goldmine quickly became a southern mecca for soul pilgrims. In the mid-70s, it also became the centre of a swing revival, where kids would jive to Jimmie Lunceford and Count Basie, decked out in 40s clobber. Here, you could rub shoulders with a who’s who of the time, from Sade to Siouxsie Sioux. Then, at the Lacy Lady in the Ilford suburbs, he put on the Clash, the Damned and Subway Sect, while playing Fela Kuti and Krautrock alongside his beloved jazz funk and soul. (A little-known fact: the Clash’s Mick Jones was a revered dancer at Chris’s weekly soul session. After all, in the words of Andrew Weatherall: “The initial punk scene in London was a load of bored soul boys who liked dressing up.”
Hill clearly understood the power of personality, making him one of the first British DJs that people would pay to see. He was from a theatrical background, with a lifelong passion for Shakespeare and could easily have taken that path. Uninterested in being cool, he doubled up as his own MC, urging the crowd to participate and, in so doing, continuing the lineage of a particularly British form of entertainer. I remember him playing Latin America by Cedar Walton to 2,000 kids at Caister at midnight on a Saturday: he told us to dance and we obeyed! That power also cultivated trends and dance fashions: he took the world-famous rowing-boat dance, normally associated with Oops Upside Your Head by the Gap Band, and popularised it, alongside Ring My Bell by Anita Ward.
But Hill was less interested in advancing himself as a personality than he was using his platforms to evangelise and push forward the culture. While he never became a full-time radio jock, he broadcast frequently on Radio Invicta, the first specialist Black music pirate on the FM dial. As he put it: “The second you make it all about you … you’ve already lost. It’s about people – it always has been and it always will be.”
When he got behind a record he loved, he could influence the charts – back when they were still a barometer of culture, not just sales: he supplied the energy behind Jazz Carnival by Azymuth, British Hustle by Hi-Tension and Southern Freeez by Freeez. He fundamentally helped shape the UK’s broad taste in popular music – until the mid-80s, when the birth of acid house ushered in a new generation of DJs including Carl Cox, Paul Oakenfold and Danny Rampling. Hill’s approach was based on diversity and inclusion, preaching unity – something we would do well to remember today, alongside his memory.
Thanks to Mark “Snowboy” Cotgrove for his help with some of these anecdotes and for flying the flag for Chris Hill until the end.