Interview with the Original DJ Tibbs

DJ Tibbs

       conducted by Sir Norin Rad (The Intruders / Germany)

SIR NORIN RAD:"From which part of the Boogie Down Bronx are you? Like from which section and from which street?"

DJ TIBBS:"Okay, me and DJ Charlie Rock (his DJ partner) we were from Butler Houses which is called Webster Houses. We lived at 169th street & Webster Avenue. Charlie Rock lived in 1230 Webster and I lived in 1348 Webster....in the projects."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Which side of the Bronx is that? Is that the east side of the Bronx?"

DJ TIBBS:"Yes, that's the east side of the Bronx which is like....we had a place called The Nine which is Washington Avenue...everybody knew about The Nine though it's called Claremont Projects but everybody called it The Nine. All the DJs played there.  So it is like the east side of the Bronx."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What was the first jam that you ever attended?"

DJ TIBBS:"My first Hip Hop party that I attended was at The Black Door and Grandmaster Flash was playing. He was the first DJ that did the backspin, growing up in the Bronx.  Grandmaster Flash..he always did his parties every Saturday at the Black Door...everybody just knew that Grandmaster Flash played at the Black Door, so everybody would go there every Saturday. We would go there and see him mixing up beats....he was just good, he was good!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"I see. Do you recall what kind of impression was left on you by seeing Flash at the Black Door?"

DJ TIBBS:"The impression was to see this crowd of people come from all over to see this guy. You know, this guy drew people from all over it's like...the place was jam packed!!! Every Saturday! That inspired me to think like,"Ah, I wish that was me!" You know? See people dancing...you know, the people were happy and laughing...it was fun! So that really inspired me."

SIR NORIN RAD:"So then what was the next step for you to pick up DJing yourself?"

DJ TIBBS:"Okay, so the next step was going around to different parks in the Bronx to see different DJs play and to hear beats because at that time I didn't have that many records. I met a few DJs....I went to school with Kool DJ Red Alert...we both went to DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx in 1974. So when I met Red Alert he told me that he had a lot of records. So I said, "How many records do you have?" He said he had a garage full of records! (laughs) At that point I only had maybe two or three milk crates. So he told me, "If you wanna do this you gotta go around and get yourself some beats, get you a nice soundsystem, talk to other DJs and listen...listen to those beats, man....to learn!" Then later on I ran into Afrika Bambaataa who was from Bronx River and he gave me some beats. He said, "Tibbs, here are some beats. You gotta go around and search for these beats and do your thing!" So both of those guys..I look up to both of those guys."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What were some of the parks that you would go to in order to check out some other DJs ?"

DJ TIBBS:"We went up there to the Valley...we went to Forest Houses to see Grandmaster Flash. Basically though, I started learning from Webster. We had three DJs on Webster....we had TR Nation which was Presweet....we had DJ Formalo who lived down the block and we had DJ Tibbs and DJ Charlie Rock. All of those guys were in the same neighbourhood."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Do you also recall a duo that consisted of DJ Bear and DJ Abel?"

DJ TIBBS:"Yeah, I remember Abel...yeah!!!! (excited) I battled Abel on Webster!!! That was big!!!  Yeah, I knew him for a long time! He was a good guy! All that was going on on Webster. If it wasn't on Webster it was going on on The Nine!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Which steps did you take to build up both your record collection and your soundsystem?"

DJ TIBBS:"Okay, so first like I told you...my mom she had boxes of 45s, she had no albums..she just had boxes of 45s. So what I did was...back then, you know, we had one turntable which was an old school turntable and I had a 8 Track- Player. So I put the 45s and the 8 Track-Player together and I started mixing records. So then I went to a Kool Herc party which took place on The Nine and Kool Herc had like twelve speakers, he had six speakers on each side. It was amazing how many speakers this guy had. It was loud!!! When Kool Herc came out you really heard the soundsystem from many blocks away because he had so many speakers! So I said, "Wow, that's what I wanna do! Get some speakers!" I never met him but I heard his music and I heard him playing those beats. Every time that I tried to meet him at different parks it was so crowded I couldn't meet him. Then when I finally met him he said, "Look, man, if you wanna be a DJ you need a soundsystem so people can hear your soundsystem from blocks away!" So that's what I started doing and then I met a DJ called DJ Dutchmaster, he was a Spanish DJ from The Nine and he had eight Cerwin Vegas. Those speakers were like the classic speakers. They were on wheels. I bought four from him and then I started building up a soundsystem from there. So four speakers, four bass bottoms I had , two sets of horns and two sets of tweeters.....and one mixer."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What kind of mixer was that? Was that a clubman mixer?"

DJ TIBBS:"I had a clubman and I had a GLI."

SIR NORIN RAD:"I see. What about the amps?"

DJ TIBBS:"We all used Crown amps. Crown or Pioneer,"

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where did you purchase them from? Crazy Eddie's?"

DJ TIBBS:"No, no. There was a place on Canal street in Manhattan. All they sold was speakers, turntables. So if you wanted anything you had to go to Canal street to get turntables, speakers, amps. That's where you had to go."

SIR NORIN RAD:"It is interesting that you mention DJ Dutchmaster because the legendary DJ Clark Kent also told me that he started his DJ career through him. He furthermore told me that the Ni**er Twins, Keith and Kevin were around DJ Dutchmaster at one time."

DJ TIBBS:"Yeah, yeah!!!! I know them (The Ni**er Twins)!!! Those were Herc's boys!!! I know those guys!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"But DJ Dutchmaster wasn't a Hiphop DJ, right?"

DJ TIBBS:"Yeah...he played Hustle music but, you know, he had a good soundsystem. People knew him."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Do you recall how much DJ Dutchmaster charged you for those four Cerwin Vegas speakers?"

DJ TIBBS:"Back then he charged me like 300$ a piece for those Cerwin Vegas. They would cost like 600$ but he did me a favour. He knew what I wanted to do, he said, "You wanna do this? I got a bunch of speakers. Take these four cabinets and start building from there!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"I guess this whole transaction took place at a party?"

DJ TIBBS:"Yeah, he was DJing at a party on The Nine. I didn't know he was Dutchmaster until Charlie Rock told me. Charlie Rock said, "Yo, that's DJ Dutchmaster!" I said, "Oh yeah, I heard about this guy." You know? Then when the party was over I went over there to introduce myself. I said, "I'm Tibby Tibbs!" He said, "Yeah, I heard about you. You got a lot of breakbeats, right?" So I said, "Yeah! I'm interested in buying some of your speakers." He said,"Well, I never sold any speakers but I heard a lot about you. You know what? I got a couple of speakers that I let you buy so you can build yourself up. That's what he did. So he looked out for me. As far as my record collection, you know, like I said I only had 45s so I started going around to different places. They had a place called Downstairs Records on 42nd street, every Friday I would go down there, get some beats..just try to build up my record collection. Every party that I went to I kept hearing those different beats and my people would say to me, "Yo Tibbs, you got that one?? Yo, you got that one??" I said, "I don't got this one but I'll get it! I guarantee the next party that I do I'll have that beat!" That's what I did. I would go around searching for beats. I asked DJs, "Yo, I heard this beat that Herc played the other day and I don't know the name of it." Next thing I now (they said to me),"Yeah, that was 
Son Of Scorpio, Tibbs!!!! By Dennis Coffey!" So I said, "Yeah, okay!" BANG!!!! Went downtown, found it....Dennis Coffey.... for a dollar! (chuckles)"

SIR NORIN RAD:"So you also used 45s when you were rocking parties? This is very interesting because many out here in Europe thought for a long time that the original DJs from the Bronx only played LPs and 12"s."

DJ TIBBS:"Yeah! Only the original guys like Grandwizard Theodore, Flash, Herc, Bambaataa, Smokey, me..we used 45s. If you had 45s and you were at a party people were like,"Oh man, look! This guy got 45s, man! Yo, where did he get those from?" 45s is classic, man!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"It is also harder to do the backspin with them, right?"

DJ TIBBS:"You had to put a piece of tape on the record when you backspin. There was a certain technique that you had to do. So you would mark the record with a piece of tape, so every time you did the backspin it would help you to do the backspin easily."

45s from DJ Tibbs record collection (note that the artist's name and the song title have been crossed out)

SIR NORIN RAD:"When did you decide to take your equipment and your records outside in order to throw parties? The earliest flyer I have seen of you was from 1977 but I guess you were out even earlier, right?"

DJ TIBBS:"Yeah! I started something like 1975..I was out there throwing parties. What I did was...in 1975 I used to play on the terrace...we lived in the projects so we had a little terrace on the floors. Each floor had a terrace so I would bring two speakers out there on the terrace and the turntables and, you know, throw little Hiphop parties. I lived on the 10th floor so people would hear the speakers. They would be like, "Yo, Tibbs is jamming up there on the terrace!" The terrace was small but it would hold a lot of people. It was packed!!!! You had people dancing and some of them were also breakdancing. Then it got too small so then we started going downstairs in the community room. So then we bought four speakers, tweeters, horns and everything and we charged like 5$ for everybody to come in to the community room. Matter of fact 5$ was a lot of money back then. So if you got 200 people in there you made good money."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Which you would reinvest into building up your soundsystem and your arsenal of beats I guess."

DJ TIBBS:"That's right! We used to do parties every week in community rooms and we put the money back into our system and kept buying new records."

SIR NORIN RAD:"So you did parties regularly? Like at least one every week?"

DJ TIBBS:"Yes! I wasn't really doing any parties out in the parks yet because people were acting funny and the police also was a problem. If we came out in the park we didn't have no electricity so you had to use the electricity from the street poles or you had to borrow electricity from somebody's house. I started playing in the parks when I met DJ Abel and DJ Formalo. That's when we all started doing parties outside. When they were playing down the block it was like, "Yo, Abel is out there! Oh man!" Then next week it was like, "Yo, Tibbs out there!" People knew us from coming to our parties."

DJ Formalo

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where exactly on Webster Avenue was that community room located at where you used to throw parties?"

DJ TIBBS:"It was on 169th & Webster and it's still there. It's called William Hodson Community Center."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Do you recall a spot on Webster called The Cave? DJ Smoke(y) used to rock up there."

DJ TIBBS:"Yes I do. That was down on 167th street. We knew Smokey well because we used to go to Smokey's parties in his house on Grant Avenue and it was packed up there. I mean packed!! Everybody was like, "Yo, Smokey is DJing!!!" "Word? Let's go all up there!!" And he did all this in his house!! At times it was so crowded you couldn't get in!! It was crazy! That's also how I met DJ Charlie Rock. He lived next door to me but I didn't know that he lived next door to me until I went to DJ Smokey's house. It was a big party going on there. I didn't know what was going on but it was a lot of people there. First I met DJ Rob The Gold (Smokey's DJ partner) . I already knew Smokey so then Smokey said, "This is Rob The Gold!" I said,"Rob The Gold from Mount Vernon? I've heard of him." Smokey said,"Yaeh, that's my man from Mount Vernon!" Then Rob The Gold introduced me to Charlie Rock who was with him at the time. He said,"This is Charlie Rock." I said, "Don't I know you from somewhere?" Charlie said,"Yeah, I live on Webster." I said, "I live on Webster, too!" So at that point we became homeboys and we started doing parties together. Later on we added two MCs, one of them was called The Amazing Jeffrey Jeff and the other guy his name was Jay so we called him Jay One. So we had two MCs. It was DJ Tibbs, DJ Charlie Rock and two MCs..The Amazing Jeffrey Jeff and Jay One." 
 

DJ Tibbs & DJ Charlie Rock

SIR NORIN RAD:"But you and DJ Charlie Rock were already DJing before you met at Smoke(y)'s party, right?"

DJ TIBBS:"Yeah, I was already DJing and so was Charlie Rock. He was down with Rob The Gold first, then he came with me because we were next door neighbours."

SIR NORIN RAD:"So when you and Charlie Rock teamed up and began to do parties on Webster and on The Nine was there ever any kind of tension like people trying to snatch your equipment or your records? How did you move your stuff to venues outside of Webster? Did you have people that looked out for you?"

DJ TIBBS:"Yes we did. So what we did was being that we lived in the projects we would get a couple of hand trucks.....remember we used milk crates of records...so we would put everything on hand trucks and roll up everything to The Nine if we was playing there. Everybody knew us, you know? We set everything up and we had a few people that we knew that would stand there and just watch people and tell them, "Yo, back up from the speakers!!! You're coming to close to the speakers!" Or I would get on the microphone (changes his voice),"Please back up from the speakers! Please!" We never really had any trouble. We paid people to stand there behind us so nobody came through the ropes trying to bum rush us. Charlie Rock knew a lot of people from Webster, he had a lot of connections."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Were there are any Puerto Ricans at your parties when you started DJing  on Webster in 1975 and 1976?"

DJ TIBBS:"That's a good question. There really wasn't a lot of Puerto Ricans until later. I started seeing more Puerto Ricans as I started playing parties in the clubs. You had the DJs playing in the parks, then from the parks we went into the clubs. Like The Executive Playhouse, The Black Door, 371...those were the spots where DJs was playing at. Now you're getting some perks! Now we're playing in the clubs, we wanna get fresh. Yeah, you wanna show your technique to the people and you wanna get this money! Remember back then when you played in the clubs you had to bring your own soundsystem. Now all you bring is your computer! (laughs)"

SIR NORIN RAD:"So how did that transition from playing in community centers and parks to rocking clubs happen for you? Did you approach the club owners or did they send out people to look for new talent in the streets?"

DJ TIBBS:"Usually...like Grandmaster Flash he had a manager, his name was Ray (Chandler) he knew all the DJs and he knew all the spots. So if you was kool with Ray he would get you into all of these spots. He would do the talking and he would tell you, "Look, man, if you wanna play at the Executive Playhouse...I talked to the guy...all you gotta do is go there, you know, and introduce yourself and give him a flyer from a party that you did and let him know who you are so you can bring the crowd in there and make some money. Usually, when you did that you would bring in about 300 - 400 people. So that was a lot of money. The owner would get half of the money and the DJ would get the other half. It was four of us so we had to split the money four ways. Basically, it was word of mouth. If you was good and you knew people who had the clubs they'll put you in." 

 

July 8th & 15th 1978: DJ Tibbs and his crew are rocking at the legendary Sparkle (flyer by courtesy of Debbie D)

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did you also hand out flyers to advertise your parties that took place on Webster before you moved on to the clubs?"

DJ TIBBS:"Yes! Like DJ Breakout...anytime that he would play I would go there and give out our flyers saying that we would give our party next Saturday or they would even say it on the mic,"Yo, I got Tibby Tibbs in the house! They're playing at this and that place next week! 5$ with a flyer, 10$ without!" Stuff like that which had the people coming to our parties. We also had shirts with our names on it...Tibby Tibbs, Charlie Rock...you know? So people knew who we were."

SIR NORIN RAD:"So you had gained the status of a street celebrity after a while?"

DJ TIBBS:"That's what it was all about! When I was ready to come out to do a party I didn't even have to tell people. Just come out, next thing you know, they hear the music, "Tibbs is out there!!!! Oh, man!!!" Once you turned that system on they knew!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"What would you consider to be your stomping ground back then? Like at which spots would you and your crew rock on the regular?"

DJ TIBBS:"It'd be Webster....right there in the projects...right there between 169th & 170th. We played right there and everybody knew us. Then the other spot around there would be Claremont Park."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Okay, now please describe how you got into that aforementioned battle with DJ Abel and how it went down? DJ battles back then weren't about displaying the most sophisticated scratching patterns, were they?"

DJ TIBBS:"This is what happened: Let's say DJ Abel he did a party, right?  He's in the park playing, right? Then I would come with my crew, right? And then he plays some beats that I might not have and I'd be like, "Damn, I never heard that one!" So then I go up to him, right? And I'd be like, "Yo Abel, what's the name of that record?" He'd be like, "Yo, I can't tell you the name of that one. So you ain't got that one, huh?" "Nah. That's kool though. You know what? I wanna batte you in about two weeks, man! You're okay with that?" He'd be like, "Yeah, yeah! No problem, man. You'll take your stuff out, I'll take my stuff out, you know? Let's see who got the better beats!" And that's what we did. He did his thing, I did my thing. He played some of his secret beats that I never heard and then I played some of my beats that he never heard before. And the crowd would be like, "Oh man!!!!!!!!!!Yo, Abel!!! Yo Abel got that one??? Yo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Come man! Tibbs you gotta get that beat, man!" It was so much fun just  to hear different DJs play different beats that you didn't have. You heard those beats and if it was a good beat you said to yourself,"You know what? I gotta find that beat!!! I gotta wait!" So you would go around ask people. They'd be like, "I don't have it." So then you'd go downtown, "Yo, I'm looking for a record!" You'd go to Disc-O-Mat, Downstairs Records...anywhere where they'd be selling records..that's where you had to go to find those beats." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Okay, I hear you. Still I would like to understand how you managed to find that beat if the DJ who played it in the park refused to let you know its name. I mean unlike today there obviously were no breakbeat compilations out, no breakbeat list on the internet, no youtube nothing......it must have been very hard."

DJ TIBBS:"Thats right. What you had to do was you had to keep going to those parties to hear that beat again and then you would ask one of your crew members to go over there and ask them, "What's the name of that record?" and then see if they'd tell you. Sometimes they would let you know. Like I would send one of my MCees up there, "Go up there and ask the name of that record! I need that record!" He'd be like, "Okay Tibbs, I follow you." He'd go up there, "Yo, yo what's the name of that record?" "Yo man, it's this and that but, yo, don't tell anybody I told you!" They don't know that it's for me, you know? If they still didn't tell you the name you had to use a different approach like trying to peep the album cover. And when I finally found that record I had a big smile on face, I was like, "Yeah!!! I got it!"

SIR NORIN  RAD:"So the competition for beats was really fierce back then?"

DJ TIBBS:"Yeah, you had to have the beats to move the crowd, to get recognition. Forget about the scratching!!! It was about the beats! You got the beats that's how people knew you."

November 4th, 1978: DJ Tibbs and his crew are rocking at Patterson Community Center on Morris Avenue

SIR NORIN RAD:"And who won that battle between Abel and you?"

DJ TIBBS:"Ahhhhh....I think I won that battle, man! 'Cause I had a lot of records, man. I had a lot of beats. You can tell from all the pictures that I have sent you (Tibbs did indeed impress me with pictures of his huge and exquisite record collection). When I used to do a party  I used to come out with like 10 crates of records!!! You know how many records fit in one crate? You know how heavy one crate is?" 

SIR NORIN RAD:"Alright, now for those out there who don't know what a crate is....those were basically milk crates that were originally used by dairy companies to transport milk bottles and that you DJs used to carry your records with you, right?"

DJ TIBBS:"Yeah, yeah..the milk crates! And one milk crate could hold at least 75 albums. So if you're coming out in the parks and you got ten crates..... That was another thing with the battles back then. You would see Abel, see how many crates he got and he got like six. Okay he's good, but now they look at Tibbs. "Yo, Tibbs got twelve crates!!! Yo, Tibbs what you need all these crates for, man??" I was like, "Every crate got different beats in it. That's why we got them out here!" (laughs) The more crates you brought out, the more recognition you got."  

SIR NORIN RAD:"How long would you play each beat? I have been told that Afrika Bambaataa, The Master Of Records, changed beats like every 2 minutes at his parties. Did you follow a similar procedure since you had so many beats?"

DJ TIBBS:"I would give it like 3 minutes. Yeah, like 3 minutes, real quick.  'Cause you wanna keep the crowd going so you gotta have a continuous beat."

DJ Tibbs and his crew rocking at the New Underground Disco on Prospect Avenue

SIR NORIN RAD:"Alright, now what were your 5 favourite beats back then? I know you don't wanna disclose any secrets in terms of hot beats but what were some of the joints that you really felt?"

DJ TIBBS:"I'mma tell you I got a collection of James Brown records. If you had James Brown you was the man! I still got a collection of James Brown beats right now that a lot of people don't have. Back then you had to have James Brown, you had to!! You had to have the Sex Machine album. You also had to have "Apache"...Later on you had to have "Scratching" by The Magic Disco Machine and "Dance To The Drummer's Beat" by Hermann Kelly. You had to have that. If you didn't have those records back in the day, you wasn't down with the crew."

Gerson King Combo LP out of DJ Tibbs record stash

SIR NORIN RAD:"Which record was very hard for you to get back then?"

DJ TIBBS:"That Baby Huey "Listen To Me"....I got that......that was hard!!! The reason why that record was hard to find was if you look at the album cover they said they had to bury him in a piano case."

SIR NORIN RAD:"It came out after his death."

DJ TIBBS:"Right. That means that there was only a certain amount of copies of it. That record was rare! You know how I got that record? I got my record through a cousin, he had a bunch of vinyls upstairs in his house. I said, "I'm looking for a record. Baby Huey!" This guy was an older guy. At that time he was older than me so he had a lot of records. I'm like 18, 19 years old looking for a record, this guy was in his forties. He found that record in his storage and I said, "Can I buy that record from you, man?" "Nah!" He wouldn't sell it to me so I kept searching around. He showed me the album cover and I kept looking for it til I found it. It was hard, man! I think I found it in some of these record shops up there in Brooklyn." 

SIR NORIN RAD:"So you would go all the way to Brooklyn to find records?"

DJ TIBBS:"Brooklyn, Long Island, Queens. Everywhere that somebody had told me, "Yo Tibbs, that record store up there in Queens, they got a lot of records, man!"  And sure enough you go out there, "Yo, tons of records!!!" It took me hours to look through these records, man!! That was my career...looking for records and spending money on records."

DJ Tibbs Record Stash

SIR NORIN RAD:"Out here in Germany many DJs are offended if you don't allow them to go through your record stash at a party or if you are not willing to share the titles of the beats that you are playing. They claim that Hiphop was always about being open and sharing everything 
with everyone. What is your take on that? How was this kind of behaviour looked upon back in the days in the Bronx?"

DJ TIBBS:"Nah, nah..that wasn't acceptable. It was every man for himself. You don't tell your stash and you don't let people look through your records. Back in the days no DJ let another DJ look through his records! That's why we scratched some of the records out cause if you come up to the rope and you look at the record you'll be like,"What's the name of the record? I don't see a name on it."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Thank you! Now how would you divide up the time behind the turntables at a party between DJ Charlie Rock and you? Did you differ in terms of the type of beats that you played?"

DJ TIBBS:"I all depends on the crowd. Let's say we did a party in a park. We would set up the equipment, right? I would start it off, play some beats....DJ Charlie Rock was more like the Kool Herc type of guy, he played more of the slower beats.  I would let him play for an hour, then he would be like, "Yo Tibbs, I'm done! Get back on the wheels, man! The people wanna see you! Get back on there!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"How did the invention of the backspin by Grandmaster Flash change the DJ game from your recollection?"

DJ TIBBS:"Before the backspin DJs were just mixing the records. There wasn't any cutting or scratching it was all blend, blend, blend. Then you would get the technique of backspinning because other DJs started doing it.  You saw Grandmaster Flash he was the master..Grandmaster Flash and Grandwizard Theodore those two guys were the masters of the backspin. So that's why DJs started to do the backspin because it was a technique that you had to have when you were doing parties in the park. They wanna see you do that!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"At the end of this interview would you like to shout somebody out?"

DJ TIBBS:"I wanna shout out all the Old School DJs! Grandmaster Caz, that's my friend! Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa, Kool DJ Red Alert, DJ Mean Gene, Grandwizard Theodore, DJ Breakout, DJ Smokey...all these Old School DJs that had beats and did parties in the park!"