Interview with Kool DJ Blue 

                                                  

Kool DJ Blue

                                                       

                                   conducted by Sir Norin Rad (The Intruders / Germany)


SIR NORIN RAD:"From which part of Harlem are you originally?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"So...I grew up on 1932 Second Avenue. That was between 99th street & 100th street and Second Avenue.  Right across from Metropolitan Hospital and Washington Projects."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Could you please break down the geographical difference between the Eastside and the Westside of Harlem?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"East Harlem starts from anything after Madison Avenue. From the east side of the street of 5th Avenue all the way to The FDR. That's all East Harlem. Anything from Lennox Avenue all the way to Broadway...12th Avenue....that's all the Westside of Harlem. Then you got your Uptown of course....going up to Convent Avenue & 131st street......which they called Sugar Hill, they called it the Wild Wild West all the way up to 155th street. You had DJs like Master Don (RIP) who had the Westside and The Crash Crew and a lot of other DJs up on the Westside. Then you have the Eastside where you had DJ Kid Flash, you had DJ Dollar Bill, you had crews like The Crusaders and myself, Kool DJ Blue. Ski Jump who was with me when I DJed for the Gangster 5 MCs. DJ Louie Lou who was the DJ for Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. God bless his soul! He had passed away. A lot of times when they speak about Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde they don't mention him which I thought was kinda sad but I always mention him anyway. Then you got Spanish Harlem which starts from 110th Street all the way to 96th Street or something like that. They're on the Eastside."

SIR NORIN RAD:"What was your first encounter with Hiphop? Where and when did it take place?" 

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Well, I started in 1979. I think I was 15, my first encounter with a DJ was my brother Lep Ski. He started it, he had equipment and everything and I would see him doing it and I started liking what he was doing on top of the fact that he had this here voice. They called him "The Golden Voice of the People's Choice - DJ/MC Lep Ski". So I would go out there and I would see him playing music. Now he had his own system and anytime he'd leave the house I would be on his system until he recognized that somebody was messing with his system.  So he knew it was me. Anytime he walked out he'd say, "Don't touch my system!" But I would touch it anyway. Once I looked out the window and I'd see him going down the block I would touch it anyway until I got busted! But I didn't know I got busted until later on when I realized how he knew that I was still messing with his system. All he had to do was come and put his hand on the amplifier and he would realize that it's warm. So I was busted all the time! In Washington Projects was my first encounter with playing music on my own. What happened was...my brother Lep Ski went out to play some music and I would just stand by his side. So he went to go mingle in the crowd but he told me,"Here you can take over!" So of course now I'm nervous!  I'm like maybe 13 or 14 like that there.  I said to him, "What am I supposed to do?" Now he looks at me like I'm crazy. He says,"You know what to do. You been doing it every time I left the house!" So he pulled out a couple of records and I jammed them! The crowd, you know, went wild to see this young little kid behind a DJ system and keeping everybody dancing. So that was my first encounter with Hiphop. As things went on....as 1979 got into the 1980s...I started playing music outside in Johnson Projects where I encountered DJs like DJ Louie Lou....Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde used to come over..... DJ Ronnie Green and a lot of other DJs. By that time I had my own system 'cause my brother got mad with me and said, "Listen,  you wanna be a DJ you get your own system!" Me and MC Priest...who was my MC at the time... MC Priest he also encouraged me to do it. He said,"Listen man, if you go ahead and do this I'll be your MC!" So when I started, it started out with DJ Blue and MC Priest. May he rest in peace! I said to him,"If I do that don't you back out on me!" 'cause MC Priest he would start something and then he don't finish it. So after that we started playing music outside like Johnson Projects, Jefferson Projects, Wagner Projects and the more you play outside, the more people get to know who you are , they like what you are doing and stuff like that. I went to Julia Richman High School and that's where I met DJ Master Don and he told me, "Come on down to the Ponderosa!" He was like the house DJ of the Ponderosa. I think it was on 144th and 143rd Street and St. Nicholas Avenue or something like that. It was a restaurant...like a bar & grill. It's not there anymore. Like I said our name started growing and then going to school with DJ Master Don.....we had a school boat ride......and our names had gotten so big by the time of that boat ride that we had to take a vote on who was gonna do Julia Richman Boat Ride. The principal didn't want no ruckus over the fact that here are these two DJs that have been out there and have been doing their thing and got a name for themselves and now it's starting to be a problem with the students where they want DJ Blue or they want DJ Master Don & The Death Committee. Well, opposed to having a big problem the principal said, "We're not going to have neither one of the DJs!" Although Master Don got a lot of votes and I got a lot of votes, it just became a tie. So they said,"We're not gonna have neither of them!" and they went with DJ Spivey & The Magnificent Seven. Grandmaster Dee of Whodini went to Julia Richman, too. He also jammed in Julia Richman and he came by and said, "Hey, Blue! Can I get on those turntables?" And I was never the one to  say, "Nah, nah!" I said, "Go ahead! Get on, enjoy yourself! Pick whatever records you got and enjoy yourself!" I never treated anybody like I was more better. I was always like, "Come on in!" So as time went on I got connected with Kid Flash who became my brother-in-law and he hooked me up with Mike & Dave (Mike & Dave Productions)."

DJ/MC Lep Ski

SIR NORIN RAD:"From Lincoln...."

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Right. Mixmaster Mike & Disco Dave. Then you also had DJ Mr. Freeze and DJ Kenny Sex. DJ Mr. Freeze promoted a lot of my parties as well."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Where would these parties take place at?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"With Mixmaster Mike & Disco Dave they would have parties at Randy's Place...that's like on 125th Street.....they had some at Celebrity Club and they would promote them at the schools like I.S. 201 and they promoted this one party "East versus West" or something like that. To my knowledge at that time it was said that whoever win get paid, whoever don't win don't get paid. It was all cool and everything, it was all in fun. They promoted that party where you had a lot of DJs......like DJ Pernelli-O and them (The P-Brothers Disco) , DJ White Flash, The Magnificent Seven.... a lot of them....I don't remember right now because I don't have the flyer in front of me but it also was DJ Blue & The Gangster 5 MCs. Then they promoted another party called "Battle Of Harlem's Best".....that was on Old Terrace Ballroom...I think it was an old masonic building or something like that...right on 125th Street off of 5th Avenue. That was also one of the biggest parties that they had given. A lot of their parties were also given in the Lincoln Projects. At that particular party at the Old Terrace Ballroom it was DJ Blue & The Mafia Family which consisted of MC Al Capone, MC Joe Ski- RIP, and MC Kool Joe- RIP. Those were the MCs that I DJed for. D.J. Blue & M.C. Priest had parted ways by that time. M.C. Priest stayed with the Gangster 5 M.C.'s. At this party we stepped out a midnight blue stretched limousine and everybody was like,"Look who pulled up in a limousine?!?" At that particular party at the Old Terrace Ballroom I remember it well, all of us were wearing godfather hats. M.C. Kool Joe had on a black godfather hat, he stepped out the car holding the left turn table and stood to the left. Joe Ski also wore a black godfather hat, he stepped out to the right, holding the right turn table. Al-Capone wore a white godfather hat, he stepped out holding his personal mic and stood to the left. I wore a blue godfather hat with my set of headphones and I walked up the middle as the crowd parted."

May 24th, 1980: DJ Blue & The Gangster 5 MC's participate in the "East vs West Battle" at the legendary I.S.201 in Harlem

SIR NORIN RAD:"What caused you to move on from MC Priest to the Gangster 5 and from them to the Mafia Family?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"It started out as DJ Blue & MC Priest. After a while Priest started seeing his girlfriends and stuff like that. Then we had a party at a place called We Are Somebody which was at 110th Street & Avenue which was an old film studio. People like DJ Mr. Freeze jammed there...MC Priest stepped down from rapping at that party. But then he came and started hanging out with Ski Jump (legendary Harlem B-Boy / MC), Prince Haji and a kid by the name of Kendu. They got together and became the Gangster Five MCs. There was fifth guy, I don't remember his name off hand. They would join forces with me and that's when we went to the I.S. 201 party with Mixmaster Mike & Disco Dave that I told you about. We did that, then once again everybody went their own separate ways. Later on I was introduced to MC Al Capone who was cousin with MC Joe Ski and MC Kool Joe. They needed a DJ so when we got together they was called the Mafia Family so then we called ourselves DJ Blue & The Mafia Family. "

SIR NORIN RAD:"Do you recall how that "East vs. West Battle" at I.S. 201 went down? How well did your crew perform in that battle?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Oh well, listen! They did a routine with a song that was called "Gangster Boogie" (by the Chicago Gangsters). What happened was they said, "Listen Blue, we gonna start off with "Gangster Boogie"!" First of all, Ski Jump would say an introduction in terms of who he was and they would go down to  the next MC, then to the next MC and by the time they got to the fifth MC they would all say, "We are the Gangster 5 MCs!" and that's when I was to supposed to drop the "Gangster Boogie" beat. Instead of them saying "Gangster Boogie!", they would say "Gangster Five!" So that record was like hot! Then from there so that they could go off and do their thing I dropped "Groove To Get Down" by T-Connection. Well, of course they also had steps and all that stuff and each one of them went off on the mic and did their thing. The crowd was loving it! But how it turned out the Eastside did win!"

September 20th, 1980: Kool DJ Blue & The Mafia Family participate in the "Battle Of Harlem's Best" contest at the Old Terrace Ballroom

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe your method of acquiring new breakbeats back then!"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Wherever you can find records, that's where you go get them. It was Cheap Records on 23rd Street between Lexington Avenue and Park Avenue. I shopped there. I shopped at Downstairs Records at 43rd Street or something like that. It's been so long.....Al Ski worked there and anytime I went there I said,"Okay, Al Ski! What new you got?" He'd be like,"Blue, check this out!" He would throw the beats on and he'd say, "This just came in!" So when he played those beats for me I'm registereing in my mind like,"Okay, okay...." I'm listening to it, seeing what kinda beats he's going through and I would say, "I want it." So he would put it to the side and he'd throw the next one on.  Whatever he had I would get, on top of the fact that I was also registered with those record pools. I was registered with Mojo Records. The director of Mojo Records was a man called Stan...I don't recall his last name.  Howie Dee  turned me on to Mojo record pool and I got in with that so of course when you're in that you get all kinds of records. Stuff that wasn't even out yet! So every week you gonna get records and you have to do a write-up on those records to see how well they do in the clubs........Like would you play this record? Would you not play this record? Would you promote it? There were records that were like not that good but you could make that record good depending on what you mix it with. In order to get into a record label you had to be a house DJ somewhere. That's the way it was supposed to be but with these directors...as long as you were paying dues it was like, "Listen, we need the DJs to come in." So, say you didn't have a club you was jamming in...as long as you were jamming in the park you were a active DJ they would be like, "Yeah, come on in!" because when they give you the records they give you paper work with it that you have to write up to say how well these records do. Those were the terms and conditions of being in a record pool, you know? By the time you came in to pick up your next shipment of records...if your paper work wasn't in they wouldn't let you pick up that shipment of records for the week. So you had to stay up on that paper work. It wasn't just spinning records you had to fill out this here questionnaire. Let's say they gave you 15 records.....there were 15 records in your bin....when you go to the record pool you have a bin with your name...."DJ....whoever you are" and you might have anywhere fom 5 to 15 records which means now you have to do paper work for each record. If you came in one week and you didn't have it they may say, "Alright, I'mma let you pick up your shipment today but now you know you owe me a double package!" Cause that's how the record pools stayed up. They had to get that paperwork to who they was dealing with."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Did you have certain beats that made you stand out from your competitors? From the other DJs that were rocking in the parks in Harlem at that time?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Well, what made you unique back then..you know, back in the days DJs would cover the label of the records that they were playing. So you wouldn't know what it was. We all would do the same thing...shopping for different records...it could be some type of western music but if it had a so many seconds or minutes beat you would take that and you would say,"Okay, they (the other DJs) don't know what the rest of this record is. I'm gonna jam this and mix it with this or with that. " So anytime you could come up with something that nobody else got and then turn into something special that always made you different from the next DJ.  What happens is partygoers they go and they hear these beats over and over again though they still like them like "Before I Let Go" (by Frankie Beverly & Maze)....now you can play that record and I don't care who you are you play that record at any party and people gonna be like,"Yo!" and they gonna party and you will still get the crowd pleased because that's a record they can identify with but anytime you get a beat and you turn it into something that's what makes you stand out. The crowd would say, "I haven't heard that before!" and they would remember that, especially if you made them dancing off of that. They would remember that and if they ever heard it again...I guarantee you..they would say,"I heard that beat before and the first person I heard play that record was DJ Blue."  

SIR NORIN RAD:"Would you say that there were people in Harlem who came to the parties specificially to hear new beats being spun by the DJs in the park?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Well, you gotta remember you had the MCs who were hyping things up so half of the time the crowd was into the MCs doing their thing and they may not even recognize that record right then and there. It's only until that MC would say something like, "You're listening to the sounds of Kool DJ Blue! Hit it!" and then you'd drop the beat and then they would give you that minute and let you cut that beat up. That's what made them hyped off of that record especially if it was something new."

SIR NORIN RAD:" What made you pick the name Kool DJ Blue?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"My mother used to call me Baby Blue. So when I was younger before I got into the DJ thing she would always call me, "Baby Blue, come here!" Of course it's from that little nursery rhyme..."Baby Blue go blow your horn..." That's where it probably came from. As I got older and started doing music it was DJ Blue, right? Then the way I would play music was too kool. I wasn't the Flashes of the world, I wasn't the Theodores of the world......Did I scratch?  Yeah, I scratched and stuff like that but it was more of a smooth type of way of jamming that record to the point where it became Kool DJ Blue."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Which influence did the Boogie Down Bronx have on you?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Well, one thing about my MC Priest. Priest was dating a girl from the Mill Brook projects (South Bronx) and he was hanging out in the Bronx. So we would go up there to hear different DJs like C.C. & Company which was MC Money Mike's crew, Grandwizard Theodore and stuff like that. Getting from borough to another we didn't have no car and back then...I got to be honest....if we didn't jump the turnstile we walked because basically the Third Avenue Bridge was right there. We would walk right across the bridge. As a DJ or MC of course you are always listening to other DJs and MCs. I looked at it as a learning lesson. I'm not better than you, you're not better than me. If you can move the crowd, you can move the crowd. However, there was a little twist in there and it was all in good fun. We would go to different places and of course we didn't carry no equipment. So if we see a DJ there we would ask, "Hey, can we get some? Can we get a little bit of that?" And they either let you or they don't for several reasons because they don't want nobody coming in there and after they been rocking and they get the crowd and then they let you get a little bit of those turntables or that mic and then you kinda make it look like you're better than them. They was often kinda staying away from that. One incident...I remember we went to Mill Brook projects and MC Money Mike and his crew was down there. They was playing music in the park and Priest said to me,"Yo Blue, let's go over there and see if we can get on!" So we made our way through the crowd, I went to the DJ...stuff like that....MC Money Mike was rapping on the mic...so Priest said, "Hey, Money Mike! What's going on?" We didn't know each other like that but Priest asked, "Yo, can I get some of that mic?" Money Mike said, "No!" (laughs) He said, "No!" So Priest said, "Yo, check this out! I can't get none of that? I mean, come on man! You know we're out here doing this." Money Mike said, "No." So Priest said, "I tell you what. Let my DJ battle your DJ and I'm gonna battle you!" Priest was good for doing crap like this. He'd done this with Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde when we went over to Schomburg and battled them for the first time. So Priest said,"I tell you what, Mike. Let's battle over this mic. If you win I'll never rap again but if I win you don't touch this mic no more tonight. " He gambled but Money Mike wouldn't challenge him because..and I don't wanna put him down but from what I have heard...he didn't have too much. He would go, "This is Money Mike, y'all!" Then he would spell his name out or whatever the case was and then he'd go into "Throw your hands in the air!" He didn't have too much coming behind that so I guess Priest already knew he had him beat anyway. Back then they walked around with their little books of rhymes and stuff like that there, you know? So he already knew what time it was. He also did the same thing with Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde and DJ Louie Lou over at Schomburg...I think it was Schomburg. Did Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde let Priest get on? Yeah, they let him get on. Now, did Priest win? No, but he put up a hell of a fight. Why? Not that he wasn't good, it was just that Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde had their crowd there already. Was the crowd fair?  They was very fair, they gave Priest his props 'cause Priest did do his thing but Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde they still won that battle."

MC Priest (The Gangster Five)

SIR NORIN RAD:"How did these MC battles go down in Harlem back then? Was verbally abusing your opponent and threatening him part of it like it is today?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"It was definitely a whole different genre from what it is today. They were talking about fly girls....at that time the word "fly girl" came out....they talked about how beautiful the fly girls was, how they (the MCs) dressed, how they would talk to the fly girls, they talked about the O.J.'s (luxury car service)  in terms of, "I pick you up in a fly O.J." The MCs talked about how good they was on the microphone. They would never talk about nobody's mother or their family and they were never talking about killing and stuff  like that. That's why it's so crazy today to hear how they talk more about death...like dying is not a problem, almost like they are rapping about they live to die. No! They got it twisted. I say, "Bring the party back!  'Cause back in our days when we was  jamming we was more into the music, into the dressing.....like the Cortefiels, the Playboys, the British walkers, the Kangols. You get out of the O.J and you're looking dapper. That's how you roll up in a party! You go up in there, you're looking to talk to some female, get your little dance on and stuff like that. That's why I'm trying to tell you, "Bring back the party 'cause y'all so caught up in doing all this gangster stuff  that y'all forgot that Hiphop is about the party!"

SIR NORIN RAD:"That's a powerful statement!" 

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Yeah, you know, me and DJ Dollar Bill battled and we are still friends today. There was no animosity, we did that battle to entertain the people."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Please describe how that battle went down!"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"That battle took place in East River. There was a park over there....between East River projects and Wilson projects just next to the FDR Drive. It was me, MC Priest, DJ Mr. Freeze and it was DJ Dollar Bill. We got on the turntables and the way it went down was he would take a certain record and cut it up and also do some scratches and mix it with other records. Then after that he would stop and then MC Priest would say something about me like, "A lady had a baby that's pretty and brand new. The doctor slapped him on his ass and called him DJ Blue!" And then he'd go,"DJ Blue!" Now anytime he said, "DJ Blue!"I would cut it after what he would say, right? And then he would say,"You go on and on and on and on! The beat don't stop till the break of dawn!" and I would drop that record "Scratching" (by the Magic Disco Machine) and cut it up. Then I started getting faster.....BAM, BAM, BAM and then DJ Mr. Freeze got on and he would work one turntable side and I would work one turntable side and we would still hit that BAM every time. That was backspinning. He would backspin...BAM....I would backspin...BAM. Then after he let go I kept working both sides of the turntables and then the crowd just said, "Yo, DJ Blue got it!" 

SIR  NORIN RAD:"So what was your stomping ground back then?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Being that I was from Johnson projects, Johnson Park became my stomping ground. That was the home, that was the home of DJ Blue. Then from Johnson I would go over into Jefferson and jam. Then after meeting DJ Kid Flash and all that I went to Wagner projects and I started rocking more in Wagner because that was the home of DJ Kid Flash, DJ Kid Swift....DJ Mr. Freeze would jam there although DJ Mr. Freeze was from Jefferson and we would do that right there on 124th Street Park. I even played in Brooklyn, New Lots one time... It was a bit scary because around that time Brooklyn and Queens they was all known for systems that looked like housing projects. They would have like five big speakers on the right and five big speakers on the left looking like towers and stuff like that. But they didn't have no music (in terms of breakbeats). They had Brass Construction, Crown Heights Affair, El Coco, MFSB but they didn't have what Harlem and the Boogie Down (Bronx) had. So when I went out there I played that record "Walks like sex, it talks like sex".......I played that in Brooklyn and they looked at me like, "What the hell is this record?!?!" So to get them back into their comfort zone I threw on "Cocomotion" by El Coco and they got back into doing the Hustle because you can't take Hiphop and bring it to an environment that isn't ready."

SIR NORIN RAD:"Could you describe the process by which crowds were drawn to the parks?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"You see this the thing about the projects...you didn't have to put out no flyers or nothing like that, if they heard some music and if it was louder than a boom box they knew somebody brought a system out somewhere and it would just automatically draw a crowd. Now if you're doing it right there in the Wagner projects people would be like, "Yo, they got the music out!" So now they gonna come it's just a matter who it is that got the music out. They won't know until they actually come out and then they start telling their friends and everybody always made their way up to the DJ. Then they would see who it was..whether it was Kool DJ Blue, whether it was DJ Kid Flash, whether it was DJ Kid Swift....whoever it was they would know once they got up there and then they was out there. Sometimes the MC would be testing his mic, "One, two...one, two." and if they heard a beat drop after that "One, two, one, two" and they heard the MC going off people would just come. So no matter what project you went to all you had to do was bring your set out. Once you brought that set out people would come."

January 9th, 1981: Kool DJ Blue & The Mafia Family perform at Twin Disco

SIR NORIN RAD:"What do remember about East Harlem B-Boys going off at the park jams? Like the Floormasters, the Crusaders or the Executioners?"

KOOL DJ BLUE:"Listen, anywhere were there was music and it was outside and you were playing all the Hiphop records they would show up. That was their thing! Once you played "Apache" and stuff like that..."It's Just Begun" by The Jimmy Castor Bunch. Once the beginning of "It's Just Begun" came out, the B-Boys would start forming because they knew what time it was and then they would go off. After "It's Just Begun" you played "Apache" that was the continuation to let them continue to get theirs off. After "Apache" you played "Shaft In Africa" (chuckles).....mmmh, yeah I mean listen, man.....you better believe by the time you finish playing "Shaft In Africa" people was sweating!!! It was over!"