House came first. The record most often cited as the first house release, Jesse Saunders’ “On and On”, came out in Chicago in early 1984, and the club sound behind it goes back to 1977. Techno wasn’t named as a genre until 1988. The gap is narrower than those dates suggest, though, because Detroit’s producers were putting out electronic records from 1981 and the two cities were trading ideas the whole time.
Chicago: the Warehouse and the first house records
In 1977 the Warehouse opened at 206 South Jefferson Street in Chicago, run by Robert Williams, with Frankie Knuckles, a DJ from the Bronx, as its musical director. The dance floor was mostly Black and Latino gay men, and Knuckles played to it until late 1982, when he left to open his own club, the Power Plant. The Warehouse’s owners then opened the Music Box in 1983 and hired Ron Hardy, whose sets were faster and louder.
The name “house” is most often traced back to that first club. Chip E., one of the early producers, has said a Chicago record shop called Importes Etc. labeled its bins “As Heard at the Warehouse”, and the phrase got shortened. There are competing stories, but they all place the word in Chicago in the early 1980s.
The records followed. Saunders wrote “On and On” with Vince Lawrence and released it on Jes Say Records, using a Roland TR-808 drum machine, a Korg Poly-61 synth and a TB-303 bass synth. Trax Records, founded by Larry Sherman, dates from 1984 and DJ International from 1985. By September 1986 Farley “Jackmaster” Funk’s “Love Can’t Turn Around” was at number 10 in the UK, and in January 1987 Steve “Silk” Hurley’s “Jack Your Body” went to number one there.
Detroit: Cybotron, Model 500 and the Belleville Three
Detroit’s story starts with three school friends from Belleville, Michigan: Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson. Atkins got moving first. He formed Cybotron with Richard Davis in 1980, and their single “Alleys of Your Mind” came out on the Deep Space label in 1981, three years before “On and On”. “Clear” followed in 1983 and “Techno City” in 1984. Atkins was already calling this music techno, drawing on the futurist writer Alvin Toffler, whose book The Third Wave also gave him the words “cybotron” and “metroplex”.
In 1985 Atkins started his own label, Metroplex, and released “No UFO’s” as Model 500. May’s “Strings of Life”, under the name Rhythim Is Rhythim, came out on Transmat in 1987. Saunderson’s group Inner City reached number 8 in the UK with “Big Fun” in 1988.
That same year a British compilation gave the music its public name. “Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit” was put together by Neil Rushton and Derrick May for 10 Records, a Virgin imprint. Its working title was “The House Sound of Detroit”. Atkins’ track “Techno Music” prompted a rethink, and the Detroit producers chose to present what they did as a genre of its own instead of a regional kind of house.
How the two cities fed each other
The Belleville Three made trips to Chicago to hear Ron Hardy and Frankie Knuckles play, and they combined what they heard with the mechanical sound of groups like Kraftwerk. Traffic went the other way too. Knuckles recalled May turning up at the Power Plant with a Roland TR-909 drum machine and selling it to him, after which he ran it underneath the records in his sets (MusicRadar has his account of the night). May also carried copies of “No UFO’s” to Chicago DJs, and it was Knuckles who gave “Strings of Life” its title after hearing a demo.
May once described Detroit techno as being like “George Clinton and Kraftwerk caught in an elevator, with only a sequencer to keep them company”. That line holds the difference between the cities. Chicago started from disco and soul records played for dancers. Detroit started from funk and European synth music. Detroit even got a club inspired by Chicago’s house rooms, the Music Institute.
The short timeline
- 1977: the Warehouse opens in Chicago with Frankie Knuckles.
- 1981: Cybotron release “Alleys of Your Mind” in Detroit.
- 1983: Ron Hardy starts at the Music Box.
- 1984: Jesse Saunders releases “On and On”. Cybotron release “Techno City”.
- 1985: Model 500 releases “No UFO’s” on Metroplex.
- 1987: “Jack Your Body” reaches number one in the UK. Derrick May releases “Strings of Life”.
- 1988: “Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit” gives the genre its name.
So which came first
It depends on what you count. As a club sound, house, by several years. As a record, Detroit has the earlier date, although “Alleys of Your Mind” is usually filed under electro. As a named genre with its own records and labels, house had roughly a four-year head start. My answer is house, with the footnote that techno grew up beside it as much as out of it.
To hear the relationship for yourself, play “On and On” and “No UFO’s” back to back. They were released a year apart, and you can hear two cities reaching different conclusions. A lot of that difference is in the drum programming, which I’ve covered in a piece on how drum groove gets built. And if you want to know what happened after 1988, I’ve written about how dance music went from underground clubs to global festivals.