“I thought I was the best DJ in the world until I heard Walter Gibbons play.” –Jellybean Benitez
To mark the passing of Walter Gibbons 30 years ago today, we’ve brought back DEL’s original FOUNDATIONS column praising this unsung hero of dance music, as well as a playlist of 17 essential remixes you know but may not know Walter Gibbons made.
In his story, DEL provides first-hand testimony to all of us what it was like to hear Walter Gibbons play back when he first saw Gibbons in 1977 in Philadelphia’s The Second Story club:
Gibbons was an innovator as well as someone that launched countless obscure and unknown artists through the power of playing their records in the perfect environment — in the perfect mix. Much of what Gibbons played, though, “was not in the commercial disco mainstream but rather the soulful, funky, percussive and even hip-hoppy-break-beaty underbelly of dance music that he ‘mixed with love,'” DEL wrote. “He also was one of the first DJs to make his own acetate remixes to be able to share unique versions of hits or future hits.”
Many Walter Gibbons remixes are “underground” even today, or at least off the radar of how most people consume music via streaming services. We tried making a shareable playlist of Gibbons’ most essential remixes (as originally curated by DEL), but there are too many tracks missing from Spotify to make it worthwhile or comprehensible. After some updates YouTube, somehow, is the most comprehensive of all (though one is still missing). The playlist is shared on a separate page, which is a bit old school but I guess that’s appropriate.
Walter Gibbons was barely 40 years old when he died of AIDS-related complications on September 23, 1994. There were few obituaries; Gibbons had some years earlier become a born-again Christian and this complicated some of his relationships. But as with several of his peers, appreciation for the groundbreaking DJ — “arguably the first to really do the studio work, expertly remix an extensive discography of classics, and whose innovative approach and skills set the bar for his contemporaries and our House Music pioneers to come” — has grown over time.
Like in 1977, Walter Gibbons is still “for those who know.” Thankfully, their number continues to grow.
Read More:
❇️ Features: Mixed With Love: A Walter Gibbons Story
▶️ Playlist: 17 Essential Walter Gibbons Remixes
