Remembered as a man that combined limitless talent with an inexhaustible work ethic, Ron Carroll has passed, according to several close friends. We are mourning today for one of the shooting stars of Chicago house music, whose legacy is a stack of records as high as your neck but also the uncounted but vast numbers of DJs, vocalists and producers he put on stage and advocated for.
Ron Carroll was a vocalist, producer, DJ and impresario — and you could keep talking, keep listing his titles for awhile before you ran out of jobs. He excelled at all of them. As a vocalist he appeared on tracks with Hardsoul and Bob Sinclar and dozens more; he wrote lyrics for the Barbara Tucker smash “I Get Lifted” (one of the most identifiable house music tracks in history); he performed with countless artists, broke even more, and his production skills matched those of just about anybody.
Having experienced what it’s like to work as a vocalist in the business, he was a tireless advocate for singers in house music, demanding they receive equal billing with the producers they worked with.
The number of artists he put on as a producer, promoter and label owner must be numbered in the hundreds. Just a couple weeks ago we featured a remix of his classic “The Sermon” by Twan and Billy O’Malley for his latest label, Afro Disco Chicago.
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Ron had to be counted as one of the hardest working DJs you ever met, both in terms of the city of Chicago and of his generation. Ron maintained an international profile but also played a remarkable number of local gigs, many in front of crowds representing a new generation. When he didn’t get enough bookings, he threw the party himself, and had in the past acted as an intermediary between well-known artists he counted among his friends and local promoters who wanted to bring them here.
On a personal note, Ron was one of 5 Mag‘s earliest supporters, dropping promos and taking out ads to support his projects and club nights in those first few years. He featured in one of 5 Mag’s earliest interviews — it appeared in our second issue, released this month 20 years ago — and in a cover story published a year later. Characteristically, he invited several other artists to appear on the cover with him rather than go it alone.
I always thought that Ron Carroll had one of the most slept-on discographies in Chicago house. I mean the people that should know did know, and aside from his contemporary output, 20 or 25 year old tracks from Ron would constantly bubble back up into DJ sets and playlists of deep digging DJs. But his catalog had so many bangers. Throw a rock and you’ll break a record that you didn’t know about, or forgot that you did:
Back when we started 5 Mag, it was common to hear local artists lament that Chicago’s leading lights weren’t as close as the high profile house music artists of other cities, or as close as they’d once been. They didn’t work together as much as they once did, scarred by the vicious legacy of some of Chicago’s early house music labels and the zero-sum mentality that dominated partnerships and then broke them.
I think Ron was one of the artists that tried to change that, that tried to get people working together again. It’s reflected in the huge number of collaborations he took part in. That never really stopped — he just appeared in yet another released last week that we had in the queue to post today. And there are likely many more to come. Even more than the records, the gigs, the videos — that’s Ron Carroll’s legacy.
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