Update on 12th July: After some reflection from the Ears To The House team, we’ve decided we weren’t happy with the original headline of “Is Jesse Saunders promoting house – or himself?” for this article, and have changed it.
Jesse Saunders is the man who made the first house record pressed onto vinyl. We know this because he has relentlessly told us so for decades – and as annoying as it is, no one has ever been able to totally disprove his theory. The truth is his assessment may well be correct.
As we’ve documented before on Ears To The House, Saunders is not a man afraid to say what he thinks – whether it’s in a dispute with Pete Tong or with an interview from Farley Jackmaster Funk. And as it happens, we quite like his attitude – who better to speak up for yourself than yourself, after all?
But one thing which we’ve found curious lately is how Jesse Saunders keeps being selected by the press for interviews on the history of house music. For once, mainstream journalists have got something right – as someone who’s been there from the beginning, Saunders will know much about its history. But with all due respect, he isn’t the only fountain of knowledge out there.
As far as Ears To The House has been able to establish, Terry Hunter – who created a remix Beyoncé likes but hasn’t yet cleared major label politics – has not been interviewed on this matter. Maurice Joshua hasn’t been interviewed either, despite effectively being the in-house remixer for Beyoncé Knowles and Destiny’s Child for many years. Joshua’s absence from the debate is especially odd to us – and we’re curious to know why.
Because when we checked yesterday, both men have websites and social media profiles – and chances are that both men are also in possession of a working phone. So quite why the phone hasn’t been ringing with journalists keen to get their take on this story is a mystery. Is it that Saunders is so comprehensive they don’t feel they need to approach anyone else? Or is it just journalists being lazy?
A source in the media world spoke to Ears To The House on condition of anonymity over the weekend and espoused an interesting theory – “sometimes, exactly who a journalist ends up talking to comes down to whoever answers the phone the quickest. This especially applies when there’s a deadline coming, which there usually is.”.
And the worst thing at this stage is we can’t totally dismiss this theory…
