IN THE STORE:
TONY COOK – BACK TO REALITY
Released today: Stones Throw's anthology of rare & unreleased 1982-1986 recordings from Tony Cook, drummer of J.B.'s and creator of “the Granddaddy of all House Records”
Download MP3 – Tony Cook "On The Floor (Rock It)" feat. The Party People
“On the Floor” found Cook successfully merging funk and disco, although that was not the original intent. The drummer-turned-producer was admittedly trying to score a hit, and to do so, chose to ride the other emerging genre of the day. “‘On the Floor’ was a rap record at first,” he reveals. “Regisford and Jarvis took the master and re-recorded a few things, added a few things. Then, we didn’t know what to call it, but it definitely wasn’t a rap record anymore. It had more of a dance kind of thing going through it. And it had a little bit of techno to it. When we released it in 1984, the phrase ‘garage’ came out, then ‘house’ came out, and someone called it ‘The Granddaddy of all House Records’, so we knew we had something different and new.”
“I first became aware of Tony through the song ‘On the Floor’,” says Chris “Peanut Butter Wolf” Manak. Manak is the founder of Stones Throw Records, home of Cook’s Back to Reality anthology, a collection of rare and unreleased funk, boogie, and proto-rap from the immediate post-disco era. “I found the record in NYC about seven or eight years ago and started playing it in my DJ sets. It sounded like the missing link between funk and house music. For being released in 1984, to me, it seemed like the first house record. I loved playing it.”
Read about Tony Cook's history with James Brown and his Stones Throw anthology Back To Reality here: Tony Cook – Back To Reality
